How long did it take you to learn Zen Cart

Just wondering how long did you take you to learn the basics and to get a site up and running.
The company that I work for gave me two weeks (10 Working days) which I thought I had 14 days to get a site up and running. Just wanted to know if this is possible or not. I really only have 5 days now. It took a half day to load zen cart because it crashed a couple to time when I up load the files.

thanks
nomad
PS need this info so I can show my upper manger on how long it took for the adverage person took to learn Zen...

When you say it "up and running" do you include:

1. new template
2. new mods
   ?

I need everything up and running. Template, db, store front, customer info.

nomad

Starting from scratch - including planning, implementation, and TESTING. Minimum 90 days.

Most mods won't take too much time since it's quite straight to the point (be careful of the seo mods tho).

Template will take you a while for several reasons:

1. ZC is a fork from OSC, and in the mean time it still inherits many things from OSC, which means the code can be hard to modify sometimes.
2. Some functions are declared twice, and they actually take different parameters sometimes, beware.
3. The 'all listing', 'special', 'category', ....listing sections have their own templates, so you have to edit each one of them.

In the end, it all depends on your experience with php and html/css. The good thing is that you can always ask for support here and someone will be willing to help.

nomadrw:

Just wondering how long did you take you to learn the basics and to get a site up and running.
The company that I work for gave me two weeks (10 Working days) which I thought I had 14 days to get a site up and running. Just wanted to know if this is possible or not. I really only have 5 days now. It took a half day to load zen cart because it crashed a couple to time when I up load the files.
thanks
nomad
PS need this info so I can show my upper manger on how long it took for the adverage person took to learn Zen...
It really does depend on how familiar you are with HTML/PHP/ - and for the look of - and layout of the store - the CSS - and also Graphics editing skills.
If you are coming to this with extensive knowledge - even then you will likely take a LOT longer than 2 weeks to even find your way around, learn where all the options / switches are etc - let alone have it stocked - and have all the necessary shipping, Ts & Cs, Privacy and other stuff in place.
If you want the store to look a particular way - with your own header, logo etc - your CSS skills will need to be good - you will likely need to edit / resize any images you need to use in the store, - and create different sized images for different purposes - such as popups etc...
If you have an extensive inventory to load - then it is likely to take a fair amount of time just on that - setting up Attributes & options for a lot of products will take a fair amount of time....
Depends on your current skill level - but 2 weeks - I would suggest that 2 months might be nearer the mark - even with fairly good HTML/CSS knowledge...
Bear in mind that this is an open source program - what you save in not paying up front for a commercial cart - you will pay for in time spent in learning how the cart works...
The advantage of going this route though - is that at least you will know how your cart works by the time you have it to your liking

If it's just the basics and you have the manual (this is extremely important!) I would say a week at least.

This does not include populating the database which, if done manually, is another issue altogether.

Agree with Kim.. minimum of 90 days..

time frame

Install,
configure
template
add products
calculate shipping
acquire and add payment
test test test test test

90 days or so

I have to agree with all of the above and at least 90 days to get a feel for it. I come from OSC background and there is more to Zen than meets the eye even for someone that has a little php knowledge. I'm finding Zen to be easier to manage than OSC and I love the features you get with just a stock our of the box Zen. Really makes life easier when adjusting things.

Hmm, my very first experience with Zen cart and developing a template and a working store...

I must have been lucky. Having never heard of Zen cart before, selecting a shopping cart from reviews, and stuff.

Within 7 days I had a template in Zen Cart. A few days later I populated it with a few hundred products. A few days for the owner to look at and approve. All the while from the very start I was hounding the bank for a payment gateway. That'll take a couple of weeks at least for the paperwork.

This time frame was based on about 3 hours a day.

Serious help came from the getting started tutorials, searching the forum.

So two weeks for me.

Now this is not always true. I just spent 2 months making a catalog for a client in Zen cart, and no matter what I did, they were not happy. I was so frustrated by their requests! I ended up opening an html editor and wrote my own code...Grrrr....and a credit card function that saves half to a database, half mailed. Took me 30 days.

So, umm, for picky customers...about 90 days. :cool:

I think you are correct there.
Given that you already know about PHP, html, CSS, and that this is your full time job so you can work 8 hours/ day on it, I don't think it take more than 2 weeks to master ZenCart. It's not that hard at all.