You could try searching for subcategories (rather than "nested categories"), a phrase that was mentioned in the TurnkeyWebTools forum thread you posted in today.

I'm sorry you're having trouble reaching TurnkeyWebTools. I've only had that happen perhaps two or three times in the seven years I've been using their software. I just hung up and called later.

Lastly, re your comment:

There's another thread with two people asking how to created nested categories. But nobody from Turnkey is answering, because they don't make money on the forums. Most of the time they say, "open a ticket," which is fine if you have free support. Their forum community is not very active, so many questions go unanswered.

Actually, there are a lot of threads asking about subcategories (see link above). That said, you do get a certain amount of free phone support when you purchase Sunshop. I've never had it be an issue. If they're busy when I call, I call back.

I'd also suggest that, well, maybe they request that a specific customer "open a ticket" when it appears that there's something going on with that particular Sunshop installation that they'd need to take a look at. These things are kind of hard to guess from a distance. Especially if you have to play 20 questions in order to get enough information to make an educated suggestion. And, frankly, it's Saturday.

I've found plenty of answers (and offered some of my own) in the TWT forums. At this point, I'd suggest checking the link above for threads that might answer your questions. I'm quite sure I've read responses to questions about replacing the welcome message image.

But the most basic thing eludes me. Like how to change the text and get rid of that TV in the welcome message on the home page. I've looked all over and can't find anything that allows me to edit that text. Like a simple, "Edit welcome message." Or how do I get rid of the menu "manufacturers." How do I add/delete menus. Where's the documentation?

There's no information in the documentation on how to show nested categories. The first post while searching categories in the forum is from 2005. While a Turnkey Administrator posted in that thread, he offered no answers. Seriously, why is creating nested categories so difficult? And why is there no documentation explaining such an essential aspect?

There's another thread with two people asking how to created nested categories. But nobody from Turnkey is answering, because they don't make money on the forums. Most of the time they say, "open a ticket," which is fine if you have free support. Their forum community is not very active, so many questions go unanswered.

In their "Presales Knowledge Base" under the question "Do you offer phone support, they write:

One of the most important factors in choosing a product from any provider should be the support offered. We offer many forms of support including phone support during regular office hours and support via tickets, email and forum 24 hours a day.

Phone support? I was on hold for an hour an a half before I hung up. They obviously don't want to talk to people, and plenty of product reviews complain about this. They will answer email.

I'd bet this software is wonderful if you know what you're doing, but you really do need to be a programmer to get anything modified beyond the basic template.

Secondly, I can't see any products at all on your main category pages or the home page (for the home page, you'd have to specify within Sunshop that the home page would show products specified as "Featured" in the Sunshop admin panel, and in each product, you'd need to specify whether it belongs to the Featured category as well.

Have you entered any products into Sunshop? The way this works is that, as you add products to Sunshop, you specify which categories they're assigned to.

You'd also have to set up subcategories, if you want them. If a sub category has no products, it may not display on the site. That said, if the subcategory is not marked viewable in Sunshop … and now we're back at the beginning of my comment here.

Lastly, have you looked at this:
http://docs.turnkeywebtools.com/sunshop/

Their online documentation is horrible and many questions in the forum go unanswered. There's no logical progression offered for designing the site,

I've now been 79 minutes on hold waiting for support to answer the phone! I guess it's time to hang up and email them. They obviously don't want to talk to people on the phone. They should make it clear when you pay for support that you'll really only get email support or have to search things out yourself on their forum where maybe someone will help you.

In the meantime, the only solution is plowing through the templates. Pretty much I can say that there's a main template (main_index.html) and everything else plugs into that.

I am building my own site with SunCart as the store; the rest is Educational Material for Microcomputers for schools and hobbyists.

I'm OK with HTML and can wade thru CSS ok, have Dreamweaver etc.

IsThere some reference that shows where the different elements of the main SunShop page come from?? You said "All the pages use the main_index.html template, and Sunshop adds content based upon what page it is."

But how can I modify menus? How can I change the whole page width and proportion of Left VS Center sections? (It's only 800 total on the template I'm modifying).

My fantasy is there's an image of the Main Page and there's circles and arrows pointing to elements that say "THIS comes from xxxxx" and "yyy.css sets THIS" and like that.

Am I dreaming???

THANKS!

Regards, Terry King ..On the Red Sea at KAUST.edu.sa
terry@terryking.us

* In Sunshop, a theme is a collection of templates for a particular design … kind of the "the blue theme" or the "green theme". Each theme has dozens of templates.

Sunshop 4.2.5 comes with a number of themes (they're up to eight now), any of which you could customize.

May I ask, which template you used to customize that Auction site?