Working with Dreamweaver

[Padholdr]

I'm a newbie to working with websites in some sense, so please bare with me.

 

I just bought a Oscommerce template and I have uploaded it to my server at godaddy and set everything up. I want to edit the logo, change the background, etc. and I'm really unsure of how to do this. I did a bunch of searching, however I don't really understand what everyone is saying. I own Dreamweaver CS5 and I use a Mac. Can anyone help me out, and tell me what editing software I should use, and if dreamweaver works how can i start editing with it?

 

Thanks

Jim

[Guest]

Jim,

 

I don't suggest using Dreamweaver with osCommerce(use a text editor to edit PHP files). Depending on the version of the template, changes can easily be made from the stylesheet and/or by editing the template_top.php. template_bottom.php, header.php or footer.php files.

 

 

 

Chris

[Padholdr]

What text editor do you reccomend that works with Mac?

[Guest]

Jim,

 

I can't recommend a text editor for Mac OS, in fact in my area of the world.......you can't even buy a Mac as there is no stores that sell them. Macs have to be specially ordered. Having said that, GOOGLE is your friend......try a couple. (Textmate came up #1 when I Googled it)

 

 

 

Chris

[Padholdr]

I'm really trying to just change the color of the backgrounds, add images, and add my logo for now. I can't seem to figure out how to do any of this. I was told Photoshop worked good for this. I opened the home.psd file and edited the file, but I can't seem to change the background. Do you know where I can find more information about that?

 

Thanks for your help so far.

[Guest]

Jim,

 

USUALLY the background would set in the stylesheet.css under the body class. However, since you have a template it could be just about anywhere.

 

 

 

 

 

Chris

[Xpajun]

What text editor do you reccomend that works with Mac?

 

 

TextWrangler is a free text editor for Mac, very powerful and will connect to your site via ftp

 

It is produced by Bare Bones and is a cut down version of their BBEdit

[storyleader]

Dear Jim,

 

If you're still looking to solve this problem, here are a few hints:

 

1. All Macs come with TextEdit. The only caviat is this: TextEdit can also save RTF (rich text format) formatting, which will mess up your stylesheets, etc. Therefore, be sure to "save as text" to a file ending with .txt before copying and pasting to the stylesheet or re-uploading the stylesheet.css to your OSCOmmerce installation. For that matter, Microsoft Word can do this - as long as you save as text to get rid of all the extraneous formatting code Word adds to your words.

 

This may NOT be a problem, but it's worth saying in case you run afoul of it: you may also need to be careful of adding Mac-style line endings, which differ from Unix-style line endings (and from Windows-style line endings. BBEdit (and maybe TextWrangler, too, but I don't know) lets you control this.

 

2. Get the Firefox browser (free) and the Firebug plugin (also free). When you view your OSCommerce site in Firefox and then activate Firebug (currently Tools -> Firebug -> Show Firebug), Firebug gives you clues about what css controls what part of your site. For example, looking at my own OSCommerce store via Firebug, I clicked on the page background (that is, a white area of the page, in my case). Firebug shows me:

 

BODY {

background: none repeat scroll 0 0 #FFFFFF;

color: #000000;

margin: 0;

}

 

It also has the name of the document containing that body style, and a link to it! When I click on the link, I see the contents of the stylesheet.css document. Better yet, my Firefox address bar now tells me the URL of that page (http://"mystore".com/catalog/stylesheet.css).

 

The URL will help me find the relevant stylesheet on my server using an FTP program (CyberDuck is a free one for the Mac, although I am happy to pay for Fetch).

 

From the FTP program, I can download the file stylesheet.css, then change it in my text editory, then re-upload it via FTP. Fetch lets me save changes to the web without having th manually upload them again, so that's a point for Fetch. You can get the same effect with Dreamweaver - and also get help writing CSS styles - but that comes at a much greater cost. (Unless you can do all your work within the 30-day free Dreamweaver trial.)

 

I hope this helps you - or at least someone else who stumbles upon this discussion.

[pccrafts]

definately helped me,

Thanks