Can I install Zen Cart on an existing website?

[jkotuby]

Hi all,
I have searched the FAQ and not found an answer. Sometimes answers to the simplest questions are hardest to find. I have a fully functioning website with content already installed on Media Temple grid service. We are very happy with the hosting and our content.

They offer 1-click installation of Zen Cart from their control panel.
I wish to add shopping cart functionality for only about 20 products. Can I install Zen Cart in such a way that it does not overwrite the existing content?

The goal is for me to create a Shopping page that has the look and feel of the rest of the site, but is able to link to a secure payment processor like Authorize.net.

So, again, can I install Zen Cart, say in a sub folder, and get it to work with the existing site content?

Thanks for answering my simple question. I have never used a Cart before.

[Kim]

So, again, can I install Zen Cart, say in a sub folder, and get it to work with the existing site content?

If you are thinking you can just add some submit buttons and add your items to the Zen Cart Shopping Cart the simple answer is no.

Zen Cart is designed to be the whole shopping experience.

[Vger]

Well, provided you know what you are doing, then once you have set up Zen Cart (in a folder as you mentioned) you can copy the Add To Cart links for products into your main (HTML?) website.

But this creates problems of PHP sessions being lost if people backtrack from the Zen Cart site to the main website.

Overall the best approach is to install Zen Cart in a folder, make it look as much like your main website as you can, then remove your main website and move the Zen Cart site out of the folder and into the root (replacing your old website).

Vger

[schoolboy]

One of the hardest things "dyed-in-the-wool" HTML coders have to face these days is departing from their beloved flat HTML site structures.

I say this because I had to undergo that process...

Proper eCommerce systems need independence from parallel "HTML" pages, for a huge number of reasons - many to do with the functionality and tracking that is essential to effective webshop and shopping cart management during a visitor's experience on the site.

Secondly, CMS systems do not work on flat HTML principles. In zencart, there are NO flat html pages at all. They do not exist (until a user click a link) and then they only exist for the duration that the user is looking at them in the browser. When a new link or button is clicked, that "page" evaporates forever, to be replaced by another one which is also "created on the fly".

You can use "garden shed" eCommerce such as PayPal buttons, but your customers will always know that you are a garden shed company if you do.

There is no substitute for a proper, sophisticated and reliable CMS when it comes to eCommerce - even if you are just selling a single product - which are far more robust, secure and hacker-safe than the numerous (garden shed) offerings that are peddled as eCommerce on the WWW.

[schoolboy]

... oh... and there are certain caveats to using the "one click" zencart install features on many hosts - usually under the fantastico banner.

I use these "one click" installs... but then I am now quite savvy on ZC and know what needs "managing" after this is done.

If you are keen to try ZC, then download the full software and do a manual install, with all the demo products intact (something missed in these 1-click installs).

Install in a sub-directory of your current site.

As your host offers ZC install, the assumption is that the server is up to the task of running the software... Though this is sometimes proven otherwise!

[jkotuby]

I want to thank you all for the extensive and insightful answers. I think I am beginning to get the picture. Zen Cart is a Content Management System much like WordPress except that it is more complex in that it makes use of Session State as well as other functionality that I am probably not aware of at this time.

It also sounds, from the discussion so far, as if there are NO types of shopping carts that can be used in conjuction with static "flat" HTML pages, even if the flat pages have some dynamic content driven by PHP and JavaScript. Well, at least not any Carts with the complete shopping experience.

We are essentially selling ony 1 product, or variations of it...a mailing piece to be sent to the politicians of your choice. We had been working with a company that handled the Shopping page, where the site visitor would click checkboxes to "pre-packaged" mailings. However, that page was hosted on the supplier's site, and as a result we had to wait "forever" for any minor changes to be made to that page.

I am sure that we suffer now from the "back-button" problem in that scenario also. I was hoping that we could gain an advantage by placing our own single shopping page in the Zen Cart CMS, thereby allowing us to make our own changes at will.

Once again, than you all for your time and answers.

[gjh42]

You can change the Zen Cart template to look like just about anything, and if it will be unlikely for customers to move back and forth much between the shopping page and the rest of the site before buying, you may do fine with ZC in a subfolder. (The session cookie expires after 24 minutes away from the ZC pages.)
Depending on the site, once you have the ZC template matching the main site, you may be able to quietly move all the other content into ZC and let it take over the whole thing, eliminating any session problems.

[schoolboy]

I want to thank you all for the extensive and insightful answers. I think I am beginning to get the picture. Zen Cart is a Content Management System much like WordPress except that it is more complex in that it makes use of Session State as well as other functionality that I am probably not aware of at this time.

It also sounds, from the discussion so far, as if there are NO types of shopping carts that can be used in conjuction with static "flat" HTML pages, even if the flat pages have some dynamic content driven by PHP and JavaScript. Well, at least not any Carts with the complete shopping experience.

We are essentially selling ony 1 product, or variations of it...a mailing piece to be sent to the politicians of your choice. We had been working with a company that handled the Shopping page, where the site visitor would click checkboxes to "pre-packaged" mailings. However, that page was hosted on the supplier's site, and as a result we had to wait "forever" for any minor changes to be made to that page.

I am sure that we suffer now from the "back-button" problem in that scenario also. I was hoping that we could gain an advantage by placing our own single shopping page in the Zen Cart CMS, thereby allowing us to make our own changes at will.

Once again, than you all for your time and answers.

There are some simple "garden shed" systems that will turn your html pages into "eCommerce" such as simplecart.js... but I doubt whether your client wants a site that looks like his company operates out of the garden shed...

The points about selling ANYTHING on the internet these days go far beyond the issue of "how to embed html" and "can I get $1 hosting" etc...

As internet business mushrooms globally, so do the crooks who try to exploit its every vulnerability.

Most of these "tacky bolt-on shopping cart solutions" may be quick and easy to implement, and the crooks would LOVE to see more people use them because they are far easier to exploit that a robust, sophisticated CMS where a considerable part of the intellectual input has been / is being devoted to closing as many doors to the crooks as possible.

Good CMS is scalable at minimal cost. Because you are not working with "pages", but data and resources, scaling up your website in a CMS environment is vastly easier and more cost-efficient.

Flat HTML is ok for sites where the most important item on show is the family pet and a grainy picture of little Johnny's first day at school, but serious business people want proper systems - and safe systems...