RTML for Yahoo! Store - A visual quick-start tutorial to modifying templates
74 pages
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Yahoo! Store is a powerful e-commerce platform for small businesses. Business owners can set up a virtual store and be selling their products and services online in minutes. The standard templates provide an easy way to build the store without requiring programming skills, while providing very powerful backend tools.However, if you want to achieve a truly unique storefront you need to know about RTML - the programming language of the Yahoo! Store system.
Using our experience with the Yahoo! Store system, we put together this introductory guide, which contains valuable tips and tricks for other Yahoo! Store owners. We hope that it will form the basis for you to explore many other ways of modifying your store.
Who is this Yahoo! Store tutorial for?
- People who want to build a better storefront by going beyond the standard features of the Yahoo! Store system.
- People with a good knowledge of HTML and the regular editor, but who are not full-time Yahoo! Store developers.
- Small business owners who may want to implement a few changes, but who cannot justify the expense of hiring a consultant.
- Modifying templates is pretty straightforward once you have the hang of it; however, you must be prepared to put in time and effort to learn it.
What you will find in this guide
The format is a visual quick start guide; 60 pages with lots of screenshots and many step-by-step instructions. Real practical examples include the following:
- Learning to use the template editor.
- Using your own "add to cart" image.
- Adding custom logos and images to the navigation bar
- Putting a search field in the navigation bar.
The focus is on learning by examples - showing you how to read and modify the relevant templates rather than going through the theory behind RTML. In most real-life cases you will be editing templates instead of creating new ones from scratch, and you won't need to know about all RTML expressions.
What you will not find in this guide
- A deep theoretical analysis of the RTML language. Yahoo! Store is intended to allow small business owners to get into e-commerce without requiring outside help, so the emphasis is on providing easy-to-follow examples.
- Information on other aspects of Yahoo! Store, such as credit card processing or tax calculations. The existing Yahoo! Store help files cover those well enough.
- Every imaginable worked example. Every website has different requirements, and it is hoped that this book will provide you with enough of an understanding of templates so that you can do your own template modifications to suit your particular needs.
This is an introductory guide to modifying templates; if you are a full-time developer or require very detailed template customizations, then this guide may not be right for you. (For an additional resource on RTML, please refer to the book RTML 101: The unofficial guide by Istvan Siposs at ytimes.info).
Creating a RTML compound statement
This is something that always stumps a few people when they start learning RTML, so I have created a simple Flash video that shows you how to create a compound RTML statement.
From chapter 8, page 28. Modifying the side-nav template.
Testimonials
"It unlocked the block in my head about how the templates worked. I was scared to death to mess with them. Just seeing some examples of changing things and how the logic worked was invaluable."
"Your guide helped me get our Email list sign up box on the navigation bar! I had been trying to figure out how to get something on that bar forever. Thanks so much."
"The examples had plenty of visual reference. That made things very easy to follow."
"Thanks for helping us figure out how to change that darn shopping cart icon. That was worth the $20 price all by itself."