Customising Login and Main Page

Hi,

Is there anyway of closing a site to all but the main page for non-registered users? I have looked at the admin panel and found settings to enable login as a necessity before browing, However when going to a site, it displays the login over tha main page. What I would like to do is have access to the main page where I could place a message and some links and require login/registration to access the rest of the site, perhaps via a button to open the login panel.

In addition, is there a way of customising the login panel itself (not just select which fields show) ?

Thanks for any pointers, I have looked but couldn't find anything relevant.

Not from Admin, no. You could create a page with the info you wanted the visitor to see, with a link to your cart's index.php page and name it index.html and place it in the root of your cart. Most servers load index.html before index.php.

I'd be interested to know why you'd want to place this stumbling block in front of potential customers. It may be you have some special circumstances, but as someone who buys a lot of stuff online, I would never create an account just to see the store.

All pages in Zencart can be customized by editing their PHP files and template files. We'd need to know a little more about what you have in mind to advise about the Login page.

Many thanks for this stevesh, it fits the bill for me I think. The reason for setting it up this way is that the site is not intended to accept orders from the general public but from a specialist group.

Best regards,

Javier