Frequently Asked Questions
My Cafepress site is not loading, what did I do?
I've been a member since 2001 and early on there were very few server issues, but as they have grown so has bandwidth and funky server problems. These happen to the best of organizations, including Google, so your site will be up when it's up. It has nothing to do with your templates.
I pasted the welcome page text and code and the page is not laying out right, my products display is not centering as it should.
You forgot to close the wrapping div tag. Take a second look at the original code, there's a </div> that closes out the div. Without this container, the page will not work and the site will be messed up while the browser looks for that closing div tag.
My logo is on a white background and I don't have a layered version of it or a vector version, what can I do?
Put your logo on a layer in the logo.psd file and center it in the space provided, then in the layer pallet, at the top there's a drop down menu. Currently it's "normal", choose "multiply" and your logo will be "see through". Then save and follow the rest of the logo instructions that came with your logo.
Can I removed the "Designed by DesignAvatar.com" at the footer of the template?
Not unless you purchase the extended license for $20.00.
Can I purchase a template, change all the graphics, and then remove the designed by credit?
Not unless you purchase the extended license for $20.00. All CSS and XHTML took a long time to create, if you start from scratch you can do anything you want, but if you use my templates to jump start your design, you must keep the credit or purchase an extended license.
Why so cheap?
These templates are cheap as an introductory measure to increase site rank, after which the price will go up to about 15.00 - 75.00 each.
What Comes Each Template?
All templates come with the PSD files, the images, and all the xhtml and CSS — everything you need to use the template or modifiy it and the graphics.
What are the software requirements?
To modify the templates xhtml and CSS, you will need a simple text editor, like NotePad for the Windows environment, SimpleText (free with Mac OS X), or BBedit for the Macintosh. Do not use Microsoft Word or any application which will re-write the code. NotePad is free and so is SimpleText.
To modify the template images, such as the logo file and the other files that come in PSD format, you will need Photoshop, or an equivalent application, that can read and edit PSD files. A PSD file is a layered file that is proprietary to Adobe PhotoShop. Over the years, this file format has become a standard that many other graphic software programs have programmed their software to be compatible with this file format. Adobe PhotoShop is an expensive program, however two programs that we know can open and edit PSD files which are less expensive and quite good are Corel® Paint Shop Pro® Photo X2 and Ulead PhotoImpact 12.
A free option is GIMP. GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It works on many operating systems, in many languages and edits PSD files.
Do I need image hosting? How do I activate the 6 months of image hosting?
Blogger: Yes and no. You can use HostWave.com to host your logo and other images for only .99 cents a month. We offer 6 months of hosting of the rest of the images in the template, provided that you send us the url to your blog so we can add you to the server's white list, otherwise the images will not work from your blog's url. All images inside the articles you post to your blog are hosted for free by Blogger (up to 1 GB).
Cafepress: No. However, please read this for the details. These templates contain images that can be hosted here for first 6 months, or you can host them yourself from the get go. Either way works. If hosted here, send us your store's url so we can add your site to the whitelist — before you load your template. If you choose to host your images, then you would change the paths in the appropriate areas in the css. The instructions are included. All images and the psd source files are provided. There's only two images that that would require hosting: the logo and the welcome page image, both of which you can host with Cafepress as hidden section images. Instructions for this are included. HostWave.com provides reliable image hosting for only 99 cents a month.
CMS Made Simple templates (coming in early 08) and all other templates require full web hosting (LAMP server hosting). If you already have hosting, that is fine.
What size is the hidden section image for Cafepress?
500 pixels wide or 200 pixels tall max. Use the logo template to easily make the logo. Instructions on how to do this are included.
How do I add, change, or remove the links on the side navigation?
In Blogger, just click the "Template" tab and then click the "Page Elements" link in the top navigation (right below the tabs). Then follow the screens to modify the widgets. It's easy.
In Cafepress, open up the footer.txt. Locate the comment <!--STORE INFO LINKS-->
Each link begins with <li> and ends in </li>. You can see the links are between the "a" tags and the quote (") marks. To change the url, edit the path between the " quotemarks. To change the text associated with the link, change the text between the end of the start "a" tag and before the closing a tag. Like this:
<li><a href="link-goes-here.com">Title of Link Goes Here</a></li>
Do not remove any other tags. If you want to remove a link, just remove the start <li> to the end </li>, but if you remove the opening or closing divs or ul tags, your template will get screwed up. Make back ups and be very detail oriented.
How do I add, change, remove links on the top navigation?
You would use the same knowledge as the sidebar links. Locate the "<!--BEGIN TOP NAVIGATION-->" comment in the "header.txt" (for Cafepress) the main template file (for Blogger and others). The links are between " double quotes, in Blogger the links are between single ' quotes. To change the links, observe the following example:
In Cafepress: (double quotes)
<li><a href="http:url-to-link-goes-here.com">Link Title Goes Here </a></li>
In Blogger: (single quotes)
<li><a href='http:url-to-link-goes-here.com'>Link Title Goes Here </a></li>
To remove a link, just delete everything from the <li> start tag to the end tag </li>
To add another link, provided that there's space in the template (there should be), then paste the <li>to</li> where you want it to appear. Note: in the templates with the links on the right side of the top header, the links appear in reverse order. So if you want to add a link to the end, add it to the beginning of the xhtml.
<li><a href='http:url-to-link-goes-here.com'>Link Title Goes Here </a></li> -- Paste this where you want to add a new link and edit the text.
How do I turn off the Random image feature in my Cafepress Store?
To turn off this feature, open up the "head.txt" file. Scroll down a little bit and you'll see the CSS comment:
/***** If you want to turn off the random image or featured image in the side bar,
just uncomment the code below -- remove the forward slash and asterisk around the code below *****/Right below that you'll see:
/* #random, a#randomimg {display:none;} */
Simply change the above line to the following to turn off the random images feature:
#random, a#randomimg {display:none;}
(Just remove the " /* " BEFORE and the " */ "AFTER)