More Crap from Template Monster

Template Monster, one of the largest website templates providers on the Web, enters the market of icon design. Their new product line is called Icon Sets. Each set includes ten icons of high quality, which is why they can be used not only for the Web but for the off-line needs of Template Monsters clients as well.

The icons within each set are grouped under particular themes, so with one Icon Set, you can actually fulfill all the icon needs of your project - no matter what the project is - whether its a web site or an offline presentation. The price for this new product will vary from $45 to $50, depending on the set purchased.

We are glad to represent Icon Sets - a new product line of ours," says David Braun, CEO of Template Monster. We are currently reconsidering our production policy in order to satisfy all the needs of web designers, since we want to be associated with, not opposed to, designers. Icon Sets is a milestone of this reconsideration process. The aim of this process is to widen our product range and deepen our depth so our customers can find anything for their design needs at Template Monster only. With that in mind, we will add two new Icon Sets to this product line daily."

Icon Set joins a growing collection of recently added product lines which are targeted at pleasing designers mainly. It continues what has become the new trend at Template Monster, giving witness to an obvious predilection for designers tastes. Apparently the world-renowned templates provider is more than a wholesale shop for web design templates. Template Monster is, in fact, a reliable resource for the entire web design industry itself.

Web Hosting Templates for E-commerce Websites

Web Hosting Templates for E-commerce Websites by Natalie Aranda

HTML is easy, but creating a professional website is beyond the average Joe. When it comes to a e-commerce website, the design is even more complex - logo, navigation, color themes, text arrangement and content creation. Website creation has been made easy with web templates. To increase client base, many leading web hosting companies start offering web hosting templates or hosting with templates.

Whether you're looking for a simple web site or a functional e-commerce website, the chances are that you may be able to find a few web templates from your e-commerce hosting companies. A simple web template may cost under $20 dollars, but a well-designed professional e-commerce website will cost a few hundreds or more if not thousands. The cost of web templates is still cheap comparing to custom-made e-commerce websites when Web designers charge anywhere from $20 to $100 per hour.

Besides the requirements of standard web hosting plans, Web hosting with templates for e-commerce operation needs a shopping cart that supports online catalog and online payment processing. Web templates for e-commerce often include common pages and navigations for online shopping - searching or browsing products, adding items to shopping carts and making payment. The web templates for e-commerce do not include or connect to any specific shopping cart. It's up to the webmasters to add shopping cart (paypal or 2checkout) to the site, which is often the copy-and-paste of a few lines of HTML code.

The alternative e-commerce hosting to web templates is e-commerce turnkey solution. EBay Stores, Yahoo! Store and Microsoft bCentral are the most popular turn-key e-commerce solutions for small businesses that want to setup online stores easily. Different hosting plans may have different free structures. The cost of each hosting plan often varies on transaction volume.

When comparing functionality, there're many questions to ask: 1) whether a shopping cart accepts online check or eCheck beside support on online credit card and paypal for payment options; 2) whether there's a limit on the number of products and categories that you can setup; 3) whether it automatically sends out an email notification once an order is placed successfully. When looking at the cost of commerce operation, you'll need to ask questions about 1) what's the basic monthly subscription fee; 2) whether there's a setup fee for a new online store; 3) whether you have to pay for the addition of new items to the product catalog; 4) how much it charges for each transaction. High volume sites may prefer the plans that charge a higher monthly-fee but a lower fee on each transaction, while low volume sites work better with hosting plans that charge zero or low monthly fee and initial setup fees but a slightly higher fee on each transaction.

The practicality of e-commerce websites

The practicality of e-commerce websites by Clint Johnson

The concept of e-commerce is widely understood now as a viable business platform, with many people benefiting from its cost-effective nature. We want to highlight one e-commerce solution provider (PureSilva) as an example of how easy it can be to sell online, although there are many providers available for you to choose.

It can be said without a doubt that a lot of businesses have flourished with the advent of the Internet. E-commerce websites have a proven track record as a viable media for sales, with millions of businesses making a living from a single e-commerce website. Having a professional, feature-rich, content-managed website can mean you can also enjoy the ever-increasing trend to buying and selling online.

Not all e-commerce websites are the same, however. Many factors need to be taken into account: usability, accessibility, search engine optimization, and content-management are the big ones. Our case study provider - PureSilva - take all the important issues into account and have numerous years of experience and intensive training in all areas of website development. There are many benefits to the solutions proposed and the final results fantastic. They not only create the website you need but also host it on a dedicated server, including that option in their incredible price offer.

Perhaps the most important thing in the creative process of such websites is the great availability of e-commerce templates, allowing for quick set-up, robust code that's been tested thoroughly, and ultimately low cost for the online seller. The PureSilva version is completely customizable and clients have the possibility to change various things on their website including colors, layout and graphics.

Besides e-commerce templates, there are many other features of the PureSilva e-commerce website solution. They include free updates for life, search engine optimization, a blog, a forum, a photo gallery, pod cast station, and rich content management facilities. This particular e-commerce website solution has a proven track record with many companies enjoying healthy sales from their own use of the e-commerce template.

Nowadays, people are getting used to shopping online and they prefer websites that present the merchandise with care and in clear, comprehensive terms. The phrase 'don't make me think' applies here. Shoppers should be able to visit a site and purchase items without any difficulty. PureSilva e-commerce templates take this issue very much into account and have developed templates that are easy to use.

PureSilva e-commerce templates allow one to practically toy with the many features available and supervise the whole design process. You can easily add categories, products, pages, a blog, a forum or a photo gallery to your website. The flexibility of content management with PureSilva e-commerce templates allows the site administrator to experiment with the content easily to see what works best for their product range - and they can do all of this easily and autonomously.

Things You Should Know About OS Commerce Development

Things You Should Know About OS Commerce Development by Naman Jain

OS Commerce development is one such website development software that can be highly customized. It is used successfully to create various e commerce websites. The technology behind OS Commerce is highly sophisticated and extremely easy to apply. This unique e-commerce development software application is behind the success of thousands of online stores that earn millions of pounds every year.

OS Commerce is the most popular e commerce solution available in the market these days. This popularity of the software is based on the numerous facilities that they provide to its users. The reason for its wide spread popularity can be seen from the very first stage of it's installation. Unlike other open source e commerce solutions, OS Commerce Development is easy to install. It takes only a few minutes to get installed in your system.

The features and functionalities that OS Commerce Development provides to its users are all built-in features. The user needs to add any plug-in later. Some of the most popular built in features that OS Commerce includes in its package are, product catalogue feature, account management activities, a safe and secured administrator panel, along with some more online tools and easy reporting features. More over OS Commerce can be easily upgraded or made compatible with other systems.

Creating your website with OS Commerce applications is beneficial to the search engines as well. The application is configured in such a manner that the website can be easily indexed in the search engines. Your e commerce website will function just like any other website that is indexed in the search engines. Customers will be able to find your site in the list of website references if they type product names or similar keywords in the search engines.

OS Commerce development of websites is ideal for creating any kind of web based business site. The software application is so fast and effective that your website products will not only be launched within a few minutes, but will also start reflecting in the search engines along with valuable and effective lead generation. Many web solutions companies these days use OS Commerce solutions for their clients and also customize their applications as per their requirement.

Monster OS Commerce Template Solutions

Picture this: I'm reading the support forum over at OS Commerce, looking for TemplateMonster OS Commerce Solutions. They made it abundantly clear that it was an unwelcome topic. For example, Vger says,

"Let's make this perfectly clear - no matter how many people ask, or how often they ask - there is NEVER going to be a forum here with bug fixes for Template Monster templates. They sell them, it's up to them to repair them."

LOL, right? I love that guy! Anyways, julie (urbanegos - who originally started this particular thread) says,

"I agree. However that doesnt solve the problem of people asking. It is an ever decreasing circle. The only solution is to open up a forum that discusses bought templates and os commerce solutions and fixes. That way when someone types in google "bought template need os commerce solution" they go straight to that forum and by pass this one. It seems the only way to cut down the volumes of bought templates questions on this forum."

Great idea! So I did. And now you are here reading this.

Edit Your OS Commerce Template

The juice is thus:

ToyIceBear over at www.forums.oscommerce.com says:

The look of osCommerce is fairly easy to change...it usually only requires the change of no more than 5 files..


1. includes/header.php
2. includes/footer.php
3. includes/left_column.php
4. includes/right_column.php
5. Stylesheet.css

Have fun...

In a different unveiling within the same trove, ToyIceBear also give us both ends of the OS Commerce template or theme modification spectrum. First the short version:

Part 1...For the lazy......

Go to the contribs section and do a search for "free template" , download your choosen one and follow the instructions included....


Part 2..follows...step by step design for a vanilla install

...And now for a bit more detailed delineation:

Step by Step.

1. Install osCommerce 2.2

2. go into the admin of your new installed shop "/admin" and do the following:

- Go to configurations/myshop and set "Show Category Counts" to "False"
- Go to tools/banner manager and delete the osCommerce banner

3. Open the file english.php , and change oscommerce to your company or web shop name. (the file is located in includes/languages )

It look like this:

CODE

// page title
define('TITLE', 'osCommerce');

4. Upload your own logo to the image folder on the web server.

(Easy way name the logo oscommerce.gif , and it will automatically replace the default one)

If you want to have your own name for the logo, upload the logo with your own chosen name and do the following:

Open up the file header.php and change oscommerce.gif to your own image file name, and change this one 'osCommerce' to your store name. (the file is located in the includes folder)

It looks like this:

CODE

' . tep_image(DIR_WS_IMAGES . 'oscommerce.gif', 'osCommerce') . ''; ?>

Next step.....


5. Remove default oscommerce gifs, to do that use this contrib:

Remove Default Images


6. To make color changes easier you will need to replace 3 gifs in the in the folder images/infobox.

- corner_left.gif
- corner_right.gif
- corner_right_left.gif

replace those 3 with 3 empty transparent gifs in the same size.

7. Now you are ready to change colors and/or text formating for your web shop, this is done in a file called stylesheet.css which is located in your main folder.

For instance if you want to change the color of the infobox header, this is the code which need changing:

CODE

TD.infoBoxHeading
{ font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif;
font-size: 10px;
font-weight: bold;
background: #bbc3d3;
color: #ffffff;}

Changed to a red info box header, it would look like this:

CODE

TD.infoBoxHeading
{ font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif;
font-size: 10px;
font-weight: bold;
background: #990000;
color: #ffffff;}

These are universal changes and will affect all the related parts of your web shop

Now feel free to play with the colors and/or fonts to your own liking........


And there you have it.... Solutions from ToyIceBear and OS Commerce!

TemplateMonster Support

I support TemplateMonster.

Well, what I mean is, I am all for a free and open market. And therefore I support the IDEA of TemplateMonster.

Now OS Commerce I FINANCIALLY support. I love -LOVE- open source software. The Wise & Kindly Souls of Infinite Patience lurking in the support forums... You'll find no such love from TemplateMonster.

Anywho, here's a link to the Template Monster Support page: http://www.templatemonster.com/help/ ...and here's one for the OS Commerce Forum: http://forums.oscommerce.com/

And Here Is A Random Picture Of A Kitten: