Thinking about using ZenCart

[Graham Walters]

At the moment I'm using Shopify for my store front, but I am finding it very restrictive and not very user friendly, also the product and category system is very limited.

So I'm looking at alternatives, and Zencart appears to fit the bill.

Is there a demo anywhere so that I can take an in depth look at the back end ?

How easy is it to create categories and products ?

Can you assign products to more than one category.

My shop is aimed aimed at Model Railways, and particularly British locomotives and rolling stock, because of the change that the railways in Britain have gone through customers may want to search for items in up to SIX different categories, is this possible with Zencart ?

Can I integrate with a forum software like Xenforo so that I can have a product review section and/or forum ?

I'm sure there will be many more questions, but these are fundamental to my choice.

I will be using Hawkhost which is an Apache server

[dbltoe]

Your best bet is to set up a local testing server on your computer. There are many for windows and mac. Install the latest zen cart with demo. That will allow you to "look" all you want.
The beauty of open source is that you never have to get permission to make it work like you want to. Reviews are already buit in.

[torvista]

Zen Cart is missing stock control of product variants, this functionality can only be obtained by adding third-party code.
Otherwise I think it has everything that is important.

To try it quickly I would use your hosting's one-click installation services, like Scriptaculous, as long as you bear in mind that this shop you create must NEVER be your real shop, do not customise it, it's only to try things out without falling at the first potential hurdle/losing time with unnecessary installation problems.

[PatClay]

Answers to some of your questions:

New categories are trivial to create & can have sub categories

New products are simple to create. If you have a lot, there are bulk uploader scripts available.

Yes, you can assign a product to more than one category. When you copy a product you are given the choice of duplicating it, or linking it & putting it in another category. So the one product will be listed in categories A & B. If someone buys either product, the inventory will be reduced in all categories. Just works, once you have the products in the categories you want you no longer have to think about it.

Search by default looks at all categories, a customer can then narrow it down if they want.

As to integration with a forum, I would suggest doing something like having www.mytrains.co.uk as your main site & www.mytrains.co.uk/forums with your forum software. That way zc & the forum (or blog) just need the occasional link to the other, no real integration needed. I did this with wordpress on one of my sites.

[mc12345678]

A product can be presented in multiple categories (called a linked product) but it has to have a "home" (master) category.

Toughest part about creating either a category or a product is filling in quality content. Out-of-the-box a category can have an image associated with it and content about the category. A product can have any number of pictures associated (there is a structure as well as an easy to install plugin that addresses the structure for you mostly.) and content plus a myriad of other helpful/useful options that can be populated.

But like dbltoe said, you can make it how you want it. :)