Building a site structure around ZC?

Hi. I have a pretty specific stucture in mind for my website and i'm not quite sure how to approach it with zencart. Zen will be a major part of the site but in terms of heirachy it will be one section of about 5. My plan is this: 'HOME | STORE | ABOUT US | COMPANY | CONTACT' which is straightforward enough, everything underneath 'STORE' will be my zen cart.

I hoped I could use the defined pages or maybe ezpages for these extra sections, but I've come to realise that by default these all sit 'below' the store in terms of heirachy (when represented in the breadcrumb trail and the URL) and I really need them all to be 'top level' alongside the store.

My second option was to build these pages outside of zen cart and manually include some elements from the cart by borrowing some php, specifially the header and main navigation, footer, stylesheet etc, but I've since read that can cause login/cart problems when navigating in and out of the cart.

Assuming this is all true, my question is... what can I do?! I'm not expecting step by step instructions but I imagine this to be a pretty common structure/requirement and I'm hoping someone can point me in the right direction. What should be 'inside' or outside the zencart directory... or how could zens included features could be tweaked towards what I need?

Hopefully this made some sense, thanks in advance!

CC

There is no reason that the Zen Cart structure needs to be below the top/domain root. Make all of your pages with define pages or ez-pages, including define_main_page.php as the home that shows all of the other sections. If you want your "store" link to open to a listing of all the top categories, make the link destination like
href="index.php?main_page=index&cPath=0"

which will point to the theoretical "Top" and show its subcats (your actual top cats).

Usually, Home is just a link to the homepage, and About Us and Company are single pages or possibly linked groups of pages (either of which is easily handled by ez-pages); Contact is a single page form that already exists in ZC.

You can make a menu that only shows on the homepage if you want, but all of these sections should really be accessible from (almost) anywhere on the site. You can turn on/off certain page elements like sideboxes or sidebars for specific parts of your site, using the directions in tpl_main_page.php and elsewhere.

Hi, thanks for the feedback! Sorry I don't think I explained my problem very well. For example, I'm aware that there is a Contact Us page generated by the cart, in theory it's great and already does pretty much what I want my contact page to do. The issue is that the contact page is part of the store, I need the contact page to be it's own page and level with the store in terms of heirachy. I imagine users visiting the contact page to contact the company regarding the store but also about the company as a whole, therefore I think it should be part of the site as a whole not part of the cart, eg: NOT store > contact us. I simply want the store to be one section of many, not the 'top level' of the website. I absolutely DON'T want a menu that shows only on the homepage, I want all the sections to be accessible from every page with all the main links of the site ('HOME | STORE | ABOUT US | COMPANY | CONTACT') available from the zen header, which I hope to include on every page of my site whether it's part of zen or not. Hopefully this clears up what I'm looking to do?

JMHO - I think your assumptions are incorrect, unless you are planning a lot more than what you are indicating, you don't have a standalone site and I believe the search engines will be happier if you have real information closer to the root.

(BTW - you can create all of your other pages in Zen Cart using Defined Page or EZ Pages)

Hi Kim, thanks for your input. What assumptions are incorrect, I didn't think i'd made any?! And what do you mean by standalone site? I know I CAN create my pages using defined or EZ pages, I just don't want to because I don't want them to be part of the store. I want zen cart to be a PART of my website, not the entire website.

Just because Zen Cart creates the structure for all of the other pages, does not mean that that they are under the store. The "store" proper is essentially the category/product and shoppingcart/checkout pages. Those are inherently at the same level as define pages or ez-pages. All of them can be equally and directly accessed from a main menu.

So, your assumption that you need to be outside ZC to have the other pages level with the store is incorrect.

eg: NOT store > contact us.If you have Zen Cart installed in the root of your domain, there will be no /store/ or store > contact us, merely a contact_us page in the main site. (Just as there will be an index page for categories in the main site.)

Ah, thanks GKH, I think I can maybe see where my assumption is now... but if create an EZpage, in the breadcrumb trail it appers as 'Store > my EZ page' - clearly under the store. How do I avoid this?

Apparently you have installed Zen Cart in a subfolder named /store/, not in the web root. You should move the installation to the root, or reinstall it there, whichever will be easiest. Or else you may have renamed the "Home" link to "Store", in which case, just undo that.
The standard breadcrumb trail reads like Home :: My EZ-Page.

Ah my apologies, I have in fact renamed my home link to be called 'store', good guess! I completely forgot I did that, I thought it was the first step in getting the site structured as I imagined. If I was to turn it back to be called home I still don't see it working quite how I'd like, the 'home' page would be at the top with everything underneath it (Home > About Us, Home > contact us) whereas I really wanted each section to be level. I could probably live with this but would i not lose the 'store' section altogether? I would not have 'Home > Store' to match everything else (Home > About Us, Home > contact us), I would have 'Home > Category name' Unless i've missed a trick somewhere.

To get everything that's part of the store to be labelled under 'Store' I thought the easiest solution would be to name the root of the store 'Store'!

Thanks again, I really appreciate you bearing with me!

If you really want to add another step to the categories, you could make a single top category named Store, with all of your real categories under it. I just don't see the benefit to your customers of segregating the shopping functions under a separate label which has to be clicked through to get to the products.
I suppose if you don't want the individual categories to be directly accessible from the homepage, a top cat named Store would do everything you want neatly.

Oh, and the Home link in the breadcrumbs doesn't mean that everything isn't level... all of them are under the homepage, and that is a logical necessity no matter how you organize the pages. You can hide the Home link in the breadcrumbs if you want to shorten the list.

By confusing things with my store/home mix up I think we're misunderstanding each other. I really don't think the structure I have in mind is so unusual or not user friendly... quite the opposite I hope!

Your suggestion of hiding the 'Home' link in the breadcrumbs and adding the extra category called 'Store' for all my real categories to go in would create the trail store>category>product which is great for navigating through the cats and products. But if I was to click on say 'Shipping/returns' the trail would be 'Shipping/returns' which implies that Shipping/returns is a main section of the site, which it's not. It's not in the main navigation, it's part of the store. Ideally i'd like it to read as 'Store>Shipping/Returns'.

Clicking on About Us should read as 'About Us'. Clicking on Home should read as 'Home'. Clicking on Store should read as 'Store' which should then display the zen index page. Clicking on something thats part of ZC should display as 'Store>Something'. I'm trying to mess around with ZC as little as possible as I think it works great as it is... which I why I wanted to rename 'Home' to 'Store'. In this way the whole cart works as I want it to and that section of my site is complete at mydomain.com/store. All I want to do is add my other pages (about us etc) around it (mydomain.com/aboutus) and my 'Home' (mydomain.com/index.html) All of which I think I would be able to do if I wasn't under the impression it would cause problems with the cart.

Your problem is going to be that if I come to your site, go to your "store" and start shopping and then decide to look at some other page... say "About Us" which is "outside" the store, when I go "back" to the store, my session may have timed out and emptied my cart which means I'd have to start all over again.

I really think you're making this far more complicated than it has to be.

Is it a major purpose of your site to sell things? If so, you should take your customers' ease of use into consideration. If they are looking at some external page and want to check their shopping cart contents, should they have to click on Store and then see the shopping cart link? Or should they be able to go directly to any major page? (Obviously the categories have to be navigated to get to products.)

If you don't care about making it as easy as possible for shoppers, then make your HTML pages however you like.

CheekyCockney,

IMO you are confusing the issue

ZenCart is a light CMS with a cart as part of it

The structure is for all pages is

/index.php?main_page=

And all cart pages are

/index.php?main_page=some cpath+product

So everything starts at the top or is initially on the same level

Just as if this were an html site

Interesting info on the session time out issue AFO, thanks for answering my question. I will read up on that...

The site I'm building is for somebody else and we had a discussion about the structure and sections before I started work.... they requested it to work in this way, just like many other websites do, and I completely agreed that it was the best structure for their site. Why assume I'm intent on making a bad website? As I stated in my original post I hope to include elements of Zen on all my pages... including the account/cart links. Of course I care about customer ease of use, that's why I'm here trying to iron out these potential issues. If it was JUST a shopping cart site, then fair enough, stick to the default ZC structure. But they have requested a link that says 'Store' with good reason and they want their store inside that link. I think that's a fair and reasonable request. Take threadless.com for example, you can visit the section named 'shop', fill the cart, read the blog, go back to the store, visit the community, go to your cart... all without the world ending. I'm honestly not trying to re-invent the wheel, I'm just making a website!

I (apparantly wrongly) assumed ZC would be flexible enough to tweak in that way, whether it be a simple option in the admin or extensive re-working of the PHP... I don't know, that's why I'm here. Honestly I thought it would be something in between. If it's impossible, then fair enough, just let me know! Otherwise all i'm looking for is some pointers in the right direction to how this could be achieved.

Zen Cart is CMS coupled with a shopping cart. There's really no reason it won't work for your client as is. Take a look at the sites in my sig. 2 of them are stores. One is Zen Cart as CMS (no shopping at the moment). Using Zen Cart for the entire site will make maintenance MUCH easier.

That site has their Cart in a folder - - /catalog
And also in a frame which is an antiquated tool
A frame will also break most all payment setups

If I understand the post right then he is trying to do something like http://www.manualsshop.info/testing.htm. Which you just have to view source and get the proper info from the code.

CheekyCockney:

I want zen cart to be a PART of my website, not the entire website.

Take threadless.com for example, you can visit the section named 'shop', fill the cart, read the blog, go back to the store, visit the community, go to your cart... all without the world ending.
The 'threadless' site has their store in a sub-dir. and each of the other sub-directories have different template / layouts. You could do that also but it is a lot of work and in some cases, would end up reinventing the wheel. The Contact Us page for example, could link to the built-in Zen Cart one. You can have multiple eMail addresses though, so I don't see a problem using the Zen Cart "Contact Us" page for the entire website. What I don't understand and as mentioned already, your hesitance to use Zen Cart for the entire website?

I would guess this is your first Zen Cart site and probably not aware of features that can be turned On / Off. Breadcrumbs can seen or not seen on certain pages. Pages that are informational might be better served using Document - General, as another option to Define Pages or EZ Pages. I hate EZ Pages myself and would never use them, but to each their own. :smile:

Also, regardless of whether Zen Cart "is" your website or just part of it, you will still having Session issues. By default, the Shopping Cart remembers what was put into it for 24 minutes, if not logged into their account or if nothing new is added. If they are logged in then there is no limit except for when the login Session expires. Maybe someone will be able to tell us how long that is?