Installed..now what?

[Jodiii]

I have installed Zen Cart. I have made categories, I have figured out how to upload a product.

What I need to know:
How do I get rid of the sample store and all the sample items?
How do I change the appearance as in colors and graphic?

I am feeling overwhelmed. I do not know html at all. Don't even know where to go to do any of this.

[gjh42]

The demo products and categories (in that order) can be deleted in admin, though I would advise keeping them until you have studied them all thoroughly - they all have some teaching purpose to show you how various Zen Cart features work. You can disable the demo categories in admin to get the navigation menus clear for the time being.

A good way to start transforming the look & feel of your store is to install one of the free templates from Plugins (look at (sorry, site offline) to see them live); you can modify its colors, fonts, sizes, etc. from there by editing the stylesheet. Many basic layout features can be adjusted in admin. Look at the tutorials (FAQ button at the top of this page) to learn about setup and beginning customization.

You don't need to know any HTML to do basic customization. A bit of knowledge about CSS will make it easier to start tweaking things. See online tutorials like www.w3schools.com for basic CSS and HTML tutorials.

[torvista]

I am feeling overwhelmed. I do not know html at all. Don't even know where to go to do any of this.

I faintly remember a similar feeling despite years of computer experience, seeing all those files and subfolders and not having a clue where to start.

This is what me in 2103 would say to me in 2009 when I started, ie I am not telling you what to do but its maybe food for thought...

So you want to sell stuff...well stop wasting your time fiddling about with the awful classic template (its only there because "something" has to be there) and get busy doing what you can't subcontract: writing good product descriptions, getting quality images and loading the products in a new installation on your local development server.
Pay a designer to design the look of the store, forget bells and whistles, do clean and clear. This is not ZC -specific, Zen Cart can be made to look (maybe not behave) like anything you want.
Pay someone who posts questions and answers on this forum to code the template for you on their server so you can see it.
In the meantime learn about how templates work and do some fiddling about, to understand about overrides and core files so when the coder has done the template and sends you the template files (to be dropped into to a clean zc install) you'll be able to understand if they have done it right (using overrides) or hacked it (changed core files).
When you have finished preparing your products/have enough things for sale to not be embarrassed, deal with your hosting and SSL, payment methods, shipping methods and start making money.
Zen Cart and the DIY approach is a long-term relationship, technical knowledge of html, css, javascript and php will come along the way gradually as you chip away at the minor things you want to change, but if you are serious about business, be business-like and spend your time doing what only you can do, get others to do the initial heavy-lifting so you can start selling sooner.

[Jodiii]

whew..OK..thank you!! I was telling me husband..I just want to hire someone to design my store...he wants me to figure it all out on my own and I feel I will never get the store up and running at that rate! But I do want to learn as well...I will do what I can and learn what I can and find someone to figure out the rest!