Customizing your store
Customization of the templates
Advanced Users Only
Although you do not need to know HTML or JavaScript to use RealCart on your web site, we have created the templates in such a way that you can customize your on-line store without limits! Keep in mind that customizing the templates is completely up to you and at your sole risk.
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.
Make a copy of your theme before you begin
Before you begin make sure your on-line store is completely working and fully functional. Once you have achieved this please make a BACKUP copy of your templates in case your customized templates become unusable. You can quickly make a copy of your theme by clicking the Copy Theme... option on the File menu in RealCart’s main menu. Give your theme a new name and then after the theme is copied you can switch to it in the Theme pull-down menu just beneath the RealCart Large Toolbar.
Modify ONLY the copy of your theme
Once you make a copy of the theme, modify ONLY the copy. If you modify the original and then install an update of RealCart there is the possibility that your changes could become overwritten. (Newer RealCart template files could replace your customized originals during installation.)
This also serves as an emergency backup should your modified templates stop working. For example, if you customized your product.html template and then develop an error like document.product.price is not an object then you could simply replace your customized product.html with a copy of the original from the original theme.
That being said, let’s begin. If you installed the shopping cart in the default location you will find your template folders here:
C:\Program Files\RealCart.com\RealCart\Templates
The way RealCart interacts with the templates is very similar to the way Microsoft Word (or other word processor) processes a mail merge. If you have ever created form letters with a word processor then you know what we mean. In Word, for example you would have a database and a master document. The master document will have “database fields” where actual information will be merged when creating the finished form letters. RealCart’s templates work in much the same way. Our database fields look like this:
[Products_ItemPrice]
The above database field is what we call a tag. RealCart tags are different than traditional HTML tags in that they start and end with square brackets [ and ] instead of angle brackets < and > like traditional HTML tags. If you want to use FrontPage or Dreamweaver to customize your templates you may. Just be sure to save the modified templates back to the template folder so RealCart can use the customized templates to rebuild your store whenever you make changes to your pricing and product line.
We also have a special repeat loop command that look like this:
code that displays only once on finished page
<!-- [DepartmentGroupsLoop_Begin;DepartmentID=%DepartmentID] -->
code that gets repeated
code that gets repeated
code that gets repeated
<!-- [DepartmentGroupsLoop_End] -->
code that displays only once on finished page
code that displays only once on finished page
When you see these tags just remember that the code in between them will be repeated once for each product until all of the products to be displayed on that page are shown. Then it will render the lines of code underneath the repeat tags only once. If you want to modify the way your products are presented in your department pages you can do so by changing the code between these repeat tags. If you don’t want to display a thumbnail on your department pages, for example, you can remove the RealCart thumbnail image tag:
[Products_ThumbNailFile:deptthumb.snp]
Removing this tag will cause the template to stop showing the thumbnail image. This is handy if you want to create a new template for your All Products department that does not have thumbnail images while allowing the rest of your departments to retain thumbnails. Here is how to define a special department page just for your All Products department.
Streamlining the All Products Page
Many of our users have requested a way to make their All Products Page more streamlined so that it doesn’t take a long time to download.
Here is how to accomplish this step by step.
- Click the Cart Start button on RealCart’s Large Toolbar.
- Click the Template Theme link: (this is down in the browser window, not on the RealCart toolbar)
- Make a copy of the file called department.html then name the copy: dept-nopix.html.
- Edit dept-nopix.html with the WYSIWYG or text editor of your choice. (Notepad will work)
- Locate and remove the tag that reads: [Products_ThumbNailFile:deptthumb.snp].
- Remove this tag or replace it with the words: See photo or more info or something, its up to you.
- Save the dept-nopix.html. (Make sure you save it back to the original folder, don’t save it as part of your FrontPage web.)
- Now open RealCart and navigate to the All Products page.
- In the Template pull-down menu in the RealCart program window select dept-nopix.html as the template to use.
- RealCart will now rebuild using the your new, customized department page that doesn’t have thumbnail images.
Using customized templates for selective pages
You can dress up any section of your on-line store by creating variations on the department and product pages. You can edit your catalog page too. Your imagination is your only limit!
When making custom product pages name them:
“prod-something.html” without the quotes
When making custom department pages name them:
“dept-whatever.html” without the quotes
Anytime you want to create a specialized department page or want to integrate sub departments just assign your departments different department templates and create special navigation to all your sub departments. By customizing the template your customized store remains dynamic and can be rebuilt without further intervention by you to maintain your customizations.
To assign your customized product or department template just open RealCart and navigate to the page that you want to use the new template. Select the new customized template from the template pull-down menu and each time the page or store is rebuilt RealCart will remember to use your customized template only for the pages you specify as long as they exist in your current theme folder. If the customized template you specify does not exist in the current theme then RealCart will substitute the default template instead. To correct this situation just create the template that RealCart is looking for and save it in the current theme folder.
What to avoid
The biggest mistake that most of our users make when customizing their stores is editing the finished pages in the cart folder. Don’t do this. The first time you publish your store or rebuild all of your pages the changes to the finished pages will be lost. Customize the templates instead and when your store gets rebuilt the customizations will come through to your finished pages.
Try to avoid modifying the original templates. Make a copy of the theme that you want to modify first giving the copy of the theme its own unique name. To copy a theme just select Copy Theme... from the File menu in RealCart’s main menu.
You will also want to avoid using Microsoft Word as your HTML editor. Word likes to change our square brackets into their HTML code equivalents:
[Products_ItemPrice]
Once the bracket [ has been changed to the HTML code: [ then RealCart will no longer recognize them as database fields and you will have a big mess.
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