is zen cart easy for beginners?

Hi, I have hosting with hostpapa and they provide free zen cart software so I've installed it but before i begin trying to set it up and spend a lot of time with it I wondered if anyone could tell me how easy it is to use for beginners. I was also considering using soholaunch, it seems a bit easier, but i'm not sure. I will have a canadian web store and will ship to canada and us so i don't know if that is a factor to consider when making a choice. thanks.

I was a beginner last year too. Yes Zen Cart is very user friendly. You can start selling right out of the box, as you mentioned most hosting company allow you to install the software with one click.

The best advantage for zen cart is the very active customer support, I don't think there are any other free or even paid software that has the team of support that Zen cart has.

As a beginner I am sure any shopping cart software will seem complicated but once you learn how to use the admin side of the software things get easy. A good place to start is Buying the Zen Cart Manual, it is very helpful PDF file that you can always go back to if you are stock (I have used it last night to learn how to set a document category). Another source of information is the Tutorials and Wiki page.

Once you learn the override system and zen cart structure you can find free templates in the free download section along with tons of great contribution that other shopping carts don't even have.

I hope that was helpful to you.

Before you start, make sure the version your host offered is the latest available (1.3.8a).

There's a learning curve associated with Zen Cart. It will seem very complicated to you at first, but once you get the hang of it, it's pretty simple to use.

There are lots of free templates available for Zen Cart. You can see them at http://(sorry, site offline)/

You'll need some "tools" to help you with Zen Cart. One is a good text editor like Notepad++ or Crimson Editor. The other is an FTP client like Filezilla. All are free downloads from the net.

Dianneo, you and I are in EXACTLY the same position, I have a hosted site with hostpapa, I've built my webpage with soholaunch, but now want to add a shopping cart and am looking at zencart because it integrates with paypal pro Canada. What did you decide to do?

hi i am new this is my first shopping car i have tried a few other but never finished im finlay going ot sit down and get this started
any tips? do free hosts exist are they good to use zen car with?
how should i decide a host. i am jsut starting the businesss now so not sure how much i will be making a year so not sure how much i should be spending on hosting . any help would be good i am also from canada.

Don't bother with 'free' hosts. Most don't work well with any ecommerce software.

Check the 'Certified Hosts' at the top of this page. They are Zencart specialists.

would Zymic Free Web Hosting work? has anyone tried this just curious want to test it out before i pay for a host :oops: