Please help a newbie to Zen Cart

Hi to all,

I installed ZC into my cpanel, but now, I can't figure out how to open the template into Dreamweaver or Front Page in order to edit.
The cart installed in my roots folder.:dontgetit

ZC uses various files in order to create the web page. If you use the link at the top of this page for Tutorials, you can research futher on creating / editting Templates.

Thank you for your fast reply.
I've been working on this most of the day, and have yet to find out how to open the index page in DW or FP. My host is BlueVoda, and I just installed the program from their cpanel. I've read and watched the movies and tutorials on this site,, and BV, but no answer to my question.
Would it work to uninstall ZC and reinstall into my hard drive instead of into cpanel?

From reading the Tutorials you would have seen that the ZC Index page shown on your Web site is actually made up of various files. Using DW or FP is not a good idea. A plain Text Editor might be better.

You cannot open just one file to edit. And since the files to edit are just text files, make sure to not save them as *.html or anything other than the format they are in.

Believe me, I have read and watched until I'm dizzy..lol
Guess this cart will not be what I need. I want to be able to open the store into an html editor and edit it from there.
Hard to tell what you have changed just by typing code. I like the WYSIWUG.

Thanks for your help

You won't be editing html files. You'll be editing php files. If you want to see some of what your changes will look like you can always get the Firefox browser with the webdeveloper add-on which allows you to change the css and see the effect immediately (the css files have to be saved locally and then uploaded to the site for them to take effect for everyone to see).

I doubt any cart uses straight html.

You should also have the Zen Cart distribution located on your PC that way you can edit the files locally and then upload to your server.

Thank you Mary Ellen and Clyde,
Mary Ellen, I'm not familiar with css, but will give it a try. I'll install FireFox tonight. Not sure how I can save the css locally, though. Everything installed in my root folder on my website.

Clyde, not sure about the ZC distribution. I installed it from my cpanel and it installed into my root folder.

Sure appreciate your help. Glad I'm not in a race to get my store up and running any time soon...lol

Glenna
Oklahoma

Glenna, you can always come to the forum for help. :smile:

css (Cascading Style Sheets) controls stuff like fonts and color (lots of other things, too). I found W3Schools helpful for css questions. I still look stuff up there. :smile:

In addition to FireFox, look into getting yourself a good text editor like Notepad+ or Crimson Editor and an FTP client like FileZilla or SmartFTP. All are free downloads from the internet.

I second Clyde's suggestion. You can get a copy of Zen Cart and unzip it locally by following the link from the downloads section at the top of the page.

I do all my editing locally and then FTP the changes to the site which creates an "instant backup" of the site.

Now, I'm feeling a little more encouraged. Was about at the point to give it all up and sell on EBay...lol
But, I'm a stubborn Okie! Will be busy trying the things you suggested.

Sounds like I need to uninstall Zen Cart and reinstall from the site. When I installed it from cpanel, it was installed from fantasico. It really messed things up for me because I'm used to working from my hard drive and upload to a website. This is the first business site I have done. The first one was a simple genealogy site.

Hi Glenna,

I'm very 'new' also, and, although they don't need my approval (obviously), I just wanted to tell you that everything that was suggested, I use, and it works out great. I'm not sure if they mentioned XAMPP to install with locally, but it's a free download, installs and works perfectly (the first time), and it's great having a local, fast (almost instantaneous) ZC to work with while you're getting started, and even after. Get the Notepad++ editor (free) and Filezilla (free), and you're in business.

My main reason for posting however was to mention that there's also a manual available, in case you haven't ran across it yet. I'm sure you can find everything here in the forums, and then some, but it's good to have a hard copy reference within reach too. I might have not bought it since there's so much information here, but part of the revenue goes to the developer/support types that make Zen Cart the best there is....at least as far as I'm concerned. I'm not completely set up, but I'm getting there...with almost no problems, just some reading. Oh, and the manual walks you through installing locally using XAMPP also. It covers all the basics very well.

Good Luck,

Jeff

I don't run Zen Cart locally myself. I know lots of people do and it works well for them. I do all my editing locally and FTP the changes to the sites.

i also need help
where are these files includes/languages/english/index.php
located so i can put my own verbage in also my own logo
i am so lost
help!!!!:(

chloe:

i also need help
where are these files includes/languages/english/index.php
located so i can put my own verbage in also my own logo
i am so lost
help!!!!:(

Download a copy of Zen Cart and unzip it on your local drive. This will allow you to see the folder/file structure. As it says, the file is in includes/languages/english. Please use the override system and make a copy of any files you want to change into your own folder. It'll save you lots of heartache later.

This list is a bit outdated, but it may be helpful to you when building your own template:

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/meta_tags.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/common/tpl_footer.php
• includes/templates/YOUR_TEMPLATE/images/logo.gif
• includes/templates/YOUR_TEMPLATE/css/stylesheet.css

Anywhere you see a /classic/ folder, you can create a folder for your custom template. You can copy the necessary files from either the /classic/ folder, the /template_default/ folder or the parent folder.

Edit includes/templates/YOUR_TEMPLATE/template_info.php to give your template identifying information so you'll recognize it in the admin under tools->template selection.

There are also free templates available for Zen Cart. You can see them at http://(sorry, site offline)/.

Thanks a million, Jeff! I appreciate the comments and suggestions you made. I'll download the XAMPP today. I spent last night downloading the freebies that Mary Ellen suggested. I love the w3schools. I know I'll learn a lot from it.
Everyone has been so helpful.

Glenna