Things every New Zenner needs to know

[kuroi]

Hi Ryk

Personally I'm rather partial to a bit of mindreading. The fuzziness helps make use of the empty areas in my head where all the brain cells have died off. So...

jsteelethg

Zen Cart has a much more sophisticated product and category structure embedded into its database than most carts professional or custom written. It therefore relies on its own tables for delivering data rather than trying to cope with different structures or missing data fields and so will not be able to read your pre-existing table.

There are however ways of transferring your data across. Firstly you can key it all in by hand using the Admin facilities. I'm guessing that's not going to be your favourite approach.

Secondly you could write a custom routine to convert the data. This can be done (I've done it) but I wouldn't advise it unless you are very familiar with all the relevant datafields Zen Cart's table structure.

Last, but certainly not least, the best approach is probably the use of a bulk upload facility such as Easy Populate. To do this you would export the data in your existing table to a spreadsheet readable format, hammer it into decent shape, and then use Easy Populate to upload it to the relevant Zen Cart tables.

[Ryk]

......... ...........

[cmcgaugh]

Tosh & twaddle!

I heartily agree... the manual should save a lot of questions, headaches,
and high blood pressure if it's as good as you say, and I have no reason to
doubt your review of it. My time is what I have the least of , and I see the
manual as a good investment to save my time.

In fact, I move that a link to it be put on the Zen navbar next to
tutorials/FAQ ......I only became aware of it because of Ryk's post and
link. I'm sure a lot of Zenners are so focused on some problem that
they may not know a printed manual is available.

The more who get it, the faster everyone can get up to speed, and maybe give the dev team more time to dev.

BTW, how large was the first printing? I bet they'll sell quickly as users
become aware that it's available.

Thanks to Goh Koon Hoek, et al for putting it together!

[nicedreams]

Sorry.

I apologise. I hadn't spotted the economy delivery option for the new manual. It cuts £10 off the price. I've ordered my copy today (for £30.72) and can't wait to receive it.

[Ryk]

@cmcgaugh

In fact, I move that a link to it be put on the Zen navbar next to
tutorials/FAQ

I'm sure that the link at the top of the forum pages will migrate there sooner or later.

BTW, how large was the first printing? I bet they'll sell quickly as users
become aware that it's available.

This is printed to order - I've no idea whether that makes the book cheaper or more expensive than printing by conventional methods, but I can see it massively reduces the financial risk/investment necessary.

@nicedreams

Sorry.

I apologise. I hadn't spotted the economy delivery option for the new manual. It cuts £10 off the price. I've ordered my copy today (for £30.72) and can't wait to receive it.

No problem. Lulu doesn't exactly make it easy to figure out the shipping costs and as you say, at first glance, it could be a deterrent ... a couple of good lessons there for your own store - make your shipping transparent and use Zen Cart!

Now I know I started this discussion because I think it is a Thing every New Zenner needs to know, but I suggest that any further discussion about the manual is continued on this thread.

[jsteelethg]

I originally had a database set up with one table called "gt_plantlist". In it I have a list of plants, with different fields ie "itemName", "itemHeight", "itemDescription", etc. Then I installed ZenCart and of course it accessed my database and installed it's many tables ( which I gave the prefix "gt_" to match my existing table ), so now I have numerous tables listed as "gt_XXXXXX" as well as my original table "gt_plantlist".

Naturally, in my Category/products list, nothing was listed, so to test ZenCart I set up a Category and added 5 new items ( products ). These were plants I already have in the table gt_plantlist, but as a test I entered them, and now they show up as products. All is well, however I want to avoid having to enter all these plants and their information all over again, but want to access the existing table to, I guess import that information into the table that ZenCart now puts it's products, which for the 5 test items I did, went into several tables, ie "gt_products", "gt_products_descriptions", etc. I am lost as to how to do that.

Also, how do I add extra fields to my description page? It currently only gives the product name, a picture, price and description. I want it to recognize the info in my table that also lists height, hardiness zone, etc.

Thank you so much for replying. Believe me I sifted through a lot of writing and files trying to find the answer to the above question until I stumbled upon you asking new Zenners what their biggest obstacle was, and in a nutshell, as I mention above, it is getting ZenCart to recognize products in a Table that preexisted on the database, in order to not have to re-enter all the information agiain through Admin/Category/Product. Thank You...James Steele

[jsteelethg]

Thank you Kuroi. I'll go the route of re-entering the information through Admin.

That route only offers a view fiel details as name, price, description, photo. Is there a way to add a couple of other fields that help define my product ie Light, Hardiness Zone, etc?

Thank you

[mgrunk]

Well, I've waded through all 24 pages of this thread - and I've gone through the FAQ - need to peruse through the wiki link.

I've been designing sites for about 4 years - pretty basic html table layouts and using Paypal and building custom carts (none of my customers have large inventories, and none to date needed cc processing).

Well, my loyal customer has got an infusion of money to build her business, is nearly set up w/ authorize.net and I decided that I'd take the leap into learning a shopping cart and settled on zen-cart.

I didn't have any trouble setting it up, I understand the process fairly well - the included modules are wonderful as compared to e-commerce. I still have a glitch w/ authorize.net having the orders go through w/ the test account they gave me, but I'm confident it will work.

I have to say the place that is driving me nuts is the template stuff - I want my own fonts for the header <h1>, etc. - I want white text on a custom dark blue column on the right and a custom header on the same blue at the top and I nice background image that works well on the current site - really, really basic. Oh, and I want my own text on the front page - thought I got it w/ copying it to the main page through one of the admin links, but it didn't show up.

But, I just don't get the css stuff - I so want a step by step guide - someone's tutorial of how to change the default template - to add colors, change fonts and change images - I've read about overrides, I've read about seperate folders, etc. and I just don't get it. I read the one page about copying the tp_header and footer page - got that, but didn't know what to do w/ them and don't really know where to put them once they're finished.

I got burned w/ a mambo site - I pounded through creating a custom template (someone had created a step by step and it was manageable) - I find out mambo released a couple of upgrades, I wasn't careful about what was changing and my template no longer worked.

So, I'm hesistant to leap - I can't find a template that's affordable for my client and personally, I just want to do it myself - I don't need any big deal stuff - I don't need a different look for different pages.

So - there I feel better - I love the product - I am excited to offer it to my customers, but man I wish the template stuff was easier for my old brain to wrap itself around it.

So, does the book that's being offered do this?

Michelle

[nicedreams]

But, I just don't get the css stuff - I so want a step by step guide - someone's tutorial of how to change the default template - to add colors, change fonts and change images...

Michelle,

Are you unfamiliar with CSS techniques generally or are you saying that you don't understand the use of the Zen Cart stylesheet?

I've just started using Zen Cart to built shopping carts recently. I worked out that Zen Cart has been developed in line with W3C guidelines on web design practices to separate content from style. This means reserving HTML for content and storing all the styling (formatting) information in a single CSS file.

This brings enormous benefits to everyone - browsers, search engines, web designers and clients. I won't explain further here for the sake of time and avoiding repetition elsewhere.

But it does seem to me that if you want to get to grips with Zen Cart, users need to bite the bullet and get learn how CSS works first. Even practise with a few static (brochure) sites beforehand. To learn CSS at the same time as Zen Cart would be a nightmare for most people.

I think it should be stated on the Zen Cart 'packet' that HTML and CSS skills are a pre-requisite for learning Zen Cart.

I started designing websites using HTML and tables for layout. Two years ago I finally switched fully to styling my websites with CSS. It wasn't immediately easy to grasp but once the 'penny dropped' it has made my job infinitely easier and has allowed me to do things I couldn't do in plain HTML.

I would firmly recommend that anyone who wants to use Zen Cart invests in a solid knowledge in HTML (XHTML) and CSS first. They are the fundamental building bricks of web design and without that knowledge, it will be incredibly frustrating experience. It will make things so much easier. I only started working with Zen Cart very recently and because my knowledge of CSS is sound, I have ploughed straight into it without any major problems.

There are now hundreds of web design resource sites for web designers and also lots of very good books.

So, does the book that's being offered do this?

I have just received my Zen Cart manual (recently released) and am very pleased with it. I can confirm however that it does not explain CSS and nor should it. CSS is a separate skill area in it's own right and already has plenty of books dedicated to it.

One final thing...

For those who are familiar with CSS skills, I wonder if the Zen Cart stylesheet could be rewritten in a more user-friendly style (especially for beginners) and a commented version explaining what each CSS code refers to would be invaluable. If one already exists please can somebody tell me?

As a Zen Cart beginner it has taken me longer than it should have to work out what CSS code controls what. I had hoped that there might have been a 'crib sheet' for the stylesheet in the new book but I haven't found it.

I might even do this myself.

Any feedback on my comments would be greatly appreciated because I'm very interested to know if this whole CSS issue is commonplace and could be stamped on quite easily. Or has this all been attempted before by somebody else?

Cheers,
Josh.

[Ryk]

and also lots of very good books.

I can thoroughly recommend "Designing without tables using CSS" from Sitepoint.

I might even do this myself.

Any feedback on my comments would be greatly appreciated because I'm very interested to know if this whole CSS issue is commonplace and could be stamped on quite easily. Or has this all been attempted before by somebody else?

Cheers,
Josh.

A commented stylesheet would be extremely useful for the beginners (i.e. all of us who don't yet know it by heart which I think is everyone except kuroi and kobra! ), and I imagine efforts have been made before... trouble is, it's likely to be quite a lengthy job.

However, with tools available such as Firefox with the Web Developer Toolkit and other add-ons such as Firebug (excellent) and X-ray (sometimes useful) it is now relatively easy to identify what css class applies to what on screen, and apply changes using the css tools of the Web Developer toolkit without breaking anything.