X-Cart:Appearance Options

X-Cart 4.4or above

The 'General settings/Appearance options' page allows you to adjust the preferences that affect the overall appearance of your store.

Select skin to use

This section allows you to easily change the skin used in your store's Customer area. Simply select a skin name from the drop-down list and see what your store's Customer area will look like in the preview box on the right. As soon as you are happy with what you see, click the Apply changes button. The selected skin becomes available in the Customer area right away.

Pagination options

• Products per page: Maximum number of products that can be displayed on a category page in the Customer area (Remember that pages with a lot of products take longer to load).

• Products per page (admin): Maximum number of products that can be displayed on a Search results page in the Admin/Provider area.

• Orders per page (admin): Maximum number of orders that can be displayed on a Search results page in the Admin/Provider area.

• Users per page (admin): Maximum number of users that can be displayed on a Search results page in the Admin area.

• Maximum navigation pages (2-25): Maximum number of pages that can be displayed in the navigation bar.

Displaying Products

• Select the order in which products should be displayed within a category: Defines how the products are to be sorted within each category.

Possible values: SKU, Product, Default, Price.

Note: The SKU option is only available when the 'Display product code (SKU) in the products list' option is enabled.

Sorting by SKU arranges products in a category so their SKU numbers ascend towards the page bottom (in case of alphanumeric SKUs, the alphabetic part also ascends A to Z); sorting by Product orders products by name ascending alphabetically; selecting Default orders products by their positions in the category defined by the products' POS. values; sorting by Price orders products by price ascending to the bottom of the page.

• Display subcategories list in multiple columns: Allows you to specify how subcategories are to be displayed within a category. If this option is enabled, subcategories are displayed in multiple columns. Otherwise, subcategories are displayed as a flat list (one below another).

• Show the number of products in categories: Enables showing product count for each category in the customer area.

• Show quantity in stock: Enables showing quantity in stock for each product in the customer area.

• Show quantity selector as input textbox: Sets quantity selector to textbox format. Otherwise, quantity selector appears as a selectbox.

• Maximum number of selections in quantity selectbox: Maximum number of items customer can see in the quantity selectbox for each product (This number matches the greatest number of products customer can add to the shopping cart at once).

• Enable 'Buy Now' button in the products list: Enables showing the 'Buy Now' button below the description of each product on the Products list. Customers can use this button to add a product to the shopping cart directly from the Products list, without going to the Product details page.

• Number of columns to display the product list in: Number of columns to arrange products from the Products list over.
  Note: To be able to use the standard skins, set this number to 3 or less.

• Display only featured products list in multicolumn format: Enables multicolumn format for featured products only. This option has priority over 'Display products list in multiple columns (1-3)'; so, if you want products from the Products list to be arranged over multiple columns, make sure to unset the 'Display only featured products list in multicolumn format' option.

• Enable the "Send to friend" section on the Product details page: Enables showing the 'Send to friend' section on the each product's Product details page, which customers can use to send the information about the product to friends.

• Display product code (SKU) in the products list: Enables showing each product's SKU on the Products list.

• Display additional sections as tabs on product details page: Enables shows additional information sections as tabs on the Product details page.

• Maximum thumbnail width and height: Maximum width and height of product and category thumbnail images.

• Maximum thumbnail width and height in simple product list: Maximum width and height of product thumbnail displayed on the simple product list.

• Count of columns in simple product list: Sets over how many columns to arrange the simple product list.

• Maximum product image width and Maximum product image height: Maximum width and height of product images displayed on the Product details pages.

Date / time format

• Select date format: Format used for displaying date in all the places of your store where date is displayed.

• Select time format: Format used for displaying time in all the places of your store where time is displayed.

• Time difference between shop location and host server location (hours): Time offset between the physical location of the store (where the administrative staff handles orders) and the location of the server running your X-Cart store (difference in hours expressed as a positive or negative value, calculated by subtracting the server time relative to GMT from the shop location time relative to GMT). Setting this option allows the the administrative staff of the store to monitor order placement in real time.

Cart & Checkout

• Display detailed cart totals information at checkout: Specifies whether product options must be displayed as a product link titles on all checkout pages, on the last checkout page only or never.

• Allow to update product quantity on the checkout pages: Allows customers to edit quantity of product items in their shopping cart after beginning checkout.

• Display costs for all the shipping methods: Enables displaying estimated shipping cost next to the name of each shipping method on the 'Delivery method' list on checkout.

• Print order invoices on separate pages: Enables printing each order invoice on a separate page when printing multiple invoices. You can unset this option to enable printing multiple invoices on the same page.

Miscellaneous

• Restore the language of the interface after editing multilingual data: Enables restoring the original language of the store's admin area automatically, when administrator is done editing multilingual data (like international product descriptions). If this option is unset, administrator has to reset the interface language manually, using the language selector.

• Select active language from: Controls the way active language is selected in the customer area. Choose from drop-down select box, single-line select box (text), and single-line select box (icon).

• Enable printable version of categories and products pages in customer area: Makes the printer-friendly version of category and product pages available to your customers.

• Input and display format for floating comma numbers: Sets format to be used for entering and displaying floating numbers.

• Display template variables in the debug pop-up window: Enables displaying smarty template variables in the debug pop-up window.

• Display estimated template compile time: Enables showing estimated template compilation time.

Troubleshooting

My today orders do not show up in the search results. What is the problem?

Check 'General settings/Appearance options' in your X-Cart admin back-end. The 'Date/time format' section shows your web-server's current date and time relative to GMT.

If your shop location time (relative to GMT) differs from the web-server's time, it is likely the reason of the problem.

To solve the problem, enter the time difference (in hours) into the 'Time difference between shop location and host server location (hours)' field.

For example, let's say your current shop location date/time is May 16, 2012, 11:24 AM, but the 'Date/time format' section shows a different time - May 16, 2012, 01:24 AM. Hence, the time difference between your current shop location time and your web-server time is 11 hours. Thus, when you look for today orders by your local time (e.g. May 16, 2012, 08:24 AM), your web-server's current time may be one day back (e.g. May 15, 2012, 09:24 PM). In this case, your X-Cart will show today orders as zero.

To solve the time difference issue, enter 11 into the 'Time difference between shop location and host server location (hours)' field and save the changes.