How do I even start?

[DonaldHaslam]

I cannot even find a beginner's guide. My hosting company tells me to come here to build pages, but that seems to be false info? How do I start to build pages? I built my first site with Weebly and that was pretty cool, but this is like flying blindfolded.

[DonaldHaslam]

I cannot even find the admin controls! Where are they? At zencart? or my hosting company? They are not visible anywhere.

[DonaldHaslam]

ALL of the FAQs ASSUME I can find the Admin controls. I cannot. Where do I look? What is step one?

[DrByte]

How exactly did you install Zen Cart?

Was it via some "one-click install" offered by your hosting company? If so, then they should have given you the name of the Admin URL that they assigned via their installer. Maybe they displayed it on-screen? Maybe they emailed it to you?

If you installed by downloading the Zen Cart files and putting them onto your server using an FTP program, then running the zc_install program would have given you the new Admin foldername with a link to click to go directly to it, after letting you select your own Admin user ID and giving you the password. (It's called /admin by default, but automatically gets renamed to something not-guessable so hackers can't guess what it is and launch unnecessary attacks against it.)

[schoolboy]

Hi Donald... welcome to the forum.

There are no "pages" in a Dynamic Content system. All ecommerce platforms (worth their salt) run off a database, with "pages" being created by the PHP code (in zencart's case), as and when such "pages" are needed by the person viewing the site (shoppers).

You control much of the CONTENT by in-putting data into the database and this is done in your ADMIN AREA. This area is "housed" in a coded directory - by "coded" I mean it is automatically named by the system when it is installed, and the reason it is given this coded name is to minimise the chances of hackers finding it and trying to break in.

So... as Dr Byte says... we need to know HOW this was set up... HOW was it installed? When we know that, maybe we can help you. If YOU did the install, then you may not have been paying attention to some of the notes flashed up during the install - such as the NAME of your Admin Folder.

When you know this, you will go to something like: http : // my - website . com / sIgger_$-GGpJ with the sIgger_$-GGpJ being that coded name for your admin area.

There will appear a login screen - and again... the username and password will have been flashed up to you.

So... find out what that codename is for your admin, and you can start.