Adding a Store to Existing Site

[blakehouseinn]

I have an existing lodging website which is hosted through InMotion Hosting and I already have a merchant account through quickbooks to accept payments for lodging. I want to add small store to the site to sell a few gift shop items and can't tell if there is an easy way to do it through Zen Cart that doesn't involve setting up new hosting, merchant account, etc. Oh, and I also have a PayPal account that is not tied to the website, but it exists.
Can anyone point me in the right direction?

[afo]

You shouldn't need new hosting or a new domain.

You could add Zen Cart to the current site, but it would be easier to allow Zen Cart to run the entire site.

I believe there's an add-on called Easy Embed which can be used to add Zen Cart to an existing site. I haven't used it, so I don't know much about it.

[frank18]

Can anyone point me in the right direction?

I run a couple of stores, both in sub-directories of my main site www.frnt.org

Promoted both stores individually with the SE using separate sitemaps.

All sites are interlinked and feeding of each other - and the best thing: it did not cost me one extra cent.

So if you don't want to go through the hassle of completely redesigning your existing site then sub-domains are the way to go.

[mikemcc_790]

Can you please explain how you did this with mulitple stores? I looked for the "easy embed" module listed in the earlier post. I am looking into having a main site, but them main site will be for information only, within the site will be multiple different stores each with its own individual products. Is this similar to how you have your site set up? Anyt info you can give me would be amazingly helpful! Thank you in advance for any advice on this topic!

katringrant##########################

[stevesh]

The easiest way would be to install a separate Zencart installation for each store in its own subdirectory and link to them from the main site.

The multi-site module allows you to control multiple sites from the same admin. We have a 3-site setup, and it seems to me to be easier to use 3 separate admins, but if you have more than 3, ...

[blakehouseinn]

I apologize for my ignorance, but is it possible to add a Page to my WordPress application and download Zen Cart for the store on the new page? That I get. Adding sub-directories, I don't.

[gjh42]

No, you will need to install Zen Cart in a subdirectory. It cannot install in a Wordpress page.

In your hosting file manager, create a new folder under /public_html/ or whatever your web root is named. Call it /shop/ or /cart/ or whatever. Upload the Zen Cart fileset into that folder and run the installer.

Then you can make links from WP pages to ZC and vice versa.

[frank18]

Can you please explain how you did this with mulitple stores? I looked for the "easy embed" module listed in the earlier post. I am looking into having a main site, but them main site will be for information only, within the site will be multiple different stores each with its own individual products. Is this similar to how you have your site set up? Anyt info you can give me would be amazingly helpful! Thank you in advance for any advice on this topic!

katringrant##########################

This is how my setup works:

main site with information only www.frnt.org

shop one with "practitioner only" products www.frnt.org/zencart also accessible via www.zencart.frnt.org

shop two with so called retail products www.frnt.org/personalnaturals also accessible via www.personalnaturals.frnt.org

There are links to both shops from the main site and vice versa. the main site has some articles dealing with certain products and links to the individual product pages.

I am running separate admins in both stores, could not use the MultiSite module for legal reasons (Practitioner Only products)

Hope this helps

Frank