I only need a simple store - what is the best way to proceed?

I installed Zen Cart and I bought the manual. I'm following through the manual to set up my store, but there is SO MUCH there! I have only 5 products. I don't need categories. I just want to display a list of the 5 products on my store's main page. I don't want sidebars.

What's the best way to go about this?

I've read all the FAQ's and I've searched the forums and, as I said, I even bought the manual. I am totally overwhelmed for what should be a very simple setup.

Help!

Create a top level categories called "products" - Turn off both sidebars in the Admin> Configuration> Layout Settings then add your products the Featured products and they will all show onthe front page.

Thanks. I did what you said. And I added all of my products to the featured products list with no start date and no expiration date.
But the "home" page of my store still has the original "splash" screen for Zen Cart. It's not showing just the featured products. What am I missing?

Turn off the other things you don't want or need. The URL?

https://www.collabiril.com/shop
Note: left sidebar is still on because I'm playing around with that.

I think my problem is that my home page is not displaying the so-called "center boxes" but I don't know why.

https://www.zen-cart.com/tutorials/index.php?category=4

You should start with the Customizing section of the FAQs.

PLEEEEEZE help! I've looked through the faqs. I'm following step by step in the manual that I bought from the Zen Cart site. For some reason, my home page does not show the center boxes, which, I would think, it should do by default, since that's what the manual says. I have not made any edits to the pages so this is just vanilla out-of-the-box right now. Why is my home page not showing the center boxes?

It doesn't make sense to me that, out-of-the-box, my home page is this "Congratulations! You've successfully installed " thing with an ad for the book. It doesn't make sense that I should actually have to edit the page to get the center boxes. None of the documentation tells you that you have to do this!

The center boxes are there - they are the New Products, Featured and Specials ... what more do you want?

If you set up your own custom template instead of using the default one, you'll get rid of the ad and other messages.

https://www.zen-cart.com/tutorials/index.php?article=129

https://www.zen-cart.com/tutorials/index.php?article=36

OK. I finally get the override system, and I enabled the override system EXACTLY as described here:
https://www.zen-cart.com/tutorials/index.php?article=142

It took a lot of reading to figure out that you had to do this FIRST, and this is what actually tells Zen Cart that you are using custom templates (pages) AND what your convention is for naming your custom folders. I think part of the confusion for me is using the word "templates" for the php pages?

Then I basically followed what's here:
https://www.zen-cart.com/tutorials/index.php?article=36

It must be late and I must be tired because I realize now that the content boxes were there all along - I wasn't scrolling down far enough. duh!

I edited the define_main_page.php to get rid of the book advertisement (by deleting everything in that file). It's still weird to me that one has to go through that.

Anyways, thanks for the help and sorry to be so dense. It's been a very long day.

Seems to me that if you only have five products in a single category you want them all on the front page without other clutter.

There's a way to make the front page default to your chosen category, then everything in that category will appear on the front without having to use any of the centred boxes, Specials, New or Featured products, so you could then switch them off and simplify your site and management problems.

It's here:-
Admin/Configuration/Layout Setting/Main Page Opens With Category (enter ID for category).

More tips in my thread: The Virgin Installer Diary

:smartalec:

OK .. that sounded like a GREAT suggestion and exactly what I needed.

So ... I went in to Configuration > Layout Settings and I set "Main Page - Opens with Category" to "1", the ID of my only category. In Configuration > Index Settings, all of the center boxes (Features, New Products, Specials) are set to "0". So then the middle of my page is blank. It's wasn't showing the category.

So I scanned thru the list of things in "Categories > Layout Settings" and noticed that "Categories - Always Show on Main Page" was "0"; changed that to "1". Now I get my products! Yay! But now the center boxes are all back.

So then I figured out that in Configuration > Index Listing, I had to turn off "Show xxxx - below Product Listing" for xxxx = New Products, Featured Products, Special Products and Upcoming Products.

Voila! :clap:

Now ONE MORE QUESTION ... if I want to change the layout of how the category looks on the main page, what file(s) do I edit or what admin settings can I use?

Believe me, I've spent days looking through FAQ's and reading the manual, and I'm still at a huge loss as to how to determine where to go to customize certain things.

And I still need help with this question:
http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=113349

Thank you SO much!

Before attempting to answer the questions you'd better explain what kind of layout you want?

If it's one two or three columns, or something then you search for those in Layout (I think), also try looking at Product Listing.

Hmmm, there's another...... Catalogue/Product Type (General?) you could try.

What else..... Admin/Configuration/All Listing which contains more precise controls over the way listings are laid out.

Try chapter 16 in the book.

:smartalec:

I've looked at Chapter 16. The book seems to tell you all the things you can do through the Administrator. But what about things you can't? I'm struggling with finding out how to know WHAT you need to edit.

I'm looking at the FAQs and I've found, for example, that there are "common" and "page specific" templates, and I know where to find them. But if I have a particular page that I want to modify, how to I know WHICH FILE to change?

For example, on my main page (https://www.collabiril.com/shop), which now shows the products in category=1, I want to left-justify the names instead of centering them. And I want to get rid of: the "products" caption at the top, the words "single category", the "Filter Results By", and the "Displaying 1 to 4 ... ".

So WHAT page template do I edit for that? And how do I know what page? Is there a list somewhere of every template and every include file and what they do and where they are used?

This post:
https://www.zen-cart.com/tutorials/index.php?article=132
tells you the "most common files to be customized", but it doesn't tell you WHAT they are. I agree that maybe the template files are self-explanatory by their names, but what are all the files in .../html_includes?

Thanks.

Just to drive home the point of my confusion: :huh:
I noticed that when I went from the home page to a product, then clicked on "products" link, the URL of the page I'm viewing, and the one I want to change, is:
http://www.collabiril.com/shop/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=1

So I think that means I need to edit the template for the main page: but there is no "main page" template in
includes/templates/template_default/templates
So maybe "index" is what I need to change. I do find:
tpl_index_categories.php
tpl_index_default.php
tpl_index_product_list.php
How do I know if any of those are what I need to edit.

He, he, you think you're confused now, just wait for it.....

...have you looked at the style sheet yet? :smile:

Some for the formatting for the pages, font sizes, colours, etc. is controlled by the style sheet, although I've not dug too deep into that one yet.

Now for the pages, specifically their contents. You've mentioned some of the "tpl_..." pages for content.

They may control some of the layout, but you also need to look in languages/english/........ here you'll find a whole mass of pages, and in a further sub-folder html_includes, which lay out the wording for the key pages.

Remember, the actual pages in the cart as displayed are made up of various components coming from different snippets in all these folders, and don't forget to create your own override copies.

Catch you later!

:cool:

I actually know quite a bit of css so that part doesn't scare me, believe it or not!

I have set up my overrides and have made some successful changes. So I'm pretty clear on that now. It's still a problem knowing what specifically to edit, or if there is an admin function for it.

I've made some progress and I put it here in case it will help others.

**Getting rid of the "Displaying x of y ... " message:**This is actually called "split page navigation"; I googled that and found this solution:
https://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?p=389539

**Getting rid of the Filter box:**In Administrator, go to Configuration > Product Listing. Set the value for "Include Product Listing Alpha Sorter Dropdown" from true to false"
Yeah ... that was real intuitive!

Whenever I want to remove any text or stray comments on the pages (or all these little snippets all over the place) I use the Admin/Tools/Developer's Tool Kit to find the offending page(s) then a quick edit of the templated copy in Dreamweaver and it's done.

It's only when I'm looking for odd functions that don't initially appear to make sense that I then start thinking laterally and searching around.

Zen is very lateral!

:wacko:

Thanks. I did try the Developers ToolKit but didn't have much luck with my searching! I think because I was searching for "dynamic" data? It doesn't do dynamic data, does it?

For example, I eventually figured out I wanted to remove the Category Name from the page, but I was trying to search for the actual name ("products") so of course that did not work. And that begs the question: if you want to find "Category Name" what do you search for? "Category Name" ? "Catergory_name"? "CategoryName?" or something else.

I've managed to get a lot of what I want done, but it's been painful trying to find the right pages. I think that what's really needed is screen shots with arrows that say "If you want to change this ... then here's what you need to do ...".

It does appear that most of what I'm looking to do is "out there" somewhere. It's just that finding it takes an extreme amount of effort and time, and I'm under a deadline.

Maybe in my "off" time I'll put something together! It seems that most of the documentation assumes that you already know what page you need to change. But that is just not the case.