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Using Custom HTML Design & Layout to design your shop
One of ekmPowershop’s strongest features is the fact that you have 100% control over the design and layout of your online shop. For example if you wanted your site to look more like the big ecommerce sites such as Amazon, Play.com, etc… You can. In fact ekmPowershop is one of the most flexible ecommerce solutions on the market today.
Your store can have advanced functionality such as Customer Reviews, ‘Email to a Friend’ and even a Mini Cart showing users what’s in their cart as they browse your store.
To see what can be achieved look at the Customers Shops section of our website.
To create your design you need to go into the Design & Layout section of your store and select [Change Template]. Once you have done this you can select from a collection of pre-made templates or select to use a Custom Template.
If you choose [Custom Template] you will then be given the choice between two editors, one in a WYSIWYG Word Style Editor which is best for beginners and those without any HTML knowledge. The other choice is the Plain Text editor which is best suited for more advanced users who know HTML or those using 3rd Party design software such as Dreamweaver or FrontPage.
In this example we will use the WYSIWYG editor, so select that option [Use the Word Style Editor].
The editor will then loads up and allows you to enter your own content into it. It works in a very similar way to a word processor. The best way to learn all its functions is simply to play around with it and experiment.
You can simply click into the editor window and start typing in text. By using the menus within the editor you can insert images, flash files, bullet points, tables, etc… Basically everything you need to build a template for your online shop.
Once you have put some text into the editor you simply need to tell ekmPowershop where your main/category/product pages are to appear, this is usually in the middle of the design, but it depends on how you want it laid out.
To mark where your shops content pages should appear you must put the ekmTag [ekm:content] this is effectively the break between the design frameworks header and footer.
To insert it simply select where you want the shops content to appear and type in [ekm:content].
For example...
If you then click [update] your new design will be applied to your shop. If you then select [view shop] you will see your design, along with the main page being displayed in place of the [ekm:content] tag.
You have just created your very own ekmPowershop Template using the WYSIWYG editor.
If you know HTML or are using a 3rd party design program you can use the plain text editor instead. For example if we wanted our shop to look something like
We would put the following HTML code in our Template...
This is only a very basic example but it shows you how easy it is (if you know HTML) to design your own layouts.
You will notice that where the 'View Cart' link is we have used [ekm:viewcart] instead of a traditional <A HREF=> style link. This is an [ekm:tag] and this allows you to insert into your own HTML design elements of your ekmpowershop store.
For example if you wanted to display the title of the current page you would put the tag [ekm:pagetitle].
The custom design and layout options mean you have unlimited control over your store and as long as you spend the time playing around with your designs you'll end up with a online shop that's as unique as yourself.
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