Buy Now button from outside of store

[benbogart]

I've been searching for this information in the forums and FAQs for about an hour and I can't find anything that directly answers this question (I'm sure its there I just can't find it).

How can I set up a Buy Now button on a page outside of m Zen Cart store. I have a page that has a list of products that is currently using PayPal Buttons and gets a fair amount of traffic. I want to change the page as little as possible and have the buttons take the customer directly to zencart checkout with only the selected product in the cart.

Any links or help would be appreciated. Thanks.

[gjh42]

Zen Cart is not designed to work the way you are describing. It is designed to be the whole store. You can modify the look and feel of the ZC template to match just about any site design.

[benbogart]

I understand what you are saying, but it doesn't really answer my question. I will have a store with all of the items in the store and set up as a regular Zen Cart Store. Has to do with how to keep my existing page active in addition to the store running the way it was intended to be run.

My question is, in addition to the normal usage of Zen Cart, can buy now buttons be added to my site outside of Zen Cart (and how). I know the cart isn't designed to work this way so is there a hack or has anyone done this in any way before.

Thanks

[yellow1912]

The buy now button is just an image, what important is the submit form goes with it. You can easily copy that, changes the info to suit that specific item:

<form enctype="multipart/form-data" method="post" action="http://www.yourstore.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=692&action=add_product" name="cart_quantity">

    Add to Cart: <input type="text" size="4" maxlength="6" value="1" name="cart_quantity"/><br/><br/><input type="hidden" value="692" name="products_id"/><input type="image" title=" Add to Cart " alt="Add to Cart" src="includes/templates/TEST/buttons/english/btn_buy.gif"/>          
</form>

I took out some other parts that are not needed in your case, but basically that's what you need. You can also write a very simple php function that takes the products_id produces that link for you.

Regards.

[dbltoe]

Ben,
Zen-Cart cannot control sessions and other cookies when going in and out of its "domain". I think you would be better served(especially with Zen's PayPal Express checkout) to have the link to your older page changed to point to a similar representation in Zen. The link will be the same on the current site and (with a little customization) look nearly identical to the older. All while keeping the likelihood of crashing the database at a minimum.