Zen Cart Reference Book – The Ultimate Reference for Customising Zen Cart

kerrin hardy — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 09:11:08 +0000

A powerful feature of Zen Cart is a robust template system that “abstracts” the look-and-feel from the code and logic behind Zen Cart. But what do you do if you don’t know if it’s a change in Admin, CSS or php file that you need? And then, just when you think you’ve done it you realise there’s more to it than meets the eye. For example, if the customer has a Gift Certificate balance, if the product has attributes set or if the customer selects to receive product notifications, suddenly your perfect pages may not look so great anymore.

The Zen Cart Reference Book is for you. Every Zen Cart page, sidebox and email message is listed together with the admin customisations available, the CSS entries that apply and the relevant template (php) files.

Admin Customisations
There are many settings available in Zen Cart Admin that will change the look and feel as well as the functionality of your store. These are easy to use and do not require any knowledge of html or php coding. You’ll be surprised at just how much you can do using only Admin settings.
CSS Customisations
CSS, Cascading Style Sheet, is a set of ‘rules’ used to describe the presentation (including elements such as the fonts, colours and layout) of a web page. In Zen Cart the list of style rules are saved in a number of .css files. However, there are many references to available style rules that do not exist in the .css and these are also explored.
Template Customisations
Zen Cart™ features a template override system that allows you to customise the look and functionality of your store without having to modify core files. This template override system also allows you to change your store’s look and functionality as required, for example on a seasonal basis or to promote a clearance sale or special product launch, by allowing you to create and have multiple templates available for your store.

The Zen Cart Reference Book helps you to easily and quickly locate the right information to make Zen Cart your e-commerce solution. And with hundreds of screenshots, you can quickly check the visual effect, in a variety of scenarios, of a customisation without having to set it up yourself.

The first chapter includes a quick guide in customising the home page of Zen Cart to get you going quickly.

1.   Home Links
2.   Header Search
3.   Logo
4.   Sales Message
5.   Breadcrumb Links
6.   Welcome Message
7.   Define Text
8.   Sideboxes
9.   Footer Links
10.   IP Address
11.   Copyright Statement
12.   Banner

The Zen Cart Reference Book has been developed as a constant desk companion for you as you are working with Zen Cart. The hundreds of screenshots of all the Zen Cart pages can assist you in visualising your own design and the checklist can ensure you work systematically in preparing Zen Cart for the launch of your online store.

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kerrinhardy.com » Zen Cart Reference Book

Zen Cart Reference Book – The Ultimate Reference for Customising Zen Cart

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