Is the Book worth it vs. tutorials

**wolfspring** · 7 May 2015, 09:57 PM

Hello all. I tried doing multiple searches of book, "book+worth", "book+purchase", and others and found a lot of posts but nothing specifically on the book advertised here. And I am wondering is purchasing the Zen Cart book worth the money vs. reading the site, watching youtube and even getting one of the cheaper ebooks. One huge problem I have is it is 3rd edition and clearly states it does not have 1.5.4 updates, are they that big that a version behind will be that much different? I'm not big on ebooks, but they are still better for laying in bed type reading and a quick reference, I learn so much better from paper copy, but 50+ bucks is a hard pill, especially not a fully updated version, then again so is 34 for a digital copy. So far everything I have needed to do to my site has been found on google, but it is still a daunting task to google every few minutes or watch a 30 minute video for 30 seconds of help, which I watched two hours so far of setup stuff that was amazingly helpful. I would really like a physical reference but if it's just regurgitated stuff from here and missing some key elements between the update I feel it'd be a bad investment and everyone knows books on software loose value very quickly as things get updated. A couple questions on things it covers, does it cover:

1. Template modification/customization: I'm assuming no as this is more a third party type deal, but I figured I'd ask
2. All the little bells and whistles of editing the little things like certain file lines to remove certain things on each page or just a general overview of them
3. Any kind of account linking, the advantages of one payment option to another and the same with shipping
4. Any kind of business info at all (this I would assume no).
5. How much has drastically changed between 3rd and 4th edition?

None of these are things that would kill it for me if I did decide to go the book route, but would definitely throw it over the top on decision making towards buying. I really hope I didn't miss a giant post on this topic already and my apologies if I did. So far this has been an amazing resource and some very knowledgeable, helpful people.

Thank you.

**stevesh** · 8 May 2015, 01:26 PM

I've seen a copy of The Book, but didn't use it to learn Zencart. I learn things best by trial and error (mostly error), so how-to books (and worse, videos) don't help me much. That said, The Book is a pretty good basic guide to Zencart, though, as you suggested, it contains nothing about template modification. I think a good hosting account and multiple test Zencart installations (in subdirectories), along with what you can find here on the forum and some mental elbow grease will do the job.

**lat9** · 8 May 2015, 01:52 PM

Echoing what stevesh said, with the addition that Google is your friend in this! The built-in search functionality on the zen-cart site (IMO) is fairly lacking, but if you use Google to search for zen cart {whatever your question is} you're usually rewarded!

**Design75** · 8 May 2015, 02:07 PM

I have to agree with stevesh and lat9. I bought the book 6 years ago, but never read it. It is still on the shelve as new as it was 6 years ago

**wolfspring** · 8 May 2015, 02:18 PM

Thank you guys I think I knew the answer just needed someone else to confirm, I am already learning by trial and error and believe my hosting site, Arvixe, is pretty good, the site is installed, I have learned how to turn off a lot of the boxes and edit the pages, the logo, the default messages and added an item and pictures to the inventory as a test run. It's coming along nicely just sometimes it's good to have some offline reading on something. The trail and error is great, specially since the first thing I learned to do was back up the database from within the site so if I screw it up just restore. I am googleing a lot and youtube is also a good thing for me as I can play the video on one monitor while I do the action on the other. All the other stuff I'll learn on the fly.

Thanks again for the thoughts on this.

**mc12345678** · 8 May 2015, 05:15 PM

While I agree with the above, I have heard from a store owner that they liked the book from the "running a business" side of it. Some of the switches and "generic" actions necessary to run the store, not so much to modify/update/create it but the day-to-day (possibly FAQ related) operations perspective.

**Phil Soth** · 9 May 2015, 08:32 AM

I bought the book (paper version) way back when I first began using Zen Cart in 2013. It was invaluable when I did my first installation (ZC v1.5.1). I still refer to it frequently, as it is easier for me when I have a question to start by leafing through a book than querying tutorials and plowing through the plethora of responses on threads. The Wikipedia connection is good as well. The interesting thing about the book is that every once in a while I will stumble across something that didn't make any sense the first few times I read it, but all of a sudden repeated experience will cause a bell to ring. You won't learn how to edit php or css or any of that, but you will get an excellent global view of Zen Cart. I recommend it.

**frank18** · 11 May 2015, 12:55 PM

Originally Posted by Design75

I have to agree with stevesh and lat9. I bought the book 6 years ago, but never read it. It is still on the shelve as new as it was 6 years ago

Yep, same here. Bought it 7 years ago with my first install of ZC 1.3.7.1, learned some basics but (as stevesh said) most of my learning was - and still is - hands on. By all means, the book gives you a good kickstart if you are an absolute noob, but go ahead and have a go on a development server or a subdirectory on your server.