How to Incorporate os commerce into existing web site

[jdmorrisn]

Hi all,

 

I am a newby and pretty much a novice in web site building.

 

And I know this has been asked before and I know e-commerce sites are usually stand alone sites, but i have looked everywhere to find an answer that I like:) without success. Basically we have a webpage that already exists and the e-commerce part will only be one section of this web site, we provide many other items on our site. What I would like to know is how to customise the template of os commerce to match our web site template, otherwise it looks odd when the majority of our pages are in one style and then the catalogue/e-commerce page is totally different?

 

I have the css file for the web page template I am using but how do I install parts of the template in the os template css? - I thought I could do it by trial and error with a copy of the os template css on my desktop but I would have no idea which css for the template in os is correct and where to place the text from the original website in the os css - is there any tutorial or description/example anywahere of how to do this - since it must be possible, no?

 

I am running version 2.2 via Fantastico on a web provider with a control panel - our website is a wysiwyg (what you see is what you get) website builder but obviously modifying the os commerce css is tricky.

 

Tony.

[Songman]

STS (Simple Template System) lets you build your template and use CSS to create the look of your page. It should allow you to match the look of your current site.

 

http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,1524

[jdmorrisn]

If I use this STS can I still upload the template then to the existing server/ web site host/provider through their file manager? And where would I add the template in the oscommerce folders?

[Songman]

STS creates a folder called sts_templates inside your includes folder. The templates are stored in there. Your customized template files would go there. The CSS file with the settings that would match your site also go in there. They from your main site you would just point to whatever folder your store is in.

 

** I will add that I have never installed STS to an existing store so I don't know how complicated it is. I have always started with an STS capable store to start with. The important thing, as always, is to backup your files so if you have problems you can recover from them.