Store within a Website

[sherrillchurch]

Hi
I already have a 58 page website up and running and the shopping page within the site is just a place where customers can browse what we sell in our retail shop, but not actually buy on0line. Retail is the secondary side of my business as supplying a party service is the first.
My question is: can i keep my usual home page as the landing page along with all the other info pages and have zen-cart's store running from my shop page. So in effect the zen-cart template (store) is embedded within my site as one of the navigation links to my shop (if you get my drift)!!!!
I have the zen-cart book and it looks fab - should be a great source of info.
Oh yeah, and another thing - I have got FileZilla as advised previously. Do I do it all from there or as the book states do i do it in xxamp (????) Confused.

Sherrill

[stevesh]

Xxamp is only used if you create a Zencart installation on your local computer, rather than on a hosted server (Just my opinion, but I don't recommend you do that).

Use Filezilla to download and upload files to your remote (hosted) Zencart installation.

If I understand your first question, the answer is yes. You can call Zencart from a link on your existing site (ex. www.yoursite.com/store if you installed Zencart in the store subdirectory).

What you can't do is have the product information on your existing page with a button that adds the product to the Zencart shopping cart. Zencart doesn't work as a backend processor.

The good news is that Zencart can be templated to look just like your existing site.

[dbltoe]

You will also need to be careful with links. Customers can easily be confused by links stating home which are the home for the website versus the cart.

Also, customers leaving the cart to "look" at items elsewhere will lose their session id and their cart items.

[sherrillchurch]

Wow thanks guys for your valuable information, it will be a great help.
Well off I go again to install. No doubt I'll be back with another pending question!

Cheers
Sherrill