I was playing around with WordPress trying to create a theme where the blog posts would not use a lot of screen space. I wanted to keep the content and background (wallpaper) image centered on the screen no matter what size the browser window was.

This is fairly simple to do, after you take a few things into consideration.

If you plan to use a fixed width layout for the page's content, you will want your background image to act as a frame for the content, and will most likely keep the overall width of the image small.

If you plan to use a fluid layout, (one that expands to 100% of the screen size), and plan to design for higher resolutions, (e.g.- 800x600, 1024x768 or higher), you can create an image that is 1600 pixels wide (or wider) and the same CSS will ignore the extra width that isn't used.   Be sure to keep the key elements of the design centered in the middle 800 to 1000 pixels.

Here's a screen shot of the "virtual iphone" I wanted to create. It was done as a WordPress theme to create a micro-blog.

The CSS to center a background image is very simple:

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Although Volusion is decent software, there are a few complaints I hear from customers, and one is the cost. Volusion's pricing is based on number of individual product codes in a store's database, (see chart below).

In addition to the monthly fees, there is an initial setup fee... and then you have the typical merchant account fees you'd pay no matter which ecommerce software you use, (even if you use "free" software, you still pay transaction fees, discount rate and statement fees when you make a sale -- that is a "given" cost of online sales).

The pricing is all explained, and there are no hidden costs -- but on large sites that have a lot of image files, videos, or other media that uses a lot of bandwidth, you can get a surprise bill from Volusion for excess bandwidth, (yes, they tell you about it when you sign up, but most people never do the math or consider how much bandwidth modern websites actually use).

A month or two of these bills, and you start thinking of ways to cut down on costs. While some stores can either reduce the number of images, or make them physically smaller, (in pixels), or apply greater .JPG compression to reduce the file sizes, at some point you start thinking there has to be a better way.

There is...

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While Volusion 5 is a powerful ecommerce platform, and has many features that other shopping carts aspire to, the latest version upgrade has, in-fact, removed some of the flexibility that was available in previous versions.

In version 4 or lower, there were a set of .ASP files that a store owner could modify to customize the appearance and functionality of their Volusion. In Volusion 5 the .ASP files are all but gone -- replaced by a single template file, some CSS stylesheets and more options you can set to customize your store.

While some of the new features are nice, the awkward generated code marked up in deeply nested tables is still there -- and it makes it very difficult to modify the appearance of certain pages or sections of your store.

So, what do you do when you want to, or NEED TO add some functionality or design elements, (or remove some) ?

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