New to nopCommerce

Hey Guys,

I have just today installed my first nopCommerce site and have never used it before. A big thumbs up to all out there putting the time and effort into this. I have seen expensive webshop software out there that is not nearly as good as this nor does it look or work half as good as nopCommerce. My contribution to you guys was to purchase the user guide. Hope this helps…

I am going to ask a question that I am sure you all have heard a thousand times, but here goes anyway. I have seen a lot of live shops using nopCom and they look nothing like the standard installation of this. So how does one go about incorporating nopCom into their own current website? Taking into account that I am no good working with code, so it has to be GUI for me :o( I can do a little with Dreamweaver (design view…!).

Thanks in advance for any help!

Glenn.

Hello Glenn,

Welcome to nopCommerce Community.

Talking about your question:

Well have you seen nopCommerce Showcase. Live shops. here: https://www.nopcommerce.com/showcaseliveshops.aspx

You can also take a look at other member's websites here in the "Show off" section of forum: https://www.nopcommerce.com/boards/f/11/showoff.aspx

Talking about your question "how does one go about incorporating nopCom into their own current website"

People have customized/modified standard nopCommerce project according to their requirements and you can see the output in Showcase - Live shops

You will notice that few people have kept the structure of the nopCommerce as it is, like information section, category , manufacturer section etc are still at the same place but they have changed the colors, how images will display, banners etc and few people have changed the whole structure of nopCommerce standard project and they have worked a lot on customizing the design and coming up with a new design.

It depend on everyone's capability of design ideas, If you have a good knowledge of .CSS style sheets you can also change/customize the standard layout of nopCommerce project and make it according to your requirement(s).

To begin download nopcommerce sourcecode from codeplex
http://nopcommerce.codeplex.com/releases/view/46339

install visual studio and sql server
Link to downloads : http://www.microsoft.com/express/downloads
You need visual studio web developer 2010 express,
Visual C# 2101 express
Sql server 2088 r2 express (don’t forget the management studio when it asks you).

open NopCommerce.sln file with visual studio

ok so if I download these and install I should be able to modify and preview my site layout offline? Does this give me a GUI for modifying, or is it still code?

Thanks

Yes if you install nopCommerce on your local machine, you will be able to see your site layout offline

it will look something like this  : http://demo.nopcommerce.com/

and you will be able to manage your store, manage information, pages, images etc from your admin section - see this demo - admin section
http://admin-demo.nopcommerce.com/administration/login.aspx , after installing your admin section will look like this)

I do understand that I can change the contect via the admin panel, it is the layout that I am asking about. Why did LevGe tell me to download and install these apps?

Also, is there a list of what files need to be edited to make the layout changes?

Thanks guys...

You need the apps to modify layout, it's code
it's a mix of html, asp.net and css stylesheets

glennlawr wrote:
No list, it's a lot of files.

glennlawr wrote:

Ok Glenn, have you downloaded the nopCommerce Source code ? Have you installed nopCommerce on your computer

if yes, do to NopCommerceStore folder \App_Themes\darkOrange \ styles.css

This styles.css files comes in every theme, this is the file by which you will be able to change the whole layout of your website.

(This file defines what to display and where - size, position, dimensions, page width - height  etc...everything)

LevGe asked you to download and install nopcommerce because you need application in order to make changes, if you will make changes to code where will you see the output if you don't have the application installed ?

thanks for the offer, but it is just a personal project, not business.

Thanks also for the info guys...

Glenn, if you install the application and try to understand style.css file, you will understand the code it's not that hard.

Just spend some time and try to understand the code , and how things are working in it, you will understand everything and if you face any problem you can always ask for help here..