Mike asks;
I need someone to design a template. Any recommendations?
It’s pretty much possible to do anything in osCommerce, if the developer has enough skills – but there are not many osCommerce developers who are also great at design. It’s the old “left brain / right brain” scenario – so my suggestion would be to find a website design outfit who can make a site look to your specification. Get them to supply you with the design, 1 HTML page and the sliced graphics.
It would then be quite straightforward for a good osC developer to integrate the design – or you could even integrate it yourself (have a look at this eBook).
I like the designs that come from these guys. I don’t know how well up they are in terms of knowing osCommerce inside out, but that’s not a problem – so long as they can come up with a design to suit your needs, it’s relatively easy to find someone “osc experienced”…
Also, have a read of this post which I made the other day, as that might give some other ideas…I guess it’s a matter of economics – if you have the budget, go with a designer to design and a developer to integrate to osCommerce. If the budget is not so great, how about a pre-made HTML template from the likes of Template Kingdom and then integrate yourself.
Of course, I take the odd design job myself, but my ethos these days is in building accessible sites rather than “pretty” sites – it’s my belief that websites should be useable and accessible rather than pretty. Here’s a screenshot of the site I am working on right now;
As you can see, not particularly pretty, but a bit more usable than normal osCommerce.