Quote Originally Posted by enigma666666 View Post
I have been wrestling with this same issue for the past week.
I have a client who wants a shopping cart integrated within the website. Each page must have the categories list as well as a product search function.
At first I tried using an I-frame,but it did not look right plus Google does not index I-frame content apparently,so the I-frame flew out of the window.
So I decided to fiddle with the Zencart templates to see if I can make it at least look like the site, since the client likes the html design and I can't change it now.
Anyways,I am still busy trying to get the Zen template to look like the html site and I am almost there.

But, since my Zencart is in a subfolder on my server, I wanted the url of the website to point to an index page and not the Zencart folder or the storefront page.

Soooo....today I sat the whole day, trying to figure out how I am gonna get Zen integrated into the site in the manner that the client wants.

And I found a way!
I have successfully managed to add the categories sidebox and the product search sidebox to my htm pages and it works!

What I did, is to look at the html source of my Zen cart page.
I then copied the html code of categories box into my html site page. I then also copied the search box code into my html page.
But, everything on the page went haywire. So I started deleting one line of html code at a time (the search box code) and lo and behold I got it to work.

So what you have to do, is to first create your shop in Zencart,define categories etc.
Fiddle with your Zencart template until your Zencart looks like your html site.
Then create Eazy Pages eg Home, About,store,products etc
Link these pages to your external html pages,but link the store/products pages,to the actual zen pages.

Then in your html site, create identical navigation as the Eazy pages navigation and create links exactly to same urls as you did in Zencart.

Voila, your Zencart is now integrated to a degree.
Without going into detail, this approach simply will not work. The main reason is the fundamental difference between DYNAMIC content and STATIC content, and the fact that PHP performs hundreds of FUNCTIONS over-and-above its role of cobbling together a web page.

If you pursue this route, you are not only wasting a LOT of time on a pointless quest, but you are putting the functionality of your client's site at severe risk - not only from a performance point of view but also:

Security and User Data safety
Session Tracking and Management
Bi-directional communication with payment gateways
Search Engine analysis and indexing of your site.

If I was your client, you would be immediately FIRED !

Do the job properly... what you will deliver will be a dismal failure, then your client will blame zencart.