How to make ZC store page like my main website page?

This has probably been asked countless times before, but I can't find a thread, so apologies.

I'm trying to get my Zen Cart store page to "embed" in my website within a defined page tab... where my website headers and footers stay there, and the store just appears as content within that.

All I've been able to do is link to the store as an external URL, and I don't want to do that... I lose all the familiarity of my main website.

Any help and clues are greatly appreciated.

Zen Cart isn't designed to be stuffed inside something else.
You can easily skin a template within Zen Cart to match the other sections of your site. That's a far smarter and more reliable, not to mention flexible, way of doing it.

A very interesting approach. "Easy" may not apply that much to me, but I'll give it a shot. Could you point me to an example of skinning a template with just the top and bottom, and then put the rest of the ZC in between? Thanks!

If you post a URL to your main site, we might be able to offere specific advice, but the idea is to recreate the look of the main site in Zencart (installed in a subdirectory) using images and CSS so that the visual transition between the two is seamless. How difficult that would be depends on the styling of the main site.

There's also this:

http://www.zen-cart.com/index.php?main_page=product_contrib_info&products_id=990

I haven't used it, don't know if it works with Zencart version 1.5.0, and I understand it's tricky to use, though I have seen it done.

If we can see your site, we may suggest that you just use Zencart as the whole site.

Like many people who have worked with old-fashioned flat HTML sites, getting your head round systems designed for the 21st century can be tough. MOST of us - me included - have been there...

The first thing you need to do is abandon ideas of "blending" your old site's structure, with your new, Zencart eComm site.

You old site needs to be binned completely... yes... abandoned. Make a backup of it (you may need the content), but give up on any idea of retaining "headers" and "footers", etc...

Everything should be brought into the Zencart framework. If you have a blog - or other external program - then consider a hyperlink to it in an EZ-pages menu area. You information pages can also be constructed using EZ-Pages, and/or the existing "defined pages".

Sorry I didn't include the URL. It is: http://www.rich-e-split.com/ and I'm trying to get Zen Cart to operate within the tab called Our Store. I'm reluctant to "can" the whole website in order to rebuild the works as a "by-product" of Zen Cart. The whole thing is there for the benefit of our customers - the cart is just a tool to buy one. Yeah I know - supposedly it's all about sales. Not completely.

I'll follow up on your suggestions, and they are greatly appreciated!

To start out, your site could very easily be constructed in Zencart as schoolboy suggested. All you have is a few pages of information that could easily be done with EZ pages. Someone with a little experience with Zencart could do the change in a few hours, so it wouldn't take you much longer to do the same.

It also be easy to make your new Zencart site look just like what you have now, but I wouldn't. The design of your site is pretty dated, and is due for an update anyway.

You have Zencart installed, so why not take a stab at what schoolboy and I suggested ?

p.s. Your link to your Zencart installation has an extra space at the end, so it doesn't work.

Yeah I'll take your suggestions and TRY to rebuild the entire website under the framework of Zen Cart. Of course I want to save the current ZC as-is (because I know I'll screw it up). Nothing on the Admin site really jumped out at me on how to copy and rename an existing template for development. And, can you work with one template in beta and keep another live?

Thanks.

You can have as many templates as you want, selecting the one you want to display in Admin - Tools - Template Selection.

https://www.zen-cart.com/tutorials/index.php?article=142

And you should make frequent backups of your files and database while working on a new template, so you can easily go back to something good if you mess up. Look in the tutorials for info on backups.