Zen Cart oh Zen Cart, why are you so useful & a complete A$$ at the same time - Doing the configs

For those of you who have never used the Zen Cart software, please be warned. It is not a well layed out or well templated software.

But luckily for us, we have the awesome users of zencart community forum who are willing to answer questions, even the very stupid ones like " WTF? where do i put my zencart template???"

yes well, for anyone guessing, that was me that asked and apparently its a question that gets asked a great deal.

I do like some of the zencart functionality, particularly the ability to sell digital goods. Unfortunately, we have so many amazing web cart php software out there, but there is a minute few that have the ability to sell digital goods. And the ones that do, cost an arm and a leg and possibly a kidney.

So I just thought I would write some of my experiences here so you can all avoid my mistakes.

I may have to split this post up in a few because there is so much to cover. (check that, I will have to split this, so if you have already installed your zen cart and done your config, then skip the rest of this article)

1. Once you have installed your zencart, proceed to the admin section and for those that are not sure, unlike most software zencart decided to add their initials to the admin url. so go to www/yoursite.com/zcadmin (see the initials - thats branding dude lol )

The first thing you will see is that the layout is rather old skool.. not like the amazing wordpress admin we are all used to, but it does the job and that is what we want.

So head yourself over to the configuration tab (should be the first tab from your left) and you will see it drops down to a hundred and one other settings links.

I did tell you that nothing in zen cart is very easy.. Just giving you the heads up.

First things first, head over to the My store link in the configuration tab drop down and click on it.

You will see a bunch of options and more, if unsure, leave it alone, if sure edit and change and save.

To edit any of these values, you will need to highlight the one you want to change and then click the edit button on your right. YEAH!!! your telling yourself, why cant i do all the changes in one page on one form, right?? Yeah, not in Zen cart my dear friend. One by One is how we roll..

Once you have done that then you will finally have a store name and the config done.

The Next two on the configuration tabs drop down, is minimum value and Maximum value. Basically all this is, is the max characters your buyers can input in the form when they sign up. eg: password should be atleast 6 char max 44 or email should be a minimum of 5 chars and max of 120 or whatever. So that is what those options do.

The one after those is Images - All this is the width and height of images, such as product images, product thumbnails, Now on this page, this where i began to get a little aggravated at the one by one change system they have on Zen cart, cause as you edit this page (if you even decide to bother editing this page) you are feeling yourself fall into a deep trance at all the repetitive integers i was inputting. Not happy.

After images we have customer details - So this is rather self explanatory, all it is doing is asking you what customers details you want to select. So if a customer registers and buys an item or just simply buys an item, it will ask this customer, for date of birth, address, etc Now for me all that information is useless, since i sell digital goods, unless I am a ruthless person who sells peoples details. In my shop i am only selling digital goods, so there is no need for addresses, phone numbers etc. But If I were actually selling material goods, then yes the address, phone etc would be necessary, other wise the buyer will be waiting till kingdom come for their purchase.

After Customers you have Packaging and shipping.
Now personally this page sucked my very life force, it was like a dementor that just wouldnt let up. and even now when i go to this page, I still get the pathetic, stupid, irritating message at the very top page saying store code zip not defined. (and yes i have defined it over a million times and it is just out to get me.) But other than that it is rather easy to edit, basically you enter your country and post code of WHERE YOU WILL BE SHIPPING FROM . so if you are selling from Canada, but your shipping from some random warehouse in China, then China and the Zip code from china should be inputted. then you can enter the max weight you will ship. Again, if you are shipping everything yourself, then you need to find out the rates from your local post office and check what restrictions there are, especially for over seas buyers. Generally speaking anything more than 5 or 6 kilos or 10 to 12 pounds will be very difficult to post. You might need special courier services to send items like that. Now from what i understand the weight can be anything you want, in the end it is what you set it out to be, that counts, so it will calculate it by your standards.

Product Listings.
Well this one again, pretty self explanatory, all it is asking you is for the settings on how you want the products to be listed. Do you want an image, manufacturers name, title, etc. 1 is yes, and 0 is no. You really cant go too wrong here, but you wont be able to see the effects of this page, till you add a product.

Stock.
Stock again another easy one, do you have it, do you want it to check for stock, do you want it to minus from total etc etc. Again very easy aside from the one by one editing which is a nightmare, but handy for the future, when you need to quickly edit one variable.

Ok there is so much in this tab I will break it into two posts.

I am going to try and break down each tab option in every article so you can find the info you need quickly rather than reading a million articles just to find one line of info that you need.

I have to go in depth and i should probably lay out the article and info better, so its easier for you to learn from..

Want to know more about the other options now, go to the Zen Cart Community site http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/

I will also attempt to do a video tutorial on zen cart so you can actually see the settings I am changing.

hugs, kisses and zen cart dreams.. I will leave it there.. Sorry this was meant to be an article of me bitching about zen cart and it turned into a 100 step to zen cart bliss article..



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