In Chapter 2, Getting Ready to Sell we briefly discussed a few visual elements of a new WordPress installation, such as installing new themes and toying around with widgets. Now it's time to dig a little deeper into customizing the look and feel of your shop. Dealing with your online store's layout and design can simultaneously be a satisfying and maddeningly frustrating experience. Fortunately, you don't need to be a full-time designer or programmer in order to achieve a functional and tasteful look for your store-front, nor is there an absolute necessity to hire a designer to skin your shop.
If you do possess competent design skills, WordPress allows for full customization of existing themes or even construction of your own theme from scratch. If you are not comfortable with such a drastic undertaking, rest assured that there are a growing number of third-party themes either compatible with or designed especially for WP e-Commerce, and we can still...