Customizing Your Store - Section III: Customizing the Header and Footer

The header and footer are the areas at the top and bottom of your storefront that span the screen and "frame" every page of your store. The default header includes the CRE Loaded logo and several navigational icons or links:

The default footer contains the copyright notice:

You can change any element of the header and footer, though some things are of course easier to change than others.

NOTE: The modifications you make to your store in this Chapter involve editing the basic files that run your store. You should ALWAYS make a backup copy of any file before changing it in any way.

3.1 Displaying Your Company Logo

The default header that installs with your CRE Loaded store displays the CRE Loaded logo. You will want to change this to display your own logo instead.

If your logo is in .gif format, you can very easily make your store display your logo. Simply rename your logo logo.gif and upload it with your FTP program to www.mystore.com/templates/templatename/images/. If you are asked whether you want to replace or overwrite the existing file, click "Yes."

This procedure just replaces the existing CRE Loaded logo with your own -- the program automatically displays the file called logo.gif, and it doesn’t matter what that file contains, whether it’s our logo or yours!

If your logo is in a different format, such as .jpg, you will need to edit the file www.mystore.com/templates/templatename/header.php. Open the file in Dreamweaver or another HTML editor. Use the Search menu to find the phrase:

(DIR_WS_TEMPLATE_IMAGES . 'logo.gif', 'Store Logo')

and replace logo.gif with the name of your logo file. For instance, if your logo is called mylogo.jpg, this entry should now read

(DIR_WS_TEMPLATE_IMAGES . 'mylogo.jpg', 'Store Logo')

Save the file to your website, then upload your logo (in this case, mylogo.jpg) to www.mystore.com/templates/templatename/images/.

3.2 Adding or Removing the Cart, Languages, and Buttons

You can choose to display or hide the Shopping Cart Contents, Language Options, and links to "My Account," "Cart Contents," and "Checkout" in Admin => Design Controls. Select your template and click "Edit," then turn each feature on or off under the Header listing.

See Section 1.3, Header Display Options for more information.

3.3 Customizing the Header Buttons

If you want to display the "My Account," "Cart Contents," and "Checkout" links in your Header but do not like the default buttons, you can create your own buttons in Photoshop or another graphics program. The default images are each 30x30 pixels; you should try to keep your custom buttons as close to this size as possible.

Name your custom buttons header_account.gif, header_cart.gif, and header_checkout.gif, respectively, and use your FTP program to upload them to www.mystore.com/templates/templatename/images/.

3.4 Customizing the Header

If you have some proficiency with Dreamweaver or another HTML editor, you can fully customize your store's header by modifying www.mystore.com/templates/templatename/header.php.

3.5 Customizing the Footer

You can customize your footer by editing the file www.mystore.com/templates/templatename/footer.php in Dreamweaver.

NOTE: Whatever changes you make to the footer, remember that your subscription agreement for the CRE Loaded software requires that you leave the text of the copyright notice intact and unaltered.