Quote Originally Posted by baldrn View Post
Thanks for your insights. I would wonder if they gave you reasons for moving from Volusion to Zencart?
They want more flexibility... they find the Volusion environment too restrictive...

If you have some skills in website design and management that helps considerably.

However, if you have no experience of dynamic content sites, then your learning curve is steeper...

The first thing to appreciate about zencart (as with all other database CM systems) is that they are not flat HTML pages.

In fact, there are no "true" HTML pages in a CM System at all - so you cannot call up a html page like you can in Dreamweaver, tweak the layout, move a picture, etc, and then save it and away you go...

The pages are dynamic... they don't exist until a link or button calls for them to be created. This is done by the PHP code. It "assembles" a page (sometimes using hundreds of component pieces), parses everything into HTML, and sends the page to the browser.

When a new link is clicked, the page disappears completely - it "evaporates", and a new page is assembled.

So... get a bit of grounding in the templating system and how PHP assembles a page. You don't need to become an expert, but spend a few hours getting to grips with the overarching concepts behind PHP and databases.

NB: All CM systems work on this principle, so whether you choose zencart of any other database-managed cart, you will have to develop the same understanding.