testing out zencart

Out of the three shopping cart systems, ZenCart was probably the system that took the longest to install. After downloading the cart and uploading it there was still more work that needed to be done. You have to change the permissions on several files which is a royal pain in the derriere.

I ran into a problem when ZenCart wanted to add the forum, even though I checked the box that said no. However, a simple Google search and problem solved.

This is what ZenCart looks like after the installation. Real pretty right? Now the fun part, getting this to look just like my current site LaLa Baby Boutique. It was built in a completely different system by an outside developer, I designed but hired a developer to build it because I didn’t have the time. It’s not a complicated design so it shouldn’t be that difficult.

The first thing I need to do is create the template.

I found help quickly at (http://tutorials.zen-cart.com/index.php?article=142) they have a great tutorial to get you started. This is what I did.

I went into my FTP client (Filezilla is my favorite) and created a new folder in includes/templates/. Name it whatever you want for this example I will name it /bizzie.

Create an empty folder in /bizzie and call it /images. So you should have a path of includes/templates/bizzie/images/.

Next copy the includes/templates/template_default/css directory and place it in your new /bizzie folder.
In addition you can create the following empty folders inside your /bizzie folder.

/common<br>
/sideboxes<br>
/templates<br>

Then you copy the file called includes/templates/template_default/template_info.php and put it into you /bizzie folder. Open the file and change the information inside.

Now you can upload your /bizzie folder to your server.

Log in to Zencart and go into your admin panel (tools > template selection). Click the edit button, then choose “bizzie” from the dropdown menu and click the Update button. Now, navigate to (tools > layout boxes controller) and at the bottom of the page press the Reset button.

Now you have a template ready to customize and here is what it looks like.

Okay I know what you’re thinking, this is uglier than the template I started with. Well that is actually for good reason. The “ugliness” is to help you with creating your styles. If everything were say blue you have a hard distinguish what belongs to what. So here we are, now it’s time to get started with the design. So let me get started on that, and I’ll keep you posted on the progress.