Home Page Layout

Hi I wondered if somebody can help me? I need to have a homepage which is a totally different layout to the rest of my website.

I plan on having feature products on the homepage only and their will be graphics that will be applied on the homepage which will be outside the cart.

So I think I need to build a custom template specifically for the homepage, then the rest of the pages will operate normally.

So can anybody give me an idea of how I would go about this, considering I'm pretty new to ZEN CART.

Thanks
Nick

I think you need to define some of your terminology. The 'homepage' is normally the first page of website. Will that be a Zen Cart page or no?

If you are looking for some Template ideas you can find some free ones here that work with Zen Cart.

The homepage would need to be a zen cart page in order to update categories, text, etc.

The site I'm building is for a wine merchants and we require featured products to be shown on the homepage only.

The rest of the shopping cart can function as normal.

See the attached document to get an idea of layout. That will be the homepage only.

Many Thanks

Nick

A lot of elements of ZC can be manipulated almost anyway you require.
I have built many custom ZC based sites (as opposed to simply stores) many time manipulating the main page to be beyond simple recognition as a ZC store.

What I am saying is - With ZC almost anything is possible.

Have you thought about setting your landing page as an EZpage?

You can disable header, footer and sidebars for the home page and have all of your code for the functions you want in define_main_page.php. (Ez-pages can't handle PHP code.)

See my site for an example.

In the past I have used EZ-Pages, custom define pages or the built in main page for the website 'home page' - so, yes it can be done.

http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=37252&highlight=pages+include+php
How to add php into EZ Pages may be useful.
:smile:

Is there a way to apply a CSS file to just the home page? Or looking at the other side, have the home page call a separate CSS file than the rest of the site.

nosleephotel:

Is there a way to apply a CSS file to just the home page? Or looking at the other side, have the home page call a separate CSS file than the rest of the site.
Previous thread/post below should help
http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showpost.php?p=283764&postcount=6

Thank you, misty. That should help; appreciate it. Another thing I realized, I will need to change the logo to a different .jpg for the home page as well as hide the "Home," "Login," and Search feature. How is this controlled?

I figured how to hide the "Home," "Login," and Search field by putting```
#navMainWrapper {
display: none;
}

nosleephotel:

I figured how to hide the "Home," "Login," and Search field by putting```
#navMainWrapper {
display: none;
}

Depends how you have named logo/header image..
URL of your site is?

Here is the link: http://vanessamooney.com/temp/. I was going to hide the logo by putting```
#logoWrapperOuter {
display: none;
}

I can do the second and third step but making the logo image a different image for just the home page is what I don't know how to do.

There is a variant of the Smart Backgrounds code in the support thread (post 104) that is built to switch logos for specific pages. You would put it in /includes/templates/your_template/common/tpl_header.php.
If you only want the home page different, you could simplify that to:```php

<!--bof-branding display--> <div id="logoWrapper"> <?php //Smart Backgrounds - for foreground logo - homepage only - 20081006 $smart_image = ''; //change filename to smartimg_ and pagename only if page image exists $smart_image = (file_exists(DIR_WS_TEMPLATE_IMAGES . 'smartimg_' . $current_page_base . '.gif'))?'smartimg_' . $current_page_base . '.gif':HEADER_LOGO_IMAGE; //default/home page image will be as defined (HEADER_LOGO_IMAGE) // /Smart Backgrounds?> <div id="logo"><?php echo '<a href="' . HTTP_SERVER . DIR_WS_CATALOG . '">' . zen_image($template->get_template_dir($smart_image, DIR_WS_TEMPLATE, $current_page_base,'images'). '/' . $smart_image, HEADER_ALT_TEXT) . '</a>'; ?></div> ``` Save the homepage logo as /includes/templates/your_template/images/smartimg_indexHome.gif.

Thanks, Glenn. I'll give it a go.

Okay, new questions, guys. I want to add a div layer with some image buttons at the top of my home page. Is there a way I can add this in the tpl_header.php but only for the home page or put it in the code just before the tpl_header.php is called (not sure which file this would be? Here is a screen shot of what I'm trying to accomplish: Screenshot

Those two buttons would definitely want to go in tpl_header.php, not before it.
Surround the div with a test:```php

<?php if ($this_is_home_page) { >? your HTML button code; <?php } ?>

Glenn, thanks for the help. :D Only tweak was putting the "?" on the left of the ">" in the first line. So it was like:```php

<?php if ($this_is_home_page) { ?>

your HTML button code;

<?php } ?>

gjh42:

You can disable header, footer and sidebars for the home page and have all of your code for the functions you want in define_main_page.php. (Ez-pages can't handle PHP code.)

See my site for an example.

I added my code to define_main_page.php yet it does not show on the main page? any ideas?

Currently it starts with one of the categories yet even if i disable that, i just get a blank area.

Thanks
Erez

https://www.respectyourtaste.com