Beautiful Templates

[droidmcse]

hello everyone -

I've taken on a client to upgrade their ZC install to something "prettier". I decided to move them to WooCommerce as there are an infinite number of templates / themes to choose from etc.

HOWEVER!

Having a blog that you then put products into, perhaps if you only have a handful of products, it would be splendid. This customer of mine has products that have 600 rows when denormalized. ZC handles this significantly more smoothly, as in it's more normalized and more efficient.

That said though, the number of recently, beautiful templates is lacking.

I was wondering what you folks would suggest one do?

I've worked with the bootstrap template that is actively updated. And perhaps with enough poking and prodding, it could look visually stunning. I was hoping to do something more off the shelf. I'm just not sure I can get there w/ Woo.

Thoughts?

[dbltoe]

Other than a quality image and description for the item on sale, what really needs to be pretty?

For example, go to https://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-...01LR5S6HK&th=1


That was Amazon's number one selling sports item in September. Good images, lots of choices, good description, not so "purdy". Yeah, it might be nice to have some falling snowflakes in December but, what is the overall goal?

[droidmcse]

"what needs to be good" is having an ultra clean template that your customer has a warm and fuzzy that their site is as pretty as the competition.
But another aspect is that it doesn't look like every other site out there.
It's not really fair to compare to amazon. They can more or less do what they want as they are the 800lb gorilla.
Shopify has 150 templates
WordPress has who knows how many

That said, the zen cart community has only a handful of templates to choose from. YourStore has a lot of features, but hasn't been updated in 3 years. Is it 158 compatible?

[lat9]

"what needs to be good" is having an ultra clean template that your customer has a warm and fuzzy that their site is as pretty as the competition.
But another aspect is that it doesn't look like every other site out there.
It's not really fair to compare to amazon. They can more or less do what they want as they are the 800lb gorilla.
Shopify has 150 templates
WordPress has who knows how many

That said, the zen cart community has only a handful of templates to choose from. YourStore has a lot of features, but hasn't been updated in 3 years. Is it 158 compatible?

In a word: No.

[Elemi]

Totally agree, Zencart websites are ugly!

The backend functionality is amazing, however people want pretty and they want slick. PicaFlor Azul used to do lovely ones, however she's not updated any of her templates in years. :-(

[royaldave]

Totally agree, Zencart websites are ugly!

The backend functionality is amazing, however people want pretty and they want slick. PicaFlor Azul used to do lovely ones, however she's not updated any of her templates in years. :-(

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

I agree that a lot of zencarts are very obviously "zencart" - often due to the users' reluctance to move away from using the left and right columns in the default way.

However I designed my business website with a KISS principal 10 years ago and I'd rather upfront functionality anytime over pretty pictures - and its worked for us.

Personally I think bootstrap does look slick - perhaps not "pretty" though - but pretty often equates to a lack of substance.

Anyway they don't need to be ugly - I think that's a bit strong - in my opinion it doesn't take too much effort to get responsive classic or bootstrap looking at least slick. And with a bit of creative html, even if you're not a graphic designer, you can lift it up a little.

To mean "clean" just means turning off a lot of unnecessary guff - "new products for this month", whose online sidebox etc.
All that is great if you want to be the next temu, but for a lot of niche businesses just use some common sense.

Personally I think left AND right columns is overkill and will make your zencart look busy - but everyone's business is different and you might feel the need.

Anyway I might say all this, but I got issues with mine - especially with the mobile view...

[Shop Suey]

I had started with viennabright (zc1.5.0) and have used lots of decorations and sidebox gimmicks.

With switching to responsive_classic I disabled one sidebox at first.
Meanwhile I'm free of sideboxes at all.

The last thing I'm missing is navigation for desktop view.
Maybe I'll switch over to mobile menu for desktop, too which brings a good looking off canvas menu with a proper navigation.

2014:


2019:


2022:


2024:
see https://www.roller-aus-blech.de/

[dbltoe]

Having a blog that you then put products into, perhaps if you only have a handful of products, it would be splendid. This customer of mine has products that have 600 rows when denormalized. ZC handles this significantly more smoothly, as in it's more normalized and more efficient.

Shopify has 150 templates
WordPress has who knows how many

Zen Cart is unparalleled in its out-of-the-box capabilities and compatibility with standards. Yet, everyone thinks that it's template is insufficient.

I bet none of you complaining about templates would go into an AutoZone autoparts store and ask if they had someone who could fix the transmission on your car. You think the guy behind the counter could paint your car a new color?

When answering a Zen Cart question with an "I don't know?", i often get the incredulous, "What?". My favorite answer is that you can have a PhD in keyboard and not know a thing about mouse. I have a friend who has been using the mouse pad on a laptop so long that he is not familiar with the wheel on a windows mouse.

So, where is your justification in complaining that some of the most brilliant programmes/developers are not also template experts? What is your justification in complaining that the rest of the world is not willing to take even a cursory look at the real workings of Zen Cart when making a template. Every "store-bought" is filed with work-arounds that, at the least, will cause PHP warnings with any change to the site's files. Even with bootstrap, not that many are willing to take the time to fully understand the ZC bootstap setup to create templates.

In saying that Zen Cart is ugly you are denigrating the best e-commerce software out there. I came to Zen Cart originally thru osCommerce. Deep into ColdFusion at the time, i was looking to sell some products as a side hustle. Looking at osCommerce, I saw a product that would do what I wanted to initially do without spending all the time coding, testing, re-coding, re-testing, etc.

Just a few months into osCommerce, Ajeh announced moving to the new Zen Cart so, in January of 2004, I moved with her.

Twenty years and every year there have been improvements almost monthly. Believe me, I have often tried other platforms but even the ones with features not available for Zen Cart could not hold a candle to the overall product and its performance.

The most outstanding accomplishment is that, now, thanks to the abilitites of the developers, those who wish to build templates will have a beautifully prepared canvas to work with and lat9's clone a template to create their own. Just a few additions to the site specific stylesheet, color changes from the admin, and, a template is born - ready for deployment. Zen Cart docs already handle the Congratulations, Welcocme Guest, and Site tagline adjustments so that there is not that much to do to get a produdct together.

That said, there are those that will try to work around the colors and other things as they will not read the docs on bootstrap. And, we have to get these folks to look at the "canvas" created for them.

What I do, whenever possible, is to rebutt false assumptions or lack of currency of any review of Zen Cart that I find.

Perhaps our time is better spent letting the world know about the potential canvas than complaining like the church choir is not delivering a decent sermon Sunday. It's not there job.

[g2ktcf]

The lack of "stunning" templates has been well documented and discussed. What you are hearing from all the expert programmers is "we make the engine run REALLY well". I had some very long discussions with several of the programmers over the past two years related to the future of ZC. I was getting concerned as nothing was really happening. This has seriously turned around with the push and now the release of 2.0 (My hat is off to you guys!!) I has serious intentions to leave ZC for something else. BUT what? I researched. And you take WHAT they give you period. Nothing is as solid or as flexible as ZC.

Sideboxes...this argument just does not hold water. If you do not want them then TURN THEM OFF. Again, the engine is designed for that.

I am playing with Bootstrap and finding that with the addition of the site specific modifications, you can do ALOT with it. I am only making color changes in the admin, tweaking layout settings and adding that single site specific mods and I am getting close to what I want. AND the previous comment that says "read the documentation on bootstrap" is 100% accurate. I had no idea how complex that system CAN be if you want it to be.

The ZC team really needs good template designers. BUT, the issue is that those "nice" templates are valuable and they all want to sell them.
I would like to see template designers join the ZC team. We all know that "commercial" ZC templates have a tendency to overwrite core code and compromise future upgrades. I am a tech geek...I am not good with UI design but I would be willing to learn if I had someone to help teach it. Again, who wants to do that for free?

So...WHAT do people want? I would like to see examples.

enough ranting from me... sorry.

[torvista]

Templates are a subjective thing and massively time-wasting to develop.
It is not reasonable to expect any spare-time developer to create one for free.

I've (very) slowly come to some conclusions about the Bootstrap one.

I've come from the dinosaur age of pre-css and pre-framework. Since, I've got used to adding a style here and there to move stuff about, piecemeal.

Not so with Bootstrap. It's a world of its own classes and functionalities and so, no, you should not be adding your own discrete classes and styles all over the place trying to get what you want, you have to use the in-built ones, and so, yes, you have to do some studying again.

Do a couple of tutorials to get the idea how it works, then install and clone the Bootstrap template and start reading the code from the header downwards, look up those meaningless classes like mr-2 and find that they not so meaningless.
Change stuff in develope tools rand see how it does change.

You'll find the template gets easier to understand and so easier to modify as it is designed properly with the absolute minimum necessary.

Gradually I'm finding my feet with Bootstrap, but as soon as it is functional with my mods, it's going live. Visual tweaks can come later as I learn.

It is FAR better to go this way than get a pre-made template. I got hold of one a couple of weeks ago to try out, and it was just far too much to de-louse and then make changes/repair it.

The only way more templates will become available is if users pay a developer to make one, then share it on Github for others to improve.

If you want this project to regain strength, you have to invest something in it.