AgoraCart Free User Forums

hi. Ok I have read all the docs and guides to customising a website to include a new design. I have the header working etc but I need to integrate a left hand menu (that in the originale file is included in the header) and place the agora.cgi in a table next to this.

the front page is ok but needs a tweak : http://www.62bug.net/shop/agora.cgi

but when a cat is linked I cant integrate the cgi into my template. which file do I need to edit to include my table and insert the cgi at the correct point?

or have I got this wrong at some point?? PLease I am going nuts over this and I am a designer not a coder

hell-o
the VW Beetle! my dad used to say they aren't a car they are a disease! LOL
i used to be a vw/porche mechanic. when the germans quit making the beetle parts that's when i quit. nothin but junk for new oem parts after that. lots-o-memories crusin in my ghia.

what exactly do you want to do with the nav? you can do css plain text buttons with the agorascript or you can even do css rollover (2 image) plain text buttons with the script with mouseovers and all kinds of neat stuff.
please post a link to a page where you have a nav developed you want to incorporate and i'll see what i can do.
regards,
dan

hi thanks for the reply - true vw are a disease.. There are a lot better parts now than there used to be. esspecially over your side of the pond.

I dont really have a problem with the navigation as I can hard code the nav or use a css. The problem I really have is more to do with the inclusion of the agora.cgi - how much modification can I do to change the look of this OUTSIDE the manager. if you look at the main page of the site

http://www.62bug.net/shop/agora.cgi

you will notice I have a white area with curved top and bottom. The centre of this is a table that I wish the product display to sit in... Is this possible? As you will see on the subsequent pages I have altered the template to include a white background - this has the effect of the products just floating and does not imho tie in the design to the products.

what I am saying is : Is there a way of placing the agora.cgi script where I want it...?

If so how do i alter my header and footer to incorporate this design?

thanks obi whan...you are my only hope

oh and you should think about getting a dub again the scene is awsome over in the states..

hell-o
you mean like this?
http://www.hgltd1.com/
all of the pages following hgltd1.com/hgltd1 are agora
you can also access the store like this...
http://www.hgltd1.com/hgltd1/agora.cgi
however, any links you cliick will resolve to rewrite urls. well not all of them.
regards,
dan

thats exactly the sort of thing. How hard is this and what do I need to do it.

Unfortunately being a designer I am using dreamweaver (I have all the rewrighting code set up ) and am converting the .inc to html to work on and back again - then spot reading my code (as you will see at the moment I have just broken the header so my body is underneath - just trying to fix it... grrrr

It is really a challenge if your code skills are not highly developed. by the way it must be late there?? hope im not keeping you up

hell-o
nope not keepin me up. i'm sort of a hooty owl anyways. tons of stuff i need to get done before dawn then tons of stuff i need to do later. lol never ends.

i did that site in notepad. is xbrowser compatible with netscape 4.*.
well at least it was before i went wild on features.

i didn't look at your html but if you study my header and footer you will see that i dropped the header lower than usual to include the top rounded area of the content box then started the footer just above the bottom of the rounded content box. so for yours the head file controls the top of the rounded white area. and the footer controls the bottom rounded white area. the ppinc displays in the middle. you may have to ajust the ppinc width and rearrainge the contents of the ppinc to avoid cramming content too tightly.

regards,
dan

ok.. i'll give it a whirl. Might need a little help along the way I'm sure..gonna have a look at your code now.

cheers mate.

ok looked at the code..confused - as of course I have been using the tutorials that use the "header starts here.. and ends here etc..." ewhen I look at the source for the shop you sent me it is all rolled into one.

I mentioned above that I have currently broken the template so the header part with the categories in has centred itself.. I think it is about this part I need to pu in the top curved part.. but I dont know how.

my header code is:

<!-- THIS IS WHERE THE HEADER STARTS!!! -->
<link href="styles.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">
<DIV align=center>
<TABLE width=760 border=0 cellPadding=0 cellSpacing=0>
<TBODY>
<TR>
<TD width=128><img src="%%URLofImages%%/user_header_logo.gif" width="128" height="62"></TD>
<TD width="100%"><img src="%%URLofImages%%/user_header_slice.gif" width="100%" height="62"></TD>
</TR></TBODY></TABLE>
<table width="760" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
<tr>
<td width="50"><img src="%%URLofImages%%/user_menu_about.gif" width="50" height="21"></td>
<td width="6"><img src="%%URLofImages%%/user_menu_spacer.gif" width="6" height="21"></td>
<td width="40"><img src="%%URLofImages%%/user_menu_contact.gif" width="40" height="21"></td>
<td width="6"><img src="%%URLofImages%%/user_menu_spacer.gif" width="6" height="21"></td>
<td width="40"><img src="%%URLofImages%%/user_menU_policies.gif" width="40" height="21"></td>
<td width="100%"><img src="%%URLofImages%%/user_menu_slice.gif" width="100%" height="21"></td>
<td width="9"><img src="%%URLofImages%%/user_menu_right.gif" width="9" height="21"></td>
</tr>
</table>
<table width="760" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
<tr>
<td width="160"><img src="%%URLofImages%%/user_nav_slice.gif" width="160" height="34"></td>
<td width="39"><img src="%%URLofImages%%/user_nav_curve.gif" width="39" height="34"></td>
<td background="%%URLofImages%%/user_nav_slice_repeater.gif">&nbsp;</td>
</tr>
</table>
<TBODY>
<TR>
<TD vAlign=top width=200>
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=5 width=160 bgColor=#6699CC border=0>
<TBODY>
<TR>
<TD width=150><br>
<table border="0" align="center" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2">
<tr>
<td><img src="http://www.62bug.net/shop/picserve.cgi?picserve=/user_choose_cat.gif" width="91" height="16"></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="whitebold">------------------</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="70" bgcolor="#6699CC"><!-- Start Dynamic Link Creation -->
<!--agorascript-pre {
local(%db_ele,$sku,$category,%category_list);
if (!($sc_db_lib_was_loaded =~ /yes/i))
{ &require_supporting_libraries (__FILE__,
__LINE__, "$sc_db_lib_path"); }
&capture_STDOUT;
@category_list = &get_prod_db_category_list;
foreach $category (sort(@category_list)) {
print "<a href=\"agora.cgi?cart_id=&xm=on&product=",
"$category\">$category</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;\n";
}
&uncapture_STDOUT; }
-->
<!-- End Dynamic Link Creation -->&nbsp;</td>
</tr>
</table></TD>
</TR></TBODY></TABLE>
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=5 width=160 bgColor=#6699CC border=0>
<TBODY>
<TR>
<TD width=200>
<P>&nbsp;</P>
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
<TABLE width=160 height="600" border=0 cellPadding=5 cellSpacing=0 bgColor=#6699CC>
<TBODY>
<TR>
<TD width=200>&nbsp;</TD>
</TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD>
<TD vAlign=top width=500>
<P><FONT face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size=2><!-- THIS IS WHERE THE HEADER ENDS!!! --><!-- main product display starts -->


not sure where now I need to insert the new table, or the graphic. then how i set the bg color in order to match the header..

I am so sorry for being an annoying code idiot designer...

hell-o
kinda looks to me like you already have it in a giftbox. but maybe not. we shall see....
copy evrything just below the body tag to just before this:

<!-- End Cart Summary -->&nbsp;<br>
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

and add that to your store_header.inc

now take the /td tad just foloowing this:

<!-- End Cart Summary -->&nbsp;<br>
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

and everything below it including the /body /html adn add it to your store_footer.inc

then upload via ftp in ascii to the store/html/html-templates folder. hopefully this will pan out without too much messing around.
regards,
dan
btw. leave your css there for now. but it will have to be moved on the next step.

cheers. Will give this a go. As you can see I am getting there slowly...

Any idea how I can get me left hand navigation box to run the full height of the display i.e height =100% I know you cant do this in hard code anymore.. is it a css class that enables this?

hell-o
this can get tricky. generally you have to nest the nav within the cell that contains it. to may have to nest it within another table. so you have td then table then table for the nav then close out the tables before the content. after doing this you may need to define the minimum height of the parent td and maybe the table so the nav floats top. then (hopefully) the left bar will stretch along with the content as it grows and shrinks. i did this with both css and with normal table manipulation. this link demonstrates the techniques.
http://www.theamdals.com/
unfortunately i have to go fix her pages every two weeks. i don't know what the heck she does (other than she uses MS Frontpage!!!!) but sometimes not even the static pages will show up even though they're there! luckily she hasn't messed up the store pages....yet!
anyway the left bar and the holly on the right both stretch dynamically.
the buttons are pure css rollover with plain text links riding ontop. really fast loading and works better than javascript.
regards,
dan

cool. i will have a go. It seems to be getting there anyway.

Any idea when I go into the manager and upload a product image. It uploads but does not display??

hell-o
if you click on a product link you'll see it works in the store. you should also see the comments for the header and footer
regards,
dan

sorry I dont understand. When I go into the store admin and add a product. Upload an image it does not display once I go to the store - It shows the default "missing image " pic. When I look in remote directory the image is there. If I pull it back down and hard ftp it back up it displays. how wierd is that.. The only problem is that of course I want the end user to be able to put all their own images up.. any thoughts?

hell-o
uhhhh. teach em how to use ftp?
regards,
dan

sounds a reasonable request... but they are the sort of people who look for the "any" key...


another annoying question. Anyidea why I now have a gap between my body and the footer.. Im almost there but not quite...

hell-o
probably this...

<style type="text/css">
<!--
.style1 {
font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size: 10px;
color: #FFFFFF;
}
-->
</style>
looks like it's on the footer. this kind of thing can cause gaps. use class or span or style.
regards,
dan

strange. I took out the css references and it makes no difference to the gap : and something is still altering the look of the text.

hell-o
your tables are messed up. look at the top of the ppinc (bottom portion of the header) in your browser.
regards,
dan

when I look at the source in the browser the first ppinc i get is in relation to the search...

(you understand that the code means practically nothing to me anyway - sorry)

what SHOULD it be like?

hell-o
look at the page in your browser...
http://www.62bug.net/shop/agora.cgi?xm=on&product=HTML
oops. nevermind. either the server burped or my browser loaded it incorrectly. on refresh it looks good at the top.
dan

Suggestion to fix your layout....
Take your header file and footer files and copy them into a blank web page.
Then validate the code.
The combined header and footer file should make a complete, validated web page. Of course, the header & footer are not to have any of the following tags:
<html></html>
<title></title>
<head></head>
<body></body>

You can see how I set it up if you visit this post:
http://www.agoraguide.com/faq/viewtopic.php?p=5906#5906

HTH!


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hell-o
sorry. i'm outta here. good luck
regards,
dan

cheers for all the help today/tonight... no doubt will be on here again.

cheers scottcrew will have a go at this..