newbie questions

i'm considering changing to zen cart shopping cart but first wanted to confirm what was and wasnt possible and had a few questions

1)is there complete design control of the front end all parts the customer will see, design is important to me and being able to produce something distinct is a must just changing the colours and subtle layout changes wont be enough, my present site has a lot of css, flash and javascript which gives it a very unique look i would like to keep

2)will it still work with an htaccess mod re-write so i can keep the URLs i already have (i'm quite well ranked in google)

3)do you have complete control of the sales funnel, ie i choose what procedures my customers do or dont have to go through, if they have to open an account or not etc

4)is it possible to download my sales and customer information straight into quickbooks and my access customer database

5)is it php based, can i learn more about how it works from easily available text books or as a newbie will i be completely reliant on the support network to help me through the learning curve

thank you for your time, its much appreciated, changing shopping carts is such a big upheaval i want to make sure i'm doing the right thing
kind regards
Seth

Why are you considering changing carts?

did you create the site yourself the first time around? (all the javascript, flash, etc) or did someone do it for you?

i have a feeling that if you didn't do it yourself the first time around, zencart won't be for you. i recently started implementing sites using zencart for clients and am finding the learning curve so far as true customization quite steep--there's a gazillion files everywhere.

that being said, it's immensely robust and user friendly on the admin-side. it's just properly locating all the files that need to be modified in order to make a "seamless" transition from non-zencart pages to zencart pages that is time-consuming.

presently i'm using romancart, its a good shopping cart for small companies but i've presently out grown it and its become too time consuming to keep up to date and its time to change

javascript, xhtml and flash i'm pretty experienced (although i dont think flash is going to help in this endeavor) Php and forms i'm a little inexperienced

1. yes

2. I believe so, but I'm not all that familiar with .htacess. Search the forum for more info.

3. I believe there are mods in the Free Software Add On section for check out without an account.

4. Again, I think there's a QuickBooks mod in the Free Software Add On section.

5. Yes, Zen Cart is php based. There's a Zen Cart book (see link at top of forum), a Wiki and the forum to help you along.

About the RomanCart. Can I implement the RomanCart Credit Cart Processor with Zen Cart