Am I looking in the wrong place?

I am new to Zen Cart and would like to take the first steps in customizing a default installation. (I have installed the latest version, 1.3.8a, with all of the patches.) I started by clicking the link Tutorials/FAQ and then *All Time Favorites - FAQs (16) * I then chose How do I change the "Sales Message Goes Here" or "Tagline Here" text? So here I begin by following the instructions in:

How do I change the "Sales Message Goes Here" or "Tagline Here" text?

NB: By default the text “Sales Message Goes Here” is located in includes/languages/english/classic/header.php define('HEADER_SALES_TEXT', 'Sales Message Goes Here');
Recomended additional reading:
How do I set up the template overrides?

I then navigate to:

How do I set up the template overrides?
Modifying the default Language File - /includes/languages/english.php
Example: You need to modify the title, so that instead of reading Zen Cart!, it reads Your Store Name!
Make a directory with the same name as your template name in /includes/languages, so you now have /includes/languages/custom.
Copy english.php to this directory.
Then, you can make any needed modifications in your new:
/includes/languages/custom/english.php

So when I begin to edit my newly copied file, /catalog/includes/languages/custom/english.php, I encounter the following lines, commented out as such:

// FOLLOWING WERE moved to meta_tags.php
//define('TITLE', 'Zen Cart!');
//define('SITE_TAGLINE', 'The Art of E-commerce');
//define('CUSTOM_KEYWORDS', 'ecommerce, open source, shop, online shopping');
// END: moved to meta_tags.php

I am willing to apply myself assiduously to the task of customizing my store, but would prefer not to engage in an iterative process similar to learning to traverse a maze. Any recommendations as to a logical, productive path wil be appreciated.

Do you have any specific question? Maybe the comprehensive user manual (see banner above) can tell you step by step how to customise your template. But i havent read it and cant tell you this for sure.

When you want oto customise your template, you have to know what you wan to change. If you know what you want to change. Look for the place where the changes have to be made and change it. Change step by step from header, to sideboxes, product pages, to footer.

When you want to change to sales message, go to the file, change the text and save it in your custom folder. When you want to change some more, edit the file if you have already a custom version.

You can only have interative changes, especially when you havent done this before. Most important is to know where the file you need to change are located and how you can change them without changing the default installation as changes might be lost when you updates your zencart later. The file structure is quite logical and easy to remember.

There is no such thing that you can plug a cable in your brain and download the experience to customise a template as shown in the Matrix!

This list is a bit outdated, but it'll give you an idea where to start to create a very basic custom template (you can build from there):

• includes/languages/YOUR_TEMPLATE/english.php
• includes/languages/english/YOUR_TEMPLATE/index.php
• includes/languages/english/YOUR_TEMPLATE/meta_tags.php
• includes/languages/english/YOUR_TEMPLATE/header.php (to change the logo and header text)
• includes/templates/YOUR_TEMPLATE/template_info.php
• includes/templates/YOUR_TEMPLATE/common/tpl_header.php <- may not be necessary
• includes/templates/YOUR_TEMPLATE/common/tpl_footer.php <- may not be necessary
• includes/templates/YOUR_TEMPLATE/images/logo.gif (or .jpg or .png)
• includes/templates/YOUR_TEMPLATE/css/stylesheet.css

Anywhere you see a /classic/ folder, you can create a folder for your custom template. You can copy the necessary files from either the /classic/ folder, the /template_default/ folder or the parent folder.

Edit includes/templates/YOUR_TEMPLATE/template_info.php to give your template identifying information so you'll recognize it in the admin under tools->template selection.

Note: if you've changed the height of the logo in header.php, you may need to change it in your stylesheet as well:

#logoWrapper{
background-image: url(../images/header_bg.jpg);
background-repeat: repeat-x;
background-color: #ffffff;
height:75px; <-adjust this line if necessary
}

You might also try looking at the free templates available for Zen Cart. You can see them in action at http://(sorry, site offline)/.

Thanks for your reply. Let's pretend that I just selected the red pill offered by Morpheus. I would like to start by changing the title bar, presumably provided by my Apache server in the /catalog/index.php file by this line, "<title>Zen Cart!, The Art of E-commerce</title>"
(I am reluctant to purchase a software manual unless I can be assured that it will not quickly become obsolete.)
So how do I change the title bar to read My Domain!, The Art of Efficient Coding?

That's explained in https://www.zen-cart.com/tutorials/index.php?article=17

(I hadn't noticed afo's post when I made my previous post; I thought I was just replying to tino's post.) I created two custom folders and several files in these folders. How are these additions recognized by the system? What global configuration file do I edit to pick up the changes made by my addition of /english/custom/meta_tags.php?

Your custom template needs a includes/templates/YOUR_TEMPLATE/template_info.php file in order to be recognized.

All the files you change must be saved in a custom folder in the same folder as the original file. For example, changes made to includes/languages/english/index.php should be saved to includes/languages/english/YOUR_TEMPLATE/index.php.

If you've done it correctly, once you select your template under admin>tools>template selection, all your changes will be recognized.

Does anyone have any suggestions regarding how to make the Sales Tagline font larger?

Is this controlled in CSS?

Any help appreciated.

Almost everything to do with styling is handled in the stylesheet. In this case, look for #tagline .

#tagline h1 {}
may be the best thing to style.