Change html in 1 file somewhere?

[kramer65]

Hello,

I just installed zencart via fantastico. I've heard many good things about it so I choose for this cart. I already have a set format to my website which I simply want to put on the cart as well. I'll only use the cart on a little part of the website so I don't want to re-arrange my whole website.

I've been reading around, and apparantly you can easily changes texts, backgrounds, images etc. However, I just want to change the whole html of the website. Insert basically the html of my own layout which I have on the rest of the website.

Where would I be able to change a file which has all the html in it. Probably it are a couple files. That's fine. As long as I can change them somehow.

What I can also do is simply include some .php file into a part of the rest of my website (with a simple include in php), so I can easily keep the rest of my page.

Can anybody advise me on what I need to change to setup the html?

Thanks in advance!

[gjh42]

Sorry, Zen Cart doesn't work the way you are thinking. The HTML for display is built dynamically by the PHP files and can't be dropped in as a simple package. It's the price to pay for the power and flexibility of the system.

The style information is all in one place (stylesheet.css), and you can set up a custom template and do a lot of work right there to make ZC match your site's look (more or less, depending on how your site is laid out.) Warning - do not use the Classic template for customizing a new shop. It is intended for upgrading from old versions of ZC. Work from template_default instead; look for info in FAQs, the wiki and searching this forum.
Good luck!

[kramer65]

Ok thank you. I guess I have to start modifying the whole page then. But thats fine. Indeed a small price for a full shopping cart.

I just had one question left. How do I remove the little menu things on the side. For example the "categories" menu and the "Search" and "have you seen" menu's?

Where can I do this?

Thanks!

[Merlinpa1969]

to remove the side boxes you would use the box layout tools in the admin.
admin-> tools

as for skinning it to look like your exsisting site thats not really hard, its a matter of placing your header image and details in the includes/templates/YOUR TEMPLATE/common/tpl_header
footer in the tpl_footer of the same folder.

If you remove the sideboxes for things like categories how will your visitors find your items.

[kramer65]

Thanks for the fast reply and the good info!

I think I can get it to look somehow like the rest of my website. The idea behind my little shop is that I already have a website with visitors. I just want to try to sell something. Just to get some experience in it. For now I will just have 2 products, so setting up categories will not really be necessary.

Actually, now I was thinking of trimming the whole page down and then putting the index.php into an iframe into the rest of my page.

Is this possible?

[Merlinpa1969]

iframes suck,
zen is designed to be run as a stand alone,
it works well in exsisting sites as is

[kramer65]

Ehm, well. ok. Your opinion about iframes is clear..

Is there any particular reason why iframes suck and why i shouldnt use them?

The thing is just that I have a particular layout to my website. And if a visitor would click my new "look whats in store" link, and they would all of a sudden see a different layout, they might not trust it and think that they would be in a different website or something...

However, I'll try to change things as close to my existing layout then as possible...

Any other tips?

[Merlinpa1969]

you can easily copy your header into zencart without i-frames,
look at the site in my signature.
thats just an html header that I added in
so is the footer

[kramer65]

Allright!

Is your whole website build with installing zencart and just modifying it? Then I believe that you can do anything with it!

Although I am learning a lot now playing around with it, i still don't understand where can I include a html header then?

[Merlinpa1969]

in the includes/templates/YOUR_TEMPLATE/common/tpl_header.php

you can put your html there