Change html in 1 file somewhere?

Hello,

I just installed zencart via fantastico. I've heard many good things about it so I choose for this cart. I already have a set format to my website which I simply want to put on the cart as well. I'll only use the cart on a little part of the website so I don't want to re-arrange my whole website.

I've been reading around, and apparantly you can easily changes texts, backgrounds, images etc. However, I just want to change the whole html of the website. Insert basically the html of my own layout which I have on the rest of the website.

Where would I be able to change a file which has all the html in it. Probably it are a couple files. That's fine. As long as I can change them somehow.

What I can also do is simply include some .php file into a part of the rest of my website (with a simple include in php), so I can easily keep the rest of my page.

Can anybody advise me on what I need to change to setup the html?

Thanks in advance!

Sorry, Zen Cart doesn't work the way you are thinking. The HTML for display is built dynamically by the PHP files and can't be dropped in as a simple package. It's the price to pay for the power and flexibility of the system.

The style information is all in one place (stylesheet.css), and you can set up a custom template and do a lot of work right there to make ZC match your site's look (more or less, depending on how your site is laid out.) Warning - do not use the Classic template for customizing a new shop. It is intended for upgrading from old versions of ZC. Work from template_default instead; look for info in FAQs, the wiki and searching this forum.
Good luck!

Ok thank you. I guess I have to start modifying the whole page then. But thats fine. Indeed a small price for a full shopping cart.

I just had one question left. How do I remove the little menu things on the side. For example the "categories" menu and the "Search" and "have you seen" menu's?

Where can I do this?

Thanks!

to remove the side boxes you would use the box layout tools in the admin.
admin-> tools

as for skinning it to look like your exsisting site thats not really hard, its a matter of placing your header image and details in the includes/templates/YOUR TEMPLATE/common/tpl_header
footer in the tpl_footer of the same folder.

If you remove the sideboxes for things like categories how will your visitors find your items.

Thanks for the fast reply and the good info!

I think I can get it to look somehow like the rest of my website. The idea behind my little shop is that I already have a website with visitors. I just want to try to sell something. Just to get some experience in it. For now I will just have 2 products, so setting up categories will not really be necessary.

Actually, now I was thinking of trimming the whole page down and then putting the index.php into an iframe into the rest of my page.

Is this possible?

iframes suck,
zen is designed to be run as a stand alone,
it works well in exsisting sites as is

Ehm, well. ok. Your opinion about iframes is clear.. :smile:

Is there any particular reason why iframes suck and why i shouldnt use them?

The thing is just that I have a particular layout to my website. And if a visitor would click my new "look whats in store" link, and they would all of a sudden see a different layout, they might not trust it and think that they would be in a different website or something...

However, I'll try to change things as close to my existing layout then as possible...

Any other tips?

you can easily copy your header into zencart without i-frames,
look at the site in my signature.
thats just an html header that I added in
so is the footer

Allright!

Is your whole website build with installing zencart and just modifying it? Then I believe that you can do anything with it! :thumbsup:

Although I am learning a lot now playing around with it, i still don't understand where can I include a html header then?

in the includes/templates/YOUR_TEMPLATE/common/tpl_header.php

you can put your html there

ALLRIGHT!!!

That was now excactly what I was searching for!!

Thanks so much!!! :thumbsup: