Customizing your store
Hierarchy of templates
Templates and Snippits and Tags, Oh MY!
NOTE: A much more thorough explanation of templates, tags, snippits and customization “How to’s” can be found at www.RealCartUniversity.com, coming Fall 2002.
RealCart follows a tidy and easy to remember hierarchy when rebuilding your product pages. RealCart utilizes templates, Snippits and tags in the following manner.
A template is a special HTML page that contains RealCart Tags.
A snippit is an HTML fragment that contains HTML tags and or more RealCart Tags.
A tag is one of our special database field, square bracketed tag as described on the previous page.
As RealCart rebuilds your pages it will attempt to find the template for the page it is building in your current theme folder. If it does not find the template in your current theme folder it will look in the common folder. The common folder is a folder in the same parent folder as your current theme folder. The common folder stores templates and Snippits that are universal to all the themes.
If your current template or snippit is not found in your current theme folder AND it also cannot be found in the common folder then you will get a Parsing Error.
Before you start editing
Be sure to make a copy of a theme before you modify it. This is described in detail in the previous page. After making a copy of your theme and giving it its own name you are ready to begin. If you need to determine which file to modify to change your pages just view source code on the page and read the 5th or 6th line down in the code. It will look something like this:
<!-- to DESIGN or REDESIGN this file edit the file called "department.html" in your
c:\program files\realcart.com\realcart\templates\My New Theme folder -->
By utilizing the clues in the finished pages you can determine exactly which file(s) to edit to effect the change you want to make. This is also possible with the snippit HTML fragments that are utilized throughout the templates. When you see a comment that looks like the following you are seeing a snippit reference. This information tells you which snippit to edit.
<!-- The code that follows can be found in the file called "deptthumb.snp" v2.0.0.30 -->
<!-- This is the default snippit located in "c:\program files\realcart.com\realcart\Templates\Common" folder -->
The above comment indicates that you can change the code that follows the comment by modifying the file called: “deptthumb.snp” in your common template folder. This file is very simple. Opening it with a text editor will show just how simple it is:
<!-- The code that follows can be found in the file called "deptthumb.snp" v2.0.0.31 -->
<!-- This is the default snippit located in "[Settings_AppDir]\Templates\Common" folder -->
<a href="[Products_ ItemStockNumber|^:_~].html"><img src="http://m.realcart.com/[Products_ThumbNailFile]" width="[Products_ThumbNailWidth]" height="[Products_ThumbNailHeight]" border=0 alt="CLICK HERE to learn more about
[Products_ItemLongName]"></a>
<br>
<!-- End code for "deptthumb.snp" v2.0.0.31 -->
To change the way the department page thumbnail is displayed simply change the contents of this file and every time your store is rebuilt you will see your changes magically appear in repetition for each product listed in your department. Once you get the hang of templates and Snippits and how they work together you can truly do some amazing changes in a pretty short amount of time.
See your changes instantly
As you make changes to your templates and Snippits you can rebuild a single page by pressing the rebuild page button on the RealCart small toolbar. The rebuild page button looks like this:
Rebuild Page button — 
As you make changes to your templates just navigate to a page that uses the template and rebuild it after each modification instantly. The only exception to this rule is the checkout page. The checkout page is rebuilt every time you click the Cash Register button on RealCart’s large toolbar and then click the OK button on the Checkout Wizard. The checkout pages are all located in the common folder. Make a copy of the “pay.html” and place it in your current theme folder as well if you need to make a change to it for the same obvious reasons.
What to avoid
Try to avoid modifying the original templates and Snippits. If you need to modify a template or snippit that is located in the common folder make a copy of it and place it in your current theme folder. This way if you make a mistake and cannot figure out how to fix your snippit you can just delete it to go back to the common version or make another copy of the snippit in the common folder, again saving it in your current theme folder and trying again.
Make frequent back up copies of your entire theme as your customize it. This way you can revert back to an earlier version if your theme becomes “broken” at some point.
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