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A step-by-step developer's guide
- Install, configure, and customize Zen Cart for your customers
- Enhance and modify Zen Cart
- Walk through the creation of a fully functional book store
- Learn advanced features of Zen Cart with practical examples
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Language English
Paperback 300 pages [191mm x 235mm]
Release date
July 2008
ISBN 1847191177
ISBN 13 978-1-847191-17-5
Author(s)
Suhreed Sarkar
Topics and Technologies
Open Source, e-Commerce
This book will teach you how to install, configure, and customize your e-commerce shop using popular open-source Zen Cart and how to use its promotion and public-relations tools to attract customers to the shop. It will also teach you to customize the look and feel of your Zen Cart shop by localizing and customizing templates.
Zen Cart is a popular open-source PHP/MySQL-based e-commerce solution available under GPL that is designed to put the merchants' and shoppers' requirements first. Not only does Zen Cart offer a very long list of features, but the system is designed with both store owners and web developers in mind. There's no sacrifice of usability or power.
This easy-to-follow book will teach you how to install, configure, and customize a Zen Cart shop and use its promotion and public-relations tools to attract customers to the shop. It will also teach you to customize the look and feel of the Zen Cart shop by localizing and customizing templates. With this excellent tutorial, you will be able to extend and tweak the Zen Cart store.
- Install and configure your Zen Cart shop
- Manage, import, and export products in bulk
- Configure zones, currencies, payment processors, and shipping modules
- Use discounts, salemaker, cross-sell and up-sell to promote products
- Use gift certificates, discount coupons, and newsletters to attract customers
- Localize your shop by translating and adding new language and locales
- Create or customize templates for your shop
- Migrate products and customers from osCommerce to Zen Cart
- Integrate Zen Cart shop with other CMSs like e107, xoops, gallery2, WordPress, phpBB, etc.
Chapter 1 is a brief introduction to Zen Cart and its functionalities.
Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 deal with how to get everything you need up and running on a development machine and also briefly look at how all the requisite technologies gel together to produce a working Zen Cart site. Chapter 2 will help you with downloading and installing Zen Cart on your machine and Chapter 3 in configuring the store.
Chapter 4 will help you make the shop more attractive with the help of already available templates as well as by customizing templates.
Chapter 5 will discuss important configuration options for localizing Zen Cart defining countries and zones, zones for taxes, tax classes, tax rates, and assigning tax rates to specific zones. We also discuss adding, editing and updating currencies in a Zen Cart shop that uses multiple currencies and creating, and editing languages for Zen Cart shop and translating language files to another language.
In Chapter 6 we discuss several promotion and public-relations tools available for Zen Cart shop and use of these tools effectively and in a planned way to enhance the sales dramatically.
Chapter 7 discusses migrating from osCommerce to Zen Cart. The chapter covers points to be considered before migration, a brief discussion of differences between osCommerce and Zen Cart database structure, and finally actual data migration from osCommerce to Zen Cart, converting osCommerce modules for Zen Cart, and common problems during migration.
In Chapter 8, we discuss integration of Zen Cart with other Content Management Systems. In detail, it covers the necessity of integration, characteristics of successful integration, and ways to integrate CMS along with the ways to integrate Zen Cart with other CMS like WordPress, Gallery2, e107, and phpBB.
Once we have set up, configured, and customized our online shop, to take it to live production, we need to carry out some routine maintenance tasks to keep it running.
In Chapter 9, we discuss common maintenance and troubleshooting activities for a Zen Cart online shop.
The Appendix gives details of resources for Zen Cart.
This is a highly practical book that can act as a reference material to which you will want to return again and again. The discussion in the book is right up-to-the point and it is filled with ample practical examples.
This book is primarily for professional developers interested in building, enhancing, or extending Zen Cart sites for customers. It is also a useful reference for those who have got Zen Cart running on their own store, and want to improve it. It will also benefit those who want to migrate from osCommerce or other engines to Zen Cart.
Suhreed Sarkar
Suhreed Sarkar—IT consultant, trainer, and technical writer—studied Marine Engineering, served on board a ship for two years, then switched to the computer world with MCSE in Windows NT 4.0 track late in 2000. His latest field of study is business management and he has earned an MBA from the University of Dhaka. He has a bunch of BrainBench certifications including PHP4, Project Management, RDBMS Concepts, E-Commerce, Web Server Administration, Internet Security, Training Development, Delivery and Evaluation, and Technical Writing.
As a trainer, he has taught courses on web design, development, and e-commerce. He also delivers lectures on MIS and e-business in public and private universities in Bangladesh. Being passionate about learning and teaching new skills, he prefers hacking and teaching to actual coding for clients.
As a consultant and trainer he has experience consulting for some international organizations including the United Nations, where he helped clients building and adopting their enterprise portals, large scale databases, and management information systems. He is the best-selling technical author in Bengali—having a dozen books published on topics covering web development, LAMP, networking, and system administration. As an open-source enthusiast, he is active in different forums and takes every chance to promote open-source CMSs and shopping carts including Joomla, Mambo, Moodle, WordPress, osCommerce, Zen Cart, etc.
While not busy with hacking some apps, blogging on his blog (blog.suhreedsarkar.com), reading the philosophy of Bertrand Russell or the management thought of Peter F Drucker—he likes to spend some special moments with his family—wife, son, and daughter. Suhreed lives in Dhaka, Bangladesh with his family.
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