What's a logical sequence for building a store?

When I purchased my hosting service and installed zen cart I didn't know that the first thing I should have done was install a template, and I began building a site with the default zen cart template. It was only after I had built categories and created some products that I learned a template should have been the very first thing I should have installed.

As a result, I had to begin anew, so I deleted everything I had made, then struggled for a while as I learned how to install a template (sliding_home_images). That took the wind out of my sails and I stopped working on the site. A couple months have now passed and I feel ready to pick up where I've left off. But before I do that I want to make sure I'm building the site in a logically progressive order. With this in mind, I'm wondering how people here have proceeded to build their sites, and what I should keep in mind when building mine. Suggestions???...

Templates only control the look of your site. Why did you delete the products?

Nothing wrong with starting with products first. That way you can actually start selling immediately.
You can always refine the look of your store by adjusting template components as you go along. In fact, the template can change completely without affecting the products in any way.

There are lots of "logical sequences". The best one is the one that works for your needs.
If your goal is to allow people to start buying right away and they don't care whether your site is yellow or if it's pink, then start with products.

If your customers are way more choosey and would refuse to buy from you if your site wasn't blue, then perhaps starting with the template is more important for your unique demographic.

More important than the template is establishing your payment methods and shipping strategies, as those affect the ability to purchase and ship products, your bottom line.

You can refine other things as you go along.

For the novice it may be best to install ZC with demo products included, this way you can learn how the different features work.

Familiarize yourself with the admin, lots of things to explore and to learn.

I am assuming you have installed ZC on a live webserver.

If so, until you are ready to show the world, set the site to Down For Maintenance (done in Admin > Configuration) whist you are installing a template, adding products and arranging your sideboxes.
Keep this simple for starters, you can always add plugins and change things around at a later stage.

Once you have your own products up you may want to disable or delete the demo categories.

As Dr Byte said, you need to be clear what shipping methods you want to offer and how you are getting paid. Put a lot of thought into this and install / activate these modules.

To test them you will need to take the site off maintenance, at least temporarily, or you won't be able to do your testing.

Once you are happy that your shipping and payment mods are working as they should you could go live.

But, as previously said, there really is no rigid sequence in setting up your store.

Personally, I never install and configure a new site on a live webserver - I always do that on my local development box before I upload the lot to a live server.

I am so entirely new to this that I was unaware that the products I built would carry over to a new template, and that's why I deleted them.

I already have a website, but it's a very unprofessional looking site hosted by Homestead, which is basically a copy-and-paste system. I've been flamed on some message boards for the low quality of the site, and I'm sure I'm losing conversions/sales because of this.

I do have zc installed on a live server, but the site isn't live yet.

Some good reading material before you take the plunge:

Tutorials/FAQs

Customizing the Look of Your Shop

Setting Up Categories, Products, Attributes

Using the Admin to configure your Zen Cart

Free Template Packages

Also look at the 'Sticky' threads in the various forums - plenty of good info there

Cheers / Frank

Thanks for the great links Frank, I'll definitely be looking through them. I got the idea there was some sort of logical build sequence from this site, because the first (?) sticky in the template section mentioned the #2 thing to do was install a template (installing zc was #1.)

Something else I wasn't aware of is that I didn't need to install zc on a live server to develop it...I have a copy of the zc manual, which spoke briefly about building older versions on a personal computer, but gave the impression that the newer versions are almost always built on a live webserver, so that gave me the impression I had to build on a live server.