Layout but not with Frames

jank

Im after building a template that I want to use with OsCommerce.

Now the template is in 5 distinct parts.

Eg:

_______________________________
Logo flash animantion Part 1
_______________________________
Oscommerce stuff like search engine Part 2
_______________________________
Nav Links Other logo Part 3
_______________________________




main OScommerce stuff part 4

________________________________

Footer with links to osocmmerce stuff Part 5
_________________________________

I have the template all set up
You can have a look here.

http://www.sswholesale.ie/home.html

As some may know Oscommerce come with all these .php files that one can call in your website eg would be catalog.php or search.php.

What I want to know is that is it possible to call these files so that the file will display in another part of the template like in the part 4 or part 2.

Kinda like frames but Id really like to avoid using these as they are a bit of a nightmare and id have to re-create my template.

Anothter example of this would be to have my links at the bottom to call php functions in the main part of the site.

Does this make sense. Hope it does just ask if it doesnt.

egan007

You can use php includes to include the file you want

Make your index page a .php file.

Create a div in it where you want the search functinality to go...

<div id="mydiv">
<? php include'search.php' ?>
</div>

This will bring in search.php code into your index.php so you can refer directly to it's variables -

Simple example at
http://us2.php.net/include/

GoneShootin

Info	Data	Bollox

seamus

Oscommerce builds its pages in modules. I can't totally remember, but a page calls the header module, then the left column, then it outputs its own data, then it calls the right column module, then the footer. Quite simple really.

The only problem with Oscommerce is that it's not built on a system of templates, like smarty or something similar. You can change CSS to alter the look and feel of the site, but to make big adjustments (like changing the width of the page or removing the header), you have to edit each and every page that can be called by the visitor.

It's a bit of a pain, and you have to read the source code and follow each function call to find out how it's put together.

You may be able to find find a mod on oscommerce.com that changes the whole thing over to templates, but it's not something I've checked out.

tomED

You can get a module that will allow you to template osCommerce. It's still not very straight forward to do, but it should be quite possible to do what you need to do.

The one we'd use most is http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,1263/category,8/search,bts

Tom

axer

or the one I used before - http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,1506/category,8/search,sts
but that was a year or two ago.

jank

Yep STS is the one alright im trying to play around with.

If i get it going it will be the job.Thanks the the contributions.