Best approach to custom template?

Hello,

I am creating a shop for a client, and I am looking for any pointers as to the most efficient way of templating zen-cart for a specific design.

Firstly, I should say that I am very experienced in html, css, php.

I have a template (below) which has already been sliced and created as html/css. What I am looking for is a pointer to the best approach to adding this as a template. Looking through the template files, there are a lot of IFs to account for every admin-set option (as I'd expect), but as I've already built this template in html, it would seemingly take a long time to divide it up into tiny components around all of the IFs.

Here are some screenshots of the sections. As you will see, the header / footer and side bars should remain the same throughout the site. The three pages I have here are the frontpage, a 'content page' (non-shop based content) and a product listing page.

I suppose what I may be looking for is the best way to access specific class functions to, for instance, return an array of categories and sub categories, so that I can write a little function to build my menu as I need it.

I hope I've explained myself well enough (I seriously need some sleep). If you need any more information, I'd be happy to provide it.

Many thanks in advance!
Mase

That isn't the way Zen Cart works- You need to put your parts and pieces into the Zen Cart Template Overrides system.

OK, fair enough. I've been playing about with the overrides, and I'm making good progress. Thanks :)

To create a very basic custom template (you can build from there), you need:
includes/languages/YOUR_TEMPLATE/english.php
includes/languages/english/YOUR_TEMPLATE/index.php
includes/languages/english/YOUR_TEMPLATE/header.php (to change the logo)
includes/templates/YOUR_TEMPLATE/template_info.php
includes/templates/YOUR_TEMPLATE/common/tpl_header.php
includes/templates/YOUR_TEMPLATE/images/logo.gif
includes/templates/YOUR_TEMPLATE/css/stylesheet.css

Any where you see a /classic/ folder, you can create a folder for your custom template. You can copy the files I suggested from either the /classic/ or /template_default/ folders.