ZenCart how-to for store owners

Overview

• Audience: non-technically-oriented owners/operators/admins of a ZenCart-based online store.
• Subject: how to do basic admin tasks

Tasks

How to edit the main page

The "front page" of the store is defined by several different things. Some of them are in PHP code and are difficult to modify, but at least one of them is quite easy.

• Tools: Define Pages Editor (near the bottom of the list), and select define_main_page.php

  This edits everything between the user greeting message ("Welcome Guest! Would you like to log yourself in?") and the featured-items display ("New products for (current month)"). By default, it appears in a small font. You can edit the text without knowing HTML by selecting "HTMLarea" from the "Text Editor" list and then re-choosing the page to edit. Something seems to be overriding the font selection, however, so any font changes may not show up on the front page.

• The "Congratulations! You have successfully installed your Zen Cart™ E-Commerce Solution." text which appears by default seems to be in the file /includes/languages/english/index.php, but I haven't found any way to edit it via the admin web interface.
• Things which appear in the margins on the left and right can be changed at Tools: Layout Boxes Controller. You can choose whether they appear on the left, the right, or not at all, and in which order. To change a particular item, press the "e" icon, make changes in the box on the right, and press the "Update" button.
• The email welcome message which you can view at Tools: Email Welcome: haven't figured out how to edit

Tips

There is a search tool at Tools: Developers Tool Kit. If you go to the last box at the bottom, and choose "All Files - Catalog/Admin" from "All Files Look-ups", you can search for the text you're seeing to (hopefully) find what file defines it. Not all files appear in the Tools: Define Pages Editor, however.

How to process orders

to be written

How to process returns

to be written

Managing Categories

The category interface (Catalog: Categories/Products) is a little awkward. If a category already has products in it, the interface won't show the "add category" button, so you have to first create the category elsewhere (in the "top" level is fine) and then move the category afterward using the "m" icon/button.

A relevant error message:

Error: Category has Products!

While this can be done temporarily to build your Categories ... Categories hold either Products or Categories but never both!

multiple categories per product

edit, delete, move, copy, attribute features, price manager, meta-tags

It looks like the way you put a single product in multiple categories is to "copy" it via the "c" icon/button (in the same row of icon/buttons as the "m"). Haven't tested this to see how it works. (After you "copy" a product, do all copies "point" to the same product record? That is, if you, say, change a price, or the title, are all the copies changed?)

There is also a way to manage multiple options available across many different products; I haven't had need for this yet, so haven't explored it yet.