No. Read the comment/instruction at the top of your admin screenshot and follow it.

Your DIR_FS_ADMIN, DIR_FS_CATALOG and DIR_WS_CATALOG are all wrong.

You know if i had the knowledge i would not be waiting around for answers for a week to be able to proceed. I am very obviously stuck at this stage and so far not one person has given me any concrete answer to this quite unclear question. I visit forums myself and answer questions from newbies in dreamweaver, photoshop etc If I saw them struggling like this .. i would have given them the answer. I have tried many different combinations now and none of them so far are correct but not one person has just said put this in, instead of no you have it wrong.

I understand the reasons behind not giving out straight answers but I have a steep learning curve with the rest of zen cart, i cant help feel that this is just making me feel dumb and frustrated.

Muzz gave you the correct /includes/configure.php (as far as it could be known from the information available) in post #7. We still have no information about what the filepath to root is, so we can't tell you exactly what DIR_FS_CATALOG or DIR_FS_ADMIN should be. We can only tell you in some cases that you definitely have it wrong; we have given what should work if the base filepaths are correct.

Are you referring to this: //the following path is a COMPLETE path to your Zen Cart files. eg: /var/www/vhost/accountname/public_html/store/
define('DIR_FS_CATALOG', '/home/broomebeads/public_html/');

ahh finally ... so would it be amanda/documents/BroomeBeads/admin???

Do i change all the DIR_FS ? Thanks

That file path doesn't look right (Though it could be).

Are you connecting to the site via FTP ?

What file directory path do you go through to get to where you installed Zen Cart?

If your unsure ask you webhost.

Yes I am connecting by FTP but not for over a week now as I have been trying to sort this problem. This is my includes config.

// * DIR_FS_* = Filesystem directories (local/physical)
//the following path is a COMPLETE path to your Zen Cart files. eg: /var/www/vhost/accountname/public_html/store/
define('DIR_FS_ADMIN', '/admin/');
define('DIR_FS_CATALOG', '/admin/');
define('DIR_FS_CATALOG_LANGUAGES', DIR_FS_CATALOG . 'includes/languages/');
define('DIR_FS_CATALOG_IMAGES', DIR_FS_CATALOG . 'images/');

The problem i have been having all along is that the instructions refer to a local/physical and I was unsure as to whether this referred to my local copy on my computer or the path to the server. Going along with the rest of the paths in this block, it would be logical just to put the admin folder as the admin folder on my server sits directly in the root of my site. IE all folders that refer to https://www.broomebeads.com.au. Having said that when i use my ftp client Filezilla i do have to go to webspace/httpdocs then i see all my zen cart folders.

Hope this helps, thanks

wotnow:

The problem i have been having all along is that the instructions refer to a local/physical and I was unsure as to whether this referred to my local copy on my computer or the path to the server.

I gave you the answer to this in post#8 - all configuration entries refer to the server - not your localhost.

wotnow:

Going along with the rest of the paths in this block, it would be logical just to put the admin folder as the admin folder on my server

Other that renaming it to something other than 'admin', yes this would be a valid and logical thing to do

wotnow:

sits directly in the root of my site. IE all folders that refer to www.broomebeads.com.au. Having said that when i use my ftp client Filezilla i do have to go to webspace/httpdocs then i see all my zen cart folders.

If you can understand what** you** just wrote I can't see why you are having so much confusion over the different path names.

www.broomebeads.com.au/something1/somthing2/something3 is the 'path' that the web browsers will find your site by. This is the DIR_WS defines in the configuration files. ... They are RELATIVE to the DOCROOT

If your DOCROOT is at www.broomebeads.com.au/ and you have no sub directories or folders then the RELATIVE PATH would be "/"

If your DOCROOT is at www.broomebeads.com.au/ and your zencart files are in a directory called 'store' - such as www.broomebeads.com.au/store/ then the RELATIVE directory would be /store/

If your DOCROOT is at www.broomebeads.com.au/zencart/ and your store is at www.broomebeads.com.au/zencart//store the RELATIVE directory would be /store/

If your DOCROOT is at www.broomebeads.com.au/ and your store is at www.broomebeads.com.au/zencart//store the RELATIVE directory would be /zencart/store/

Do you see a pattern emerging here? All of the above examples are perfectly valid. depending on where the user (you) decide to place your files. This is why none of us can tell you exactly what you need to enter - it is for you to choose where to place your zencart files, and therefore only you can really say for sure what the 'correct' setting should be FOR YOU.

All of the above relates to how the site is seen/accessed via a web browser.

Your FTP client on the other hand doesn't know anything about "the Web" - all it knows are the physical location of files on the server. As you know, zencart also requires you to specify the physical location of the zencart files, and since it is a physical location, this is going to be a 'constant' - so whatever your FTP program tells you is the physical path is the exact same path that you need for the DIR_FS entry in the zencart configuration files. This needs to be specified as the FULL path, and not a RELATIVE path, the reason for this is that the physical path isn't 'relative' to any particular location .... it'll always start at "/" and will be different for each user. Most of this path is predefined by your ISP as part of your account, eg:
"/home/users/jsmith/public_html" with only the bit after the "public_html" being under your control. If you place your zewncart files directly in the "public_hrml" folder then the full path (using my example) would be "/home/users/jsmith/public_html" ---- However, if I put my sencart files in a folder called "zencart" - the full path will then be /users/jsmith/public_html/zencart"

Aqain, because this is a user choice, there is no 'correct path' for all users so we can't simply tell you to 'enter this' or 'enter that'.

Finally, both paths need to 'gel' with each other - You can't (for example) place your zencart files into (say) /users/jsmith/public_html/zencart (physical path) and then specify that the webserver will find them at
" http://somedomain.com/store/".

Is this all making sense now?

No?

Try this for size... Have you installed zencart on your local machine yet? (Hopefully you have).

Where does your webbrowser find this local install? Probably something like "http://localhost/mystore/" Correct?

Now tell me (thetorical) - Where do you find the actual zencart files for this installation? Something like C:/Documents and Settings/IIS/webroot/ would be my guess.

Clearly there are two different paths here, even on your own local machine - There is the path where the webrowser requests the files from, and another path for the physical location of the files.

It is no different on a remote server - there is a 'web path' and a 'physical path'. Zencart requires both to be specified.

If after reading this you STILL have problems then I would perhaps suggest you put zencart to one site for a week or so and concentrate creating and uploading a few simple web pages into different folders on your server, creating links between them in the process (HTML 101). It really won't take long at all to realise the differences (and similarities) between the physical location of the files and the web address(es) needed to view the files.

Cheers
Rod

Rod, thankyou from the bottom of my heart for your very well explained reply. Unfortunately I could not get the configs to work (they were checked over by a php expert) and we both came to the same conclusion .. that there is some other fault .. so have resorted to a fresh install in a subdomain. Now I have this message:

PHP session.use_trans_sid = ON Click here for more info

I have the htaccess file on the server on the same level as httpdocs and this was working fine in that position in the old install. Now it is asking for the above and yet it is there. I did a file permissions on the htaccess and it has only read applied to it ... would this be the problem?

Thanks once again!:clap:

wotnow:

Unfortunately I could not get the configs to work (they were checked over by a php expert) and we both came to the same conclusion .. that there is some other fault ..

There was no other fault, and I for one could be quite offended that you are suggesting that a 'php expert' with obviously little or no experience with zen-cart has given you better advice than we have.

wotnow:

so have resorted to a fresh install in a subdomain. Now I have this message:

PHP session.use_trans_sid = ON Click here for more info

I have the htaccess file on the server on the same level as httpdocs and this was working fine in that position in the old install. Now it is asking for the above and yet it is there. I did a file permissions on the htaccess and it has only read applied to it ... would this be the problem?

Thanks once again!:clap:

On second thoughts, I've decided that I will be offended. I would estimate that myself and the other folks here have wasted several hours of our time trying to not only solve your problem, but also help you understand the requirements, only to have you ignore everything we've told you and taken the advice of an 'outside' party instead ... and now you are back here with a totally different problem and you expect us to waste even more time?

I suggest you take this problem up with your unnamed 'php expert':lamo:

Rod

My apologies .. I had no intention of implying that you helpful people of the forums were not experts yourselves. I simply meant that after trying every combination and suggestions for over a week combined with my confusion my site was still not working. Today i discovered that my ftp client filezilla did not copy across the admin folder in the admin folder.
I was doing a fresh install today and it did the same thing with the backups folder. I did thankyou for your time and did say i appreciated it .. and i meant it ..

wotnow:

Hi i am in technological hell, I followed the instructions in the manual regarding renaming the admin folder for security reasons and voila no more site. I am fortunate in having an amazing hosting company who has a php guru and he changed the folder back to admin and reset the configuration files which were completely blank of all the information i had given. Now we have the front end happening but the back end admin is giving up "You are seeing this page". My hosting company thinks that there may be some missing files in the admin/includes folder but he is not sure. Why would the manual suggest such a thing .. as it seems now I will to start again. Maybe i am missing something? Site is https://www.broomebeads.com.au Thanks for any help

Wotnow, I can see a lot has happened since your original query, but I can also see your site is not running yet. I'm happy to try and help.

Your original post above says that you were doing the admin renaming. From your website as it currently stands, I see that you do not have an admin folder - which you have presumably renamed (or maybe your ftp program didn't upload it properly). However, I notice that you have not yet deleted the zc_install folder (which you need to do as soon as you've got your site installed).

I'm wondering if you are possibly trying to rename your admin folder before you run the zencart install? (Note that the admin renaming instructions are intended to be followed after you have installed zencart.)

Let me know if I'm way off here?

Hi Celtic thank you for your response. At the moment I am uploading a fresh install and copying across a free zen cart template called flowers. So havent finished the install yet. Yes I was aware that the renaming of the admin folder had to take place after the install and hopefully I'll have more of a success with this one .. than the last, lol.

Wotnow, lol, just checked again and it looks like I caught you mid upload.

Anyway, as for your PHP session.use_trans_sid = ON warning, I'd probably change the setting in the php.ini file (to OFF) rather than choosing the .htaccess route.

You'd need to edit your php.ini file at this location: /usr/libexec/php5-cgi/etc/php.ini

Other than that, good luck with the new install. Once you've installed it (if it all goes well) make sure you keep a note of the paths in your two configure.php files :-)