Is Zen what I need?

Believe it or not, I was thinking about this overnight :blink: (I need better hobbies :laugh:). Anyway, I realized that Zen Cart - along with the other ecommerce solutions available - has a distinct advantage: it frees you from the limitations of your payment gateway.

Your gateway doesn't allow discounts or coupons? Who cares! Your site will compute the totals correctly and pass that information along to the gateway.

You want to add another payment option? No problem! Just get it set up (which may or may not be a complicated issue) and the same applies as above. The calculations are done on your site and the payment method used isn't an issue.

I didn't take a peek at your site yet, but you might consider looking into the free Zen Cart templates available to give you a starting point if you want to try to tackle it yourself. Check out http://(sorry, site offline)/ to see them "in action".

gjh42:

<META NAME="Generator" CONTENT="NetObjects Fusion 8 for Windows">

It would be a lot easier to read if the inline styling was just removed to the embedded stylesheet. Actually, except for the redundant layers, it seems pretty well laid out as a static page (I think... haven't tried to decipher it all). Just think of a Template Monster template, and this looks like a breath of fresh air ;)

Pardon? :blink:

Excuse me, I was mostly talking to the others who are familiar with ZC, critiquing the way NetObjects Fusion 8 apparently builds pages.
It's nothing that would be relevant to making your template in Zen Cart, as the base you would apply styling to is completely different.
Carry on!

Thank goodness for that! I thought I'd lost the plot before I'd begun!
Nice site, by the way, Glenn.
We've just moved from Cornwall, having lived there forever - your pieces make me think of home!

Thanks! That's good to hear from a "native"!

gingerwilliam:

Funky stuff? I take it that's not a good thing to have "going on in the city" ?!?
And just what is this "backend" that everybody keeps talking about? (Can't you just TELL I don't do this for a living!! :no:) Do I have a backend? If I don't - do I need one? If I have - is it funky?
I'm SOOOOOooooooooooo gonna love this forum.
Seriously - thanks again for all your advice People.
Now to rewrite my site................where did I put that nuke? :shocking:

The "backend" is not publicly available and with Web sites usually means the Admin section and/or database. The "frontend" of course, is what people see when they visit a site.

In this case, "funky" would mean, "something not quite right". A lot of things going on with your coding that doesn't need to be going on, including a lot of errors. Your current coding would also need changing as the language used is not the same as what Zen Cart uses. Similar to the difference between North American English and British English. Both use a lot of common words but some mean quite different things and some are spelled or pronounced differently.

Basically, the code used in your Web pages would need to be rewritten. Taking the graphics and styling currently used, everything else would need to be changed to work within Zen Cart. This would also bring up to date and get rid of the errors. Unfortunately, this would add to the cost of switching to Zen Cart or probably most any other eCommerce script.