using side boxes on non-store pages

[erica62]

Hi,

This is my first post and I've Googled, searched here and read the FAQs and can't seem to find the answer so perhaps it's to obvious. Sorry if this is elsewhere.

I have Zen Cart 1.5.1, and I want to run it from /store. While the root of Zen Cart is in /store, I would like to use things like some of the side boxes and the shopping cart on pages that are a level higher, like on the homepage.

Is there an easy way to do this? I was hoping there might be a pre-made template or example.

Thanks,

Eric

[gjh42]

You want Sidebox Anywhere from Plugins. It does suggest that familiarity with PHP and Zen Cart will make it easier to use. Ask if you have questions after reading up thoroughly on it.

Displaying the shopping cart may be more involved than this mod deals with - try it and see.

[gjh42]

If you want to use multiple elements of Zen Cart in your main site, you would probably be better off making Zen Cart your whole site and creating content/information pages inside it, using "define pages" and/or "ez-pages". Look up the tutorials for more info on these.

This will make customer sessions and site maintenance easier in the long run.

[mc12345678]

Erica62 - welcome to Zen Cart, don't let that be your last post.

Listen to gjh42 about using ZC as your main site if you are planning on mixing various things into it. Right now in the process of trying to merge our two "separate" sites together, and wish we had done some of this a long time ago. Had already done some personal coding to display some things that is much easier to do using product types and other handy elements of Zen Cart. The tutorials are relatively easy to follow and can really help spruce up the way your site looks and functions. Anyways, don't want to stop you from using the parts of/from ZC that you want, but if you're headed that way, might as well make ZC your main site with content to follow on it.

[erica62]

Wow, thanks a mil for the responses. gjh42, you read my mind, and reposted the response to the questions I didn't ask yet. I spent an hour or so trying to bubble gum and tin foil multiples to the front door with no success. The first worked literally the first time.

mc12345678 I'll definitely take your feedback to heart. I am definitely at the point where I'm staring down the long road, and wondering if the store should be off of /store, or if the users should be in the store when accessing link directories, bbs forums, blogs etc. I'll read up on trying to get custom pages happening within the store and doing everything in ZC. I'm a little worried about using non ZC apps inside ZC, but I'm sure there's a way to get that dialed.

The only thing I was going to try to work out should I go with the whole ZC site idea, is making a /store page that is really what I have now as the homepage, and turning off some of the elements, sideboxes etc to make it look more like a homepage and different from /store. Perhaps I can reference the main elements from the home page in the /store page.

Anyway, thanks a mil for all the knowledge and experience.

Eric

[gjh42]

There are numerous standard methods for turning off certain elements on the homepage. Look at the Future Relics site in my sig - the homepage is part of the Zen Cart... and this layout was the first thing I ever did with ZC. Try stretching and shrinking the window width and see how it behaves, thanks to the abilities of CSS.