Question about editing 'Smarty Templates'

[JamesyBHOY]

I have a PHP shopping cart (X-Cart) that uses 'Smarty Templates' for it's layout, which are are CSS sheet & a bunch of TPL files.

[url=http://www.x-cart.com/articles/x-cart_templates.html]http://www.x-cart.com/articles/x-cart_templates.html[/url]

[url=http://smarty.php.net/whyuse.php]http://smarty.php.net/whyuse.php[/url]

Unfortunately I'm not really that familiar with it & so can only make the very basic of changes to the template. What I really would like to do is use a GIU, WYSIWYG type of interface to make my changes. Basically have a folder with the template, then load it in. The skin comes up & I can edit it directly, like what you can do in Coffeecup HTML Editor, SiteSpinner etc. Once I'm happy with the changes, I click save & the prog automatically updates the CSS & TPL files for me making all changes. Then I upload the files to my server & integrate them to my cart.

Because I'll always be making changes to where everything goes, such as adding banners, a new main logo to advertise special offers etc etc, then I'd rather have my own little prog to do this for me rather than hiring someone to design & make the changes for me in the long run.

I'm about to get some add-on mods done to my store, so I was wondering about getting him to make me something similar to what I described above.

So basically my question is, could this prog be done in PHP at all, or would it be too complicated? Thanks..

[redarrow]

Yes all what you want is a standered way of doing websites know.

when you buy a website a good designer/programmer will also add the fuctionalty to update your own configuration via a admin pannel.

good luck.

[JamesyBHOY]

Thanks for the reply, the cart already has a built in editor & I've already purchased it. However when you try to edit it from within the admin panel itself, it's all the source code. So I can only change basic things like the logo, colours etc.

I'm currently getting a couple of additions made to it by a programmer that I'm going to hire. However I've checked the net & although there are WYSIWYG Html editors etc, I haven't found any for Smarty Templates (CDD + TPL). So thought that I'd ask here to see if anybody who's a lot more experienced in PHP knows if it could possibly be done or not. Simply because I don't want to be paying out money to him to mess around only to find that it couldn't be done in the first place.

Simply a standalone PHP script, that I upload to my server, log in. Then click on the upload button, upload the folder that contains all the template files. Now I can see the template on the screen, then I'm able to make changes directly to it. Such as re-place text, move the search button to another location. Change ads to other parts of the page etc. Then once I'm happy at how it looks on screen. I click the save button. The prog then saves the modified code. Then I simply move the folder into my template directory of the cart. Log into the cart & change the skin etc.

I feel doing this will save me in the long run, hiring a smarty template editor a few times a year would be much more expensive than getting my own program to do this whenever I want.

It's just the fact that would you be able to create a GUI WYSIWG editor to edit all aspects of my store template without knowing any code. Not sure if I've made by requirements clear or not, it is to me but if anyone needs, then I can try & put it another way to try & make it more clearer.

Thanks..