Zen Cart Shopping Cart Tutorials for Install on Internet Business Website

From the admin control panel you can add products, change the layout of your site, and add informative text to your pages. To access the admin control panel, type www.yourdomain.com/admin into your browser and login using the user name and password you created during install. Now lets begin with the Zen Cart shopping tutorial for beginners.

Template Selection Tutorial
Before you begin making any changes to your site, you need to select the template you want to use. To access this information roll your mouse over “Tools” and select “Template Selection” from the dropdown menu. If you have not installed additional templates, you will only see the default template. Use Zen-Cart’s support forum to learn how to install additional templates. Zen-Cart has a few free templates that you can download and install on your site. To view those templates visit the “Free Zen-Cart Templates” link on WebPalPro. There are also many places that offer custom shopping templates for a small fee. For a list of those sites click the “Custom Zen-Cart Templates” tutorial link on WebPalPro. Either selecting a free template or purchasing a custom template can allow you to change the colors and layout of your site without editing the code. We have found that shopping templates are cost effective because they save you time and help you achieve the exact look and feel you are seeking. As an added bonus you do not need to know how to write html code to create the look you want!

Shipping and Payment Tutorial
You will also want to configure your payment methods and shipping methods. Both of these can be found under “modules” tutorial but first you should mouse over “configuration” and select “shipping/packaging” to enter your zip code. Modify the information on both the shipping and payment modules to match your accepted payment methods and shipping fees. If you are offering free shipping on all products, make sure both “freeshipper” and “freeoptions” have a green dot next to their names.

Sideboxes and Banners
Two other useful tools in the Zen-Cart tutorial admin are layout boxes and banners. Click “online catalog” to see how your site currently looks. Determine what sideboxes you want to keep and which ones you want to eliminate. Return to admin, mouse over “tools” and select “layout boxes controller.” Here you can turn off and on all the sideboxes, determine whether they appear on the left, right, or center, and change the order in which they appear. To turn a sidebox off or on, select the desired box, click edit, set the Left/Right Column Status to the desired setting. You will also see a Location option. Here you decide if you want it to appear in the Left or Right column. The single column setting makes the box appear in the center column. The banner boxes work in much the same way. Right now you will not need to use them as they will come into consideration later when we talk about additional revenue for your site. For now, you should visit “tools” and select “Banner Manager” and turn them all off by clicking the green dot next to each banner name.

Adding Categories and Products Tutorial
If you do not currently have any products to offer, visit the Finding Manufacturers section of this book to get more information on how to acquire contracts with manufacturers. Zen-Cart makes adding your products and grouping them into categories easy. Simply mouse over “Catalog” and select “Categories/Products.” Add your categories and products by clicking new category, naming the category, double click the category you created, click new product, enter the product information, and repeat the process for each category and product you want to add to your site. Make sure you double click the category you want to add the new product to before clicking new product.

Changing Colors and Logos Tutorial
There are many additional features available in the admin control panel. You can learn about them by “playing” with all the configurations (that’s how we learned how it all worked!) or by searching for your specific question on the support forum or tutorials found at www.zencart.com. Editing the logo, site name, meta-tags, and colors of your site is all done from your cPanel. Log into your cPanel by typing www. yourdomain.com/cPanel, click File Manager, and follow the instructions below for changing specific elements of your site. To follow a path you will double click each folder name between the “/” until you reach the final file that will end with “.xxx” For example the path includes/languages/english.php would be followed by:

1. Double click the includes folder
2. Double click the languages folder
3. Single click the english.php

To return to the main directory in order to follow a new path click the home icon and double click public_html or click public_html in the file manager box to the left of the file list. Now that you know how to navigate, let’s make some changes to your site!

Changing Logo and Site Name Tutorial

1. Follow path: includes/templates/classic/images (since this does not end with a specific file you will need to double click images as well)
2. Click upload
3. Click browse and locate your logo
4. Once upload completes, close the window
5. Return to public_html directory
6. Follow path: includes/languages/english/header.php
7. Click code editor (this will open a new window displaying the code on the header.php page)
8. Locate the section of text that looks like this:
   // added defines for header alt and text
   define('HEADER_ALT_TEXT', ‘Your Site Name’);
   define('HEADER_SALES_TEXT', 'Site Tagline');
   define('HEADER_LOGO_WIDTH', '192px');
   define('HEADER_LOGO_HEIGHT', '64px');
   define('HEADER_LOGO_IMAGE', ‘logo.gif’);
9. You will then change the three highlighted areas *Tip* make sure the single quotes are not deleted and use the name of the image you uploaded in place of ‘logo.gif’ You can use any image file for your logo just be sure to include the correct extension
10. Click save changes
11. Close the window

Changing Colors Tutorial

1. Follow path” includes/templates/classic/css/stylesheet.css
2. Click code editor
3. Make any desired changes (you may need to get more information about hex colors or editing a stylesheet from a web search)

Zen-Cart shopping tutorial makes it easy to change templates and colors in the future. It is completely acceptable to use the default template until you have everything else completed on your site. You can then return to the stylesheet and “play” with some of the configurations. This Zen Cart tutorial should help you to get your small business website up and running.