There are a number of nice design touches and high quality photographs show the products off perfectly. 

Home Page

Category Page

Product Page

Other Page

See other Zen Cart ‘Store in the Spotlight’ stores in the Zen Cart Gallery!

If you would like to suggest a Zen Cart store for inclusion in the Gallery, please email info@kerrinhardy.com or DM @zencartkerrin on Twitter.

To add or remove the Attribute Weight from the product info page:

1. Log in to your Zen Cart store Admin
2. From the Catalog menu, select Product Types.
3. Select the relevant product type, in most cases this will be Product – General, and click the Edit Layout button. 
   
4. Select the Show Attribute Weight setting. 
   
5. From the drop down menu, select either False (to remove) or True (to display) the Attribute Weight.  Click the Update button to save your setting. 
   

And there you have it.  You can see now that the Attribute Weight is no longer displayed on the product info page.

I’m really looking forward to the new version – it also boasts a new modern, responsive default template and guest checkout built-in!   You can read more about the development roadmap here:  http://www.zen-cart.com/showthread.php?199322-Roadmap-for-v1-5-and-beyond

In the meantime, check out these videos showing the new installer in action – both for a new install and a version upgrade.

New install of Zen Cart

Upgrade existing installation of Zen Cart

There is a lot of fun and action going on with strong use of colours, a scrolling display of their current designs as well as a slider for promotions such as ‘no minimum order’ and bulk discounts available.  This doesn’t take away from the ease of use however, as everything is where you expect it to be making the shopping experience smooth and straight forward.

Home Page

Category Page

Product Page

Other Page

See other Zen Cart ‘Store in the Spotlight’ stores in the Zen Cart Gallery!

If you would like to suggest a Zen Cart store for inclusion in the Gallery, please email info@kerrinhardy.com or DM @zencartkerrin on Twitter.

To add or remove the Product Reviews Count from the product info page:

1. Log in to your Zen Cart store Admin
2. From the Catalog menu, select Product Types.
3. Select the relevant product type, in most cases this will be Product – General, and click the Edit Layout button. 
   
4. Select the Proudct Reviews Count setting.  
   
5. From the drop down menu, select either False (to remove) or True (to display) the Product Reviews Count.  Click the Update button to save your setting. 
   

And there you have it.  You can see now that the count of Current Reviews is no longer displayed on the product info page.

But did you know they also work really well as a way of displaying a compilation of products from your online store?  Take a group of products that are all related around a particular theme – this may be as simple as a colour theme, an event (such as Valentine’s Day in the example below) or audience.  Inspiration boards can be particularly effective for sparking gift ideas in visitors that have come to your store without a product in mind.  Imagine a number of inspiration boards such as ‘Gift ideas for teens’, ‘Mother’s Day gift ideas’ or ‘Personalised gifts for men’ – each showcasing your products together with that all important link directly to the product page.

Inspiration boards are easy to put together and they can be presented in a range of different ways. Think about some of your products and how you might be able to group them for an inspiration board on your store blog.

Do you already use inspiration boards on your store blog?  Share a link to one of your favourite posts or let us know how your customers respond to these blog posts in the comments below.

You may wish to update this message and provide some direction to your store visitor in the form of helpful links to the Specials, New Products or All Products pages. 

To customize the ‘Sorry, the product was not found’ message:

1. Open the product_info.php file located in the /includes/languages/english/ directory.
2. Find this section of code:

   define('TEXT_PRODUCT_NOT_FOUND', 'Sorry, the product was not found.');

3. and modify the define statement as needed, for example:

   define('TEXT_PRODUCT_NOT_FOUND', '<b>Product not found</b><br /><br />Sorry, we could not find this product on ' . STORE_NAME . '.<br /><br />It\'s possible that we recently sold out of the item or that we no longer carry it.<br /><br /><br />Suggestions:<br /><ul><li>If you haven\'t done so already, try doing a search on our website for the name of the product that you\'re looking for.</li><li>Check out our <a href="' . zen_href_link(FILENAME_PRODUCTS_NEW) . '">' . BOX_HEADING_WHATS_NEW . '</a> or our current <a href="' . zen_href_link(FILENAME_SPECIALS) . '">' . BOX_HEADING_SPECIALS . '</a>.</li><li>Browse our <a href="' . zen_href_link(FILENAME_PRODUCTS_ALL) . '">Catalog</a></li></ul>');

   ** Be sure to keep the single quote marks in your new define statement.
   

4. Save the modified product_info.php file to your override folder.  This will be /includes/languages/english/CUSTOM/ where CUSTOM represents the name of your current template folder.

In this design the shopping cart is a shopping bag, the categories are collections, the featured products are Romy’s Picks and new products are new arrivals.  These touches, together with the custom design, make this store stand out.

Home Page

Category Page

Product Page

Other Page

See other Zen Cart ‘Store in the Spotlight’ stores in the Zen Cart Gallery!

If you would like to suggest a Zen Cart store for inclusion in the Gallery, please email info@kerrinhardy.com or DM @zencartkerrin on Twitter.

Zen Cart version 1.5.0 includes a number of application coding changes required to satisfy PCI demands, including;

• password changes for administrators,
• access controls for each admin user (akin to the popular “admin profiles” addon),
• as well as a number of internal coding improvements.

The certification also involves an intense security audit of the code as well as penetration testing to ensure there are no holes for hackers to exploit.

Official announcement thread:

http://www.zen-cart.com/showthread.php?190424-v1-5-0-Release-Available

Official Download from SourceForge:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/zencart/files/CURRENT%20-%20Zen%20Cart%201.5.x%20Series/zen-cart-v150-full-release-12302011.zip/download

IMPORTANT:

If PCI Compliance is important to you, Zen Cart® must be installed following the steps outlined in the Implementation Guide located in the /docs/ folder of the release zip.

What’s New in v1.5.0

• Application has been PA-DSS Certified
• CHANGE-12 – Numerous system changes to support PA-DSS compliance certification
  • Admin passwords now expire every 90 days, as per PA-DSS specification
  • Admin passwords now require a combination of letters and numbers, as well as uniqueness (cannot use already-used passwords)
  • Admin passwords can have a configurable length, but no less than 7 characters
  • Admin passwords also expire, for security reasons, when changing admin configuration from non-SSL mode to SSL mode.
  • Admin Profiles – is now built-in, with a significant number of additional features, and simpler to use.
  • Add basic admin Activity Log Viewer/Exporter tool
• CHANGE-12 – PA-DSS – prevent payment modules from ever storing more than 10 characters of sanitized CC numbers
• CHANGE-12 – PA-DSS – prevent built-in “gateway” payment modules from functioning if the site is not protected by SSL
• CHANGE-12 – PA-DSS – add admin detection of SSL mode change and auto-expire all passwords if SSL mode is enabled either with ENABLE_SSL_ADMIN or using an https address for HTTP_SERVER
• CHANGE-12 – PA-DSS – add two-factor authentication hook in admin login
• zc_install now treats supplied initial admin password (during install) as temporary … requiring the admin user to select a new password at first login. This is to prevent abuse from password sniffing.
• Incorporate TZ (timezone) support, with ability to override/disable simply by defining a DISABLE_MYSQL_TZ_SET constant. c/f http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=174346
• PADSS-30 – Admin SSL now enabled by default in configure.php file if Enable-SSL is selected during zc_install
• BUGSFORUM-1774 – Add ‘secure’ flag support for session cookie when site is running entirely in SSL
• HTMLarea editor removed from core due to obsolescence. Use preferred plugin instead if similar functionality is required.
• FCKeditor components removed from core due to obsolescence. CKEditor is the replacement editor by the same author. Switch to the new plugin if desiring to use this editor.
• USPS module removed from core in favour of being an addon, due to the volatility of frequent changes made by USPS. The addon is available in the Free Addons section of the Zen Cart website.
• BUGSFORUM-1081 – Fixed: no default set for shipping radio buttons if module is disabled after previously selecting a shipping method
• BUGSFORUM-1347 – Remove file-based session handling support due to security concerns and chicken/egg situation caused by garbage collection processes.
• BUGSFORUM-1497 – Admin order totals section of orders.php page ignored currency-formatting display rules in some cases
• BUGSFORUM-1550 – Fix occasional problem with “duplicate entry” in sessions table caused by some servers using longer session ID keys
• BUGSFORUM-1558 – typefilter incorrect lookup problem in case of (unlikely) file-not-found scenario
• BUGSFORUM-1554 – Shopping Cart Problems when updating product quantities for products with Max limit set
• BUGSFORUM-1564 – orders_status wrongly set to 0 in rare cases
• BUGSFORUM-1584 – no_picture.gif could be accidentally deleted if specified as an actual product image
• BUGSFORUM-1589 – Fixed problem with some downloadable orders where an update of an order might set the number of days to a wrong value
• CHANGE-151: Fix rounding and tax calculation issues in Cart/Order Class
• CHANGE-90 – SECURITY: Fix Local File Inclusion Vulnerability
• Whos_online – several improvements to allow the option to exclude spiders and/or admin IP’s from the list of displayed results
• Improvement: Developers Toolkit can now optionally search .js files too.
• CHANGE-136 on new installs, DB_CHARSET now defaults to UTF8, not latin1
• CHANGE-137 Removal(deactivation) of CDE payment modules when SSL disabled
• BUGSFORUM-1592 – Fix rounding problems affecting coupon min-purchase eligibility calculations
• CHANGE-70 – zc_install now checks whether .htaccess rules will work, and provides an alert if there’s a problem.
• BUGSFORUM-XXXX – PayPal improvements – allows Transaction ID to show on admin order confirmation emails for WPS, just like other payment modules do
• BUGSFORUM-XXXX – PayPal – partial fix for bug where currency code not specified during partial refunds causes request to fail
• BUGSFORUM-XXXX – PayPal – fixed bug where debug logging might happen even if switched off (caused by broader server-config issues)
• BUGSFORUM-XXXX – PayPal – fix bug in Express Checkout where a shipping-override would still send a shipping phone number, causing a 10001 error without explanation.
• BUGSFORUM-XXXX – PayPal – fix bug where EC button was removed from login page but left PayPal text prompts, resulting in confusion.
• BUGSFORUM-XXXX – PayPal – Change to VPS-Timeout-90 instead of 45 at PayPal’s request. This means customers might have to wait longer for transactions to complete, but will reduce timeout errors when PayPal’s systems are slow.
• BUGSFORUM-XXXX – PayPal – include product ID number on line-item details since is needed for order fulfillment
• BUGSFORUM-1673 – PayPal – Fix minor html table syntax bug in paypal history details on admin orders screen
• BUGSFORUM-1754 – PayPal – fix various rounding problems in all modules
• BUGSFORUM-1760 – PayPal – Fix problems with Hungarian Forint and other 0-decimal currencies
• BUGSFORUM-1926 – PayPal – Fix problem with attributes — if a product had attributes, the product name was being replaced with attribute details, instead of being appended to
• BUGSFORUM-1971 – PayPal – Trap cases where PayPal returns a blank address unexpectedly, and ask them to supply address details by creating an account
• BUGSFORUM-1971 – PayPal – Minimize address matching issues which arise when storeowners rename their countries to non-ISO standard names (something they should not do)
• BUGSFORUM-1892 – PayPal Express: Item details were shown as “Tax included in prices: 0 (0)”
• BUGSFORUM-1959 – PayPal IPN and Express Checkout Missing free Items, or listing free items without description
• BUGSFORUM-2024 – PayPal IPN – address-override alert might insert duplicate update notices in order status history
• BUGSFORUM-2151 – Paypal – Error 10413 when redeeming Gift Certificates for amount greater than product-subtotal
• CHANGE-164 – paypal logging not properly disabling consistently
• BUGSFORUM-1613 – Media Manager Assign to Products wouldn’t allow assigning of new products due to security change in 1.3.9h
• Fix to admin customer search: search for new customers by customers_email_address to get correct customer and not everyone named Smith
• Fixed display bug with category icons generating link to cPath=0 if cPath not set
• Fix the display of Discount Coupons when a redemption code is applied so it is more readable by the customer
• Fix Add to Cart to stay on listing when set to not display cart
• Fixed coupon admin screen to land on correct page after adding new coupon
• Various Admin pages: Fix pagination problems when changing status, searching, etc.
• Improvement: Shorten CPU cycles on double-parsing an array needlessly in Authorize.net modules. Also improved sanitized debug output.
• BUGSFORUM-1645 – Adding Featured Products ERROR Warning Warning: Product ID already on Special
• Admin products-to-categories copier: Add additional message for clarity when Copy to categories_id is invalid but allow for obscure usage
• Fixed bug on Order History going to page not found when set to not display cart
• Fix: restore shopping cart products in the order they were added
• BUGSFORUM-1662 – Gift Certificates Will Not Release
• Fixed Error message when restricting coupons
• Fixed hard-coded table names which should have been using constants, to allow for prefixes properly.
• Fix problems with the word “search” in spiders.txt
• Admin orders page now passes unformatted value back for availability to customizations which want to redisplay the values differently.
• BUGSFORUM-1696 – clear COUPON_GV_QUEUE when deleting an order
• BUGSFORUM-1681 – fix links in GV mails
• BUGSFORUM-1689 – email validation regex improvements
• BUGSFORUM-1634 – Bugfix: Prevent loading of non-PHP files in some admin autoloading routines
• BUGSFORUM-1650 – sanitize whosonline output
• Downloads – improvements and addition of support for IE9
• BUGSFORUM-1708 – Combine class methods to reduce chance of race conditions and add error suppression to filemtime
• Fix potential GZIP error if server configuration is overly generic
• CHANGE-74 Sanitization
• VARIOUS changes made to admin/catalog page forms to protect against CSRF using security token
• VARIOUS changes for date fields to be handled consistently and to remove some pre-quoting which was breaking bindVars
• CHANGE-102 Fix broken error checking in SQLPatch tool
• CHANGE-128 obscure sql injection fix
• CHANGE-135 add default value to zen_draw_pull_down_menu call to stop the value being drawn from the GLOBALS array and tested as a string.
• CHANGE-138 Set CURL Proxy Status to FALSE by default, and remove from display since it’s now deprecated
• CHANGE-139 fix sprintf() error when generating an outgoing email notification caused by language file refinement
• CHANGE-142 fix tax calculation
• CHANGE-143 fix sidebox query to ensure a correct limit statement is built, if necessary
• CHANGE-143 catch SQL errors and output generic message to user and write message to log instead
• CHANGE-144 XSS mitigation for admin forms — adds logging for inputs flagged as “rogue” by blacklist algorithm.
• CHANGE-145+146 Blank values for various Maximum Values settings causes PHP errors
• CHANGE-147 zc_install was throwing warning for MySQL versions over 5.2
• BUGSFORUM-1709 Fix extraneous products_id in url
• BUGSFORUM-1783 Fix Virtual Product defaults for all core Product Types
• BUGSFORUM-1798 Preview icon was linked directly to product-general type. Now linked to the product type handler, allowing correct language defines to be loaded when previewing a product via this icon.
• BUGSFORUM-1862 status filter not retaining state, restrict to first char for safety
• BUGSFORUM-1754 change to calculate price/tax on zen_round(zen_add_tax(price,rate)*quantity, decimals)
• BUGSFORUM-1696 SQL error due to non-matching field name
• BUGSFORUM-1907 Fix ambiguous description on admin search switch
• BUGSFORUM-1905 Adjust schema to handle ipv6 addresses
• BUGSFORUM-1949 various ISO country updates
• BUGSFORUM-1973 Downloads might deliver an empty file if readfile() is disabled in PHP and symlink support is off
• BUGSFORUM-2046 HTML Entities not retained while editing via admin
• CHANGE-159 – Remove Welcome-Email Preview from admin
• BUGSFORUM-2038 Invalid email address formatting can cause ugly failure message without explanation
• CHANGE-168 – Fix tax calculations for not-logged-in users, by defaulting to default country/zone just like it does for product listings
• .htaccess – add safety around apache directives to prevent errors with poorly configured servers
• Fix bug in properly detecting SSL mode with zen_redirect calls
• Addressed SSL logoff scenario specific to shared SSL on shared hosting.
• Fix email error handling – was only setting error info if the message succeeded, thus always blank.
• Fix broken markup in admin layout-controller
• add extra line-break before “spam” disclaimer in email footers
• Disable language/currency sideboxes by default, to minimize some confusion
• Fix some collation errors encountered during upgrades
• CHANGE-160 – Various changes for basic compatibility with the proposed PHP 5.4 specifications
• CHANGE-175 – Fix Maximum limit to manage merge of cart on login
• CHANGE-176 – Fix Text Required to allow for 0 to work as Required Text content
• BUGSFORUM-2121 – zc_install – fixed broken link for help with disabling session.use_trans_sid in help text
• Simplified the admin-directory-rename process: New installs now only require renaming the folder. No more special configure.php file edits!
• CHANGE-186 – Removed Tell A Friend feature
• BUGSFORUM-2138 – stripslash keyword in first parsing of search keywords, to protect against broken sql resulting in blank page
• BUGSFORUM-2140 – fix problem with metatag deletion where multiple languages exist
• BUGSFORUM-2150 – PHP Warning: strlen() expects parameter 1 to be string
• BUGSFORUM-2175 – fix XSS issue reported by intermittent PCI scans
• CHANGE-190 – fix constants from discount coupon to gv

Check the Installing & Configuring Zen Cart – Full Step-by-Step Guide for detailed help to install Zen Cart 1.5.0.

I’m sure you all know this already, but consider this a gentle reminder as we review a couple of simple steps to help you provide a superior user experience that will help attract a loyal audience to your online store.

Proofread – at least twice

Proofreading is a simple, yet vital, step before publishing because:

• Content free from errors keeps your visitors focused on your message and delivers a smooth user experience
  The effect of errors in your content on your store visitors can range from being mildly distracting to completely derailing their train of thought.  The errors become the focus rather than your content’s message.
• Content free from errors underscores your store’s credibility
  Research, as part of the Stanford University Web Credibility Research project, has shown that web users do not just overlook simple cosmetic mistakes such as spelling or grammatical errors.  In fact, the findings suggest that typos can have roughly the same negative impact on a website’s credibility as a company’s legal or financial troubles.

To help prevent overlooking something in your proofreading step, try this checklist:

1. Check the most visible elements
   There are a few ‘hotspots’ on a web page that people are most likely to read.  Give these areas some special attention when proofreading:
   - the webpage title
   - headlines and headings
   - menu items and button text
   - link text
   - brand, site and product names
2. Check the formatting
   If you tend to write content in a word processing program before copying to your store pages, pay particular attention to issues such as:
   - missing punctuation at the end of a paragraph (caused by hasty copying and pasting)
   - mismatched fonts (a paragraph appearing in Times New Roman when the rest of the page is in Arial)
   - special characters not rendering properly (such as smart quotes, apostrophes, etc being turned into ‘garbage text’
3. Check for potential legal issues
   Look out for any incorrect usage of brand names and trademarks.  Also ensure that the use of other people’s photos, videos, artwork and text are compliant with the appropriate copyright laws.
4. Check for consistency and accuracy
   Double check the spelling of all names of people and places.  Are you consistent in the way you have spelled and capitalized words.  Something in this area that I always need to keep an eye on is being consistent in the spelling of words such as color/colour or customization/customisation.Are you consistent in the names of site elements (such as buttons, menus, links, etc) across your store?  For example, do your instructions mention clicking on the ‘Sign Up’ button but the button label is ‘Subscribe’.  Or ‘Registration’ in one place and ‘Create Account’ in another.
5. Check spelling, grammar and punctuation
   Potential areas for mistakes in this cateogry include commonly misspelled words (for example – independent, maintenance, occurrence), commonly misused words (like affect/effect, complimentary/complementary, there/their/they’re, your/you’re) and common grammar traps (such as mismatching the subject and verb – we goes to school).
6. Check images and video
   Always check that the text accompanying an image or video makes sense.  It’s can be easy to miss this if you update an image down the track.  Also, double check the alt text for each image.
7. Check readability
   If a visitor to your store only skims the page, will they know what the page is about?  Do you have the most important information in the first paragraph.  Look at ways you can create ‘easy to scan’ text such as breaking up paragraphs with sub-headings, converting long sentences to bulleted points.

Proofreading Tips

• Print the page – reading on the screen and reading on paper IS different.  Printing out the page means you’ll see the page and the words differently and is a great tactic for spotting errors.
• Wait – sometimes you will find yourself reading what it is supposed to say rather than what it actually says.  A break can help you see your text with new eyes.
• Ask someone else – if you are too familiar with the content.  A new reader will be more likely to see mistakes and point out anything confusing.  Having a second proofreader is one of the best ways to clarify and correct your content.