X-cart Customization & Renovating the Storefront!

By Lucid Softech IT Solutions | CMS, PHP, x-cart customization, x-cart development,  08 Oct 2015

X-cart is a PHP based shopping cart software. Preferably it is used to develop online shopping stores for e-commerce, although developers also use it for mobile shopping apps development. Provided with built-in shopping integration, X-cart is also a fully customization open source shopping cart. This software has gained much fame for its advanced security features which make the portals secured from all kinds of hackers. Also it is an SEO friendly, and the smooth functionality helps in building the mobile version of the existing e-commerce stores.

Most merchant have a common problem even after they have built on their portal with the help of X-cart. The site looks drab and dull and is not eye catching. The online portal has the store stuffed with newest range products and it gets good number of visitors. But dilemma is those visitors don’t turn into customers, and this hinders the business. Well can you guess what needs to be done here?

The site is in dire need of X-cart storefront customization. Owing to the X-cart’s open source platform features, customization of anything and everything is made plausible. A new refreshing look with high usability and perfect support and maintenance is all what sets a store apart from all.

Let’s learn about the storefront customization:-

Templates are integral to the look of your store. In order to display the pages, X-cart uses Smarty templates, each of which holds access to different parts of site. Thus there is no central file to modify the change in the look. Each template needs to be edited individually to bring an all-over change.

The templates are made up of HTML/CSS and Smarty. So, before proceeding to edit, you should be aware about HTML/CSS. Be very cautious about while editing templates, as any wrong step can easily break the Smarty tags. With some templates, you can view their pieces only when a certain condition is met.

Below is the list of major templates in X-cart.

Rectangle_top.tpl: It controls the overall width and height of your layout. This is a shared template between admin and customer sides.

Main.css: a master stylesheet for customer side which controls the size and color of fonts, background colors, spacing, link colors and much more.

Dialog.tpl: The main wrapper of all content in main window which has a row for titole and another row for content.

Menu.tpl: wrapper for side menu boxes with totle row and content row. It controls style of border, title and box.

Head.tpl: It is footer of site which controls style of row.

Rectangle_bottom.tpl: shared by admin and customer sides, it works on closing the main table.

Dialog_message.tpl: It is the confirmation dialog box which pps out at top of main window, in admin only.

Auth.tpl: – Shared between admin and customer side, it is the side menu login box.

Authbox.tpl: – It is the side menu login box for logged in customers; shared between admin and customer side.

Currency.tpl: – This template controls the format of the currency. You can use it to change the location of the symbol.

Help.tpl: – It is the side menu help box that contains links to the help pages. Every time you add a new embedded static page, it adds the link t the code which already exists.

location.tpl: – You can see it at the top of the main content area. Here you find the code for the breadcrumb navigation.

product_thumbnail.tpl: – It controls the thumbnail of a product.

today_news.tpl: – It is the side menu that shows the current news blurb.

The templates provide you mean to change the entire look of your online store and make it a creative and innovative designed portal. Thus it attracts more visitors, lures them into becoming customers and adds to the business of the store.