So my site is going on an A2 account. 

I ftp'd the AC backup to the A2 server last night. 

A2 has a simple AC installer.  The installer never asked if I wanted demo data.  It just blasted the full package onto my root. 
So that is something to look into. 

I accessed the live AC Admin panel and deleted all that demo data. 

Then I accessed the live AC System/Data/Restore page.  The Browse button wants to look on on my local machine.  I can't make it look at my folder on the live server. 

Funny. 

Intuitive software can be a challenging thing to write. 

LOL. 

My site is done.  My two core edits were the last thing i did: Stars and PayPal icon.   

I was just testing the product review stuff and I got an error when I added a fake review using the admin backend. 

Then it hit me!  Like a flash!

The root storefront folder is for the front end.

The root admin folder is for the back end! 

Yes!  I get that now.  Brilliant!

It's crazy being a noob with AbanteCart.  It's crazy just being a noob.

So if you read my 1st post above, the lines 409-411 in that admin-folder file are the ones that you need to comment out or delete in order to halt the validation of the Star Rating input for the backend.  You may need to do this if you get an error while trying to approve customer ratings. 

Whew. 

OK, I figured it out.

Assuming you are customizing a template clone extension, removing the Star Rating system from AbanteCart while keeping the written Review system requires 1 core edit plus 3 extension edits:

1 - (Core edit) - go to sitename/storefront/controller/responses/product/review.php.  Comment out lines 121-123:
// if (!$this->request->post['rating']) {
// $this->error['message'] = $this->language->get('error_rating');
// }This halts the validation process for the Star Rating element of the Product Review system.  If it is no longer validated, it is no longer required to be displayed. 

2 - In sitename/extensions/mytemplate/storefront/view/mytempate/template/pages/product/product.tpl - comment out lines 340-345:
      [code[<!-- <div class="form-inline">
         <label class="control-label col-md-3 pull-left"><?php echo $entry_rating; ?>
         <span
            class="red">*</span></label>
         <?php echo $rating_element; ?>
      </div> -->[/code]
The removes the Star Rating element from the Product Review element under the Review tab on the Product page. 

3 - add to style.css : #current_reviews.mb20 .content img {display: none;}This hides the individual Star rating displayed next to the name of each prior reviewer. 

4 - add to style.css: .productprice .rate {display: none;}This hides the Stars that are displayed on the product page.

PS - if you want to remove the | character that is displayed after the reviewer Name: delete it from line 3 of your template/responses/product/review.tpl. 

This is my thinking:
The star ratings system includes a numerical calculation of the average of Star Ratings for each product, with the resultant display of the calculated numerical average rating, in terms of stars, on each Product page.  On a new site with no ratings of any product, there are no errors associated with the absence of ratings on which to perform the calculations.  If a site admin removes the coded validation for the required Product Review Star Rating element, the system will not generate an error if the customer does not select a star rating.  If the site admin then removes or hides all Star Rating entry points on the front end, there will never be any Star Rating values entered by a customer.  In this sense, the site will remain in a perpetually 'new" state with no Rating data, which should mean that the Average Star Rating calculation system will not lead to future errors.  As such, no other editing of core files should be necessary to disable the Star Rating system.  All you need to do is make some edits in your template extension to remove displayed elements of the Star Rating system. 

If I missed anything crucial, hopefully an AC staff member will jump in to tell me how my site will eventually break. 

Thx. 

PPS - steps 3 and 4 may not be essential.  I don't have time to go back and test, but theoretically, there is no need to hide an item that will never be displayed because of the step 2 removal of the entry point for that item's source data.

I want to use the written Review system, without the Rating Stars. 

I removed the displayed Star rating from the Product page via style.css .productprice .rate {display: none;}
Next step: 

I need to stop the form validation (empty field error test) for the Rating field, then remove the name & field from a tpl file, or just style it with display-none in css.

I researched these 2 threads:
http://forum.abantecart.com/index.php/topic,417.msg1260.html#msg1260
http://forum.abantecart.com/index.php/topic,3558.msg15849.html#msg15849

They are not fully relevant to the current AC version.   

I tried editing this file: admin/controller/pages/catalog/review.php.
I commented out lines 409-411, then cleared cache and tested. 

It didn't work.  When i submitted a review without a Star Rating, i still got the "Error Please select a review rating!" message.

Am I editing the wrong file, or making the wrong edit? 

Would appreciate any suggestions!

Hi Ian,

Like you, I'm not a coder.  I barely have rudimentary css skills.

I've run into your situation many times.  This is my perspective:

Despite not being a programmer, I can find and read the template (.tpl) files.  If I spend some time, I can begin to recognize the purpose of various parts of those files, and even the need for seemingly redundant files that relate to the same basic site functions but are often located in different folders in the template folder.  I can also begin to see the logic.  Then, with a healthy nod to syntax, I start to "comment out' or even modify some parts of those files.  With a little trial and error, i can usually accomplish the changes I want to make. 

I think this is the limit of personal customization of the Abantecart platform for non-tech people.  Anyone can do anything within their skill limitations. 

If you reach your skill limit, and that limit is beyond the basic capabilities provided by the Design>Layout feature of the Admin control panel, you have already entered the world of developers who do read and write code.

If you dive in deep enough to ask a specific question about a specific part of a specific file to accomplish a single specific goal, you can usually find the answer in the Documentation or on the AC youtube channel or by searching this site.  If not, ask the specific question on the forum; it usually gets answered. 

If you dive past the Control Panel but ask only a general question about how to change an entire page, IMO, you've entered the universe of paid services.  You can pay someone to modify your site or you can buy an extension that has your desired changes already built-in, but you can't expect the AC devs or any other contractor to customize your site for you at no charge. 

That's my experience. 

This is meant to be an encouraging reply: the reason that you push your own boundaries is that pretty much anyone can do this if they spend a little time.  If i can do it, anyone can. 

You either spend your own time, or buy someone else's.

If you can cut and paste code into files, you're already halfway there. 

Good luck!  HTH. 

Ah.  That was it.

I misunderstood the original instructions.
 
I thought the close tag was line 37-38, but I see now that 37-38 is its own tag, and the close tag for the skip is actually line 29 ?>. 

So simple.  Now I know. 

Thanks for taking the time so that a noob can understand really simple things like close tag.  Duh. 

You have lightened my burden!  :-)

...

In Chrome, the css inspector is accessed by holding down the Ctrl and Shift key and hitting the i key.  ctrl-shift-i

In Firefox, the inspector is an extension called firebug.  You install the extension and then click the bug to open the inspector.

Navigate to your redeye website homepage, and open an inspector.  It will split the screen in half. 

In the top half, scroll your webpage until you see FEATURED. 

Right click on the the text "See Our Most featured Products".  Click Inspect. 

The bottom half of the screen will display the html code for that section of your page, which is generated by the AbanteCart system on the backside and served to the front side. 

On the right side of the bottom half of the screen you will see the css styling for that section of your page, and specifically the styling for the element that you right clicked in the top half, or for any html element that you expand and click in the bottom half. 

From right-clicking the text specified above, you'll see this on the right side bottom half:
.heading1 .subtext {                                         style.css:63
    font-size: 16px;
    color: #522c0b;
    text-transform: none;
    font-weight: normal;
    padding: 0;
}

In a new tab, google "css font-weight", navigate to the w3schools link, and learn about font-weight. 

Go back to your inspector tab.  Click the word normal (as seen in the paste above), and change it to bold.  Look at the piece of text we are working on.  You will see that it is now bold.   

What you are doing is using an inspector to modify the styling of a page on the fly.  You can do anything you want while working in an inspector.  It will not save your changes to the actual style.css file that is running your site, which means that while playing with an inspector, you can't break anything. 
If you click refresh on the browser page, it will reload the page using the actual style.css file, which means that it will erase any inspector changes you were playing with. 

Download and install notepad++ or some other "improved notepad app" for editing css files. 

Your style.css file is located in /sitename/storefront/view/default/stylesheet/ , unless you cloned a template extension for your customization, in which case it is in sitename/extensions/templatename/storefront/view/templatename/stylesheet/.

(If you do all of your work to a clone, your work is not at risk of being erased by future AbanteCart system updates.  See AbanteCart documentation Developer Tools to learn more.)

Open the style.css file in your new editor.  Scroll to line 63 (as designated by the inspector, see paste above). 
There you will find the same css styling elements that you saw in the inspector.  Change normal to bold for that same font-weight element.  Refresh your working page.  Now the bold font is permanent. 

However, it is permanent for all .heading 1 .subtext items on the entire website. 

So begins your education in css styling. 

Use the w3schools site. 

Become familiar by trial and error manipulations in an inspector window. 

CSS will allow you to create entirely new specifically-targeted styles that affect only a single element on a website instead of the entire class of items that are styled by a single css style. 

Sometimes you have to clear cache before refreshing to see changes you made to the style.css file. 

Once you get handy with CSS, you can explore the changes that are possible by editing tpl files contained in various folders in the template folder.  Always work with a backup.  Inspector won;t help you much with template edits, and you can really break the system if you hack the wrong part of a tpl file. 

The AbanteCart application (back end) uses a large and extendable php program and many template files (tpl) to generate and serve html to the "front end" that you see on the web. 
HTML delivers content, black & white, unorganized. 
Templates organize content. 
CSS determines every other aspect of what the content will look like (the style of the content), including placement location to some extent, which is often a sort of shared role with templates. 

Syntax is king.  Open parentheses require closed parentheses.  Commas are not semicolons.  Spaces are not trivial.  Dots are not hashes.  Single quotes are not ticks. 

Playing around in my spare time, it took me 2 years to learn this (and more), and I'm still a noob.    I'm 52.  :-) 

Good luck!