Banner questions

I seem to be having problem after problem. The videos seem relatively easy but then they don't seem to work so easy when I do them. I turned off all the banners because they are all Zen stuff, but they didn't turn off. Is there more than clicking the green boxes on the banner. They turn red.

I also made a small gif file and copied it into the images where the other banners are. I did not make a new banner but just changed the path file name to the new one. It did not work either.

I am putting the gif image in /public_html/images/banners/file.gif. Is that the correct place? It seems the files show up in multiple directories. ??

No idea what videos you're talking about.

You tube. Only place I know to find some.

I am putting the gif image in /public_html/images/banners/file.gif. Is that the correct place? It seems the files show up in multiple directories. ??

wangel:

I turned off all the banners because they are all Zen stuff, but they didn't turn off. Is there more than clicking the green boxes on the banner. They turn red.Yes, when that button turns red, the banner is disabled, and will not show on the storefront anymore.

wangel:

I also made a small gif file and copied it into the images where the other banners are. I did not make a new banner but just changed the path file name to the new one. It did not work either.
Images for banners go into the /images/banners/ folder. And then in the Banner Manager you tell it the filename. But, even better, within Banner Manager, you can upload the image directly, and it'll put it in the right place. (This assumes you've got filesystem permissions set to allow uploads to work, as explained during installation.)

wangel:

I am putting the gif image in /public_html/images/banners/file.gif. Is that the correct place? It seems the files show up in multiple directories. ??

wangel:

I am putting the gif image in /public_html/images/banners/file.gif. Is that the correct place? It seems the files show up in multiple directories. ??

No idea what you mean by "multiple directories".

They show under the www folder and public_html.

It seems I can turn off the banners as they change to a red box, but the banner is still there. How do I see if the permissions are set to allow? I didn't o the setup. Would I be able to change the box to red if I didn't have them??

wangel:

It seems I can turn off the banners as they change to a red box, but the banner is still there.Turning it off ("red") simply disables it. if you want to delete it, there's a Delete button in the sidebar to the right.

wangel:

How do I see if the permissions are set to allow? I didn't o the setup. Would I be able to change the box to red if I didn't have them??To test permissions on uploading banner images, simply use the Banner Manager screen, edit a banner, and click the "Choose File..." button, select your image, and click the button to save/update the banner settings. That'll trigger the upload, and attempt to save your image to the spot on the server which you selected on the banner settings (the default is the /images/banners/ folder).

The red/green button has no relationship to uploading banner images.

What comes up if you put your mouse over the image that you cannot get rid of and click right and pull up the View Image info?

Have you an URL that we can peek at the problem?

Dr. Byte, The file I want to upload can be on my computer. Correct? I uploaded the file with filezilla easily enough, but I'm not sure the exact place to put it as there are several folders with images subdirectories.

When I do the choose, it seems to work ok or at least it flashes at the top that it was a successful update or something. But, nothing changes. I'm wondering about the banner URL box. It still points to zencart. Should I be changing that too?

http://(mywebsite) dot com/includes/templates/classic/images/logo.gif

I could probably delete the file but I should be able to turn this off. These 3 things I mentioned on the main page are banners correct?

I tried to upload the image but it seemed to freeze and not complete.

wangel:

These 3 things I mentioned on the main page are banners correct?
No, they're not.

In Zen Cart, "banners" refer to advertisements placed at the top or bottom of your page, or in sideboxes. They're used to cross-promote either your own internal products or external products sold by others, such as things that might compliment the services you offer.

Your logo is dealt with in your template files, which are accessed only via FTP, not via your Admin. Similar with your "Sales message goes here" text, which is stored in your language files, also accessed via FTP.
There are articles on these topics located in the FAQs area: http://www.zen-cart.com/content.php/2-FAQs-and-Tutorials

I'm feel I'm getting better at this but I am still confused as to where to find and upload these files to as the directions start with includes/languages/English.index.php but this file path seems to be under several parent folders. It's under public_html, my admin folder, and probably under www too though I didn't check this one. I made the change to the one under public_html to change the Congratulations thing and it didn't work. BTW too the Congratulations string is listed twice in the code too so which one(s) are you supposed to change? Both? Neither worked for me.

Should I have deleted the original index file? The modified one is now in the CUSTOM folder as per directions. Perhaps that is why it didn't work. Agree?

Scenario:

• You have some text you want to change in the /includes/languages/english/index.php file.
• You are making changes to your site to make it look and feel the way you want it to, to suit your own needs.
• If you alter existing files directly, then you run the risk of mistakenly replacing those files if you use one of the dreaded "1-click install" or worse, the "1-click upgrade" features offered by many hosting companies ... those things blindly replace files without asking you about your customizations.
• If your hosting company doesn't offer that, or you will never use those, then maybe the following concept of "overrides" would be less meaningful to you.
• To preserve your customizations, a "best practice" is to create a custom template for storing those changes.
• A custom template starts with copying the /includes/templates/classic/ folder to a new name, like /includes/templates/CUSTOM/ ... or you could use "fred" instead of "CUSTOM" if you wish. But whatever you choose must be used consistently.
• So, once you've got an /includes/templates/CUSTOM/ folder and have copied the css and images folder from classic into that CUSTOM folder as well as the template_info.php file, then you'll be able to CHOOSE that template from your Admin->Tools->Template Select menu.
• ONLY AFTER YOU'VE DONE THAT will your language file changes work, since you must first enable your "CUSTOM" (or "fred" or "funnyEasterTheme", etc) template via that Template Select menu.
• So, NOW your changes that you saved to /includes/languages/english/CUSTOM/index.php will take effect and be visible on your site.

All this and much more about templates and customizing is discussed in lots of articles in the FAQs area.

wangel:

Should I have deleted the original index file? The modified one is now in the CUSTOM folder as per directions. Perhaps that is why it didn't work. Agree?

And, no. Never delete any of the original files that came with Zen Cart initially. They're all important to be kept as fallbacks in case you miss something in your customizations, among other important reasons.

Ok. I'll make a new template. Since I don't see templates under the other folders that seem to have most of the similar file names, includes, languages, images etc. I will assume the correct one to use for most things is the includes and it's sub-directories that is under the public_html folder. Correct?

Well looks like it mostly worked except it looks like some of the sidebox banner stuff came back on. Maybe other stuff.

If you've read the FAQ article about making your own template, it'll tell you that you need to turn on whichever sideboxes you want to use. It'll tell you about the reset button to turn them "all" on, and you can do that and then turn off the ones you don't want, or just start with them all off and turn on only the ones you want.

It'll also tell you that there are lots of examples right in the files that show you where you can put your own custom files. The short "hint" is that anywhere you see a "classic" folder, you can put your own "fred" (or whatever name you named your template) folder and put your custom versions of the files into there.

There's also an FAQ article that shows you a visual map of the file structure and highlights where those folders named "classic" are. But you can find them by browsing the files too.