Complete re-hash of layout

Hi all,

I've recently installed ZenCart on my hosting, all running fine and dandy but my single biggest problem so far is the template style construction of the shop.

I used to work as a web designer and now work as a freelance photographer in my spare time and I'm very picky about the whole look of the shop.

Ideally I want to reduce the number of features that zencart offers and to have a very minimalistic looking shopfront.

So my question is... are there any sites out there than can give me a decent breakdown of how to rip the templates apart and work in only the parts I want? an overall guide would be good... or should I just be looking for PHP guides so I know which bits I'm breaking? :)

What I want to do.... in a perfect world, is to be able to produce my own pages using html and css and simply take the PHP elements I want to keep in the shop from the zencart templates and shoehorn them in... is this at all possible with zencart or should I be looking elsewhere?

for example, I create index.html - a spangly looking design.. I then decide I want to include PHP elements from zencart into that page, I rename it index.php, pop it in the root dir of the website and add in the chunk of code that displays the shopping cart... do-able? I guess a lot of the functionality of the admin tool would be lost but that's honestly not a problem, all I want in a shopping cart is the ability to manage a database of products, some cart / checkout bits and administer discounts and coupons..

Any help is much appreciated :)

First you need to change your thinking a bit. Zen Cart can be anything you want it to be and you probably don't have to rip, shread or tear anything apart. Start with the Admin - go turn off all unwanted features and then begin with a blank CSS file.