Before launching your online shop, you need to specify your store's name and address. You can define these via Configuration | My Store. You should at least change the Store Name, Store Owner, Country, Zone, Store Address, and Phone. These are the essentials for starting your online shop.

There are some interesting settings on this screen. If your store is multilingual, then you can specify in what language the store will be shown—based on the store's default language or on the browser's language settings. Select Default or Browser in the Language Selector field, as required.

When showing the category lists, you may want to know how many products are there in each category. Select true in the Show Category Counts field to show the product counts. Similarly, you can show the products count in the admin area by selecting true in the Show Category Counts—Admin field.

Product prices can be shown with tax. Set Display Prices with Tax to display the prices inclusive of tax. You can also specify the basis on which the product and shipping taxes are computed. This may be based on the tax rules in the originating country (where store is located), billing address (from where the bill will be paid), or destination country (where the product is shipped to). You have to select the appropriate settings in these fields.

You can use a Zen Cart store as a showcase or as a normal store by setting the following values in the Store Status field:

Another important setting on the My Store screen is the Currency Conversion Ratio. You can automatically update currency exchange rates in Zen Cart. In this case, you may want to uplift the conversion by a certain ratio. This will be added to the conversion rate. As the bank rate is obtained from the currency-exchange servers, this conversion ratio will enable you to charge extra in order to make up the difference between the bank rate and the consumer rate.

You can define the extent to which you are going to collect information on customers. From the Configuration | Customer Details screen, you can define the fields that are going to be presented during account creation, and identify the absolute essentials for purchasing a product from your store.

You may want to know the customer's age to be sure that the person who is buying a product is an adult and legally authorized to transact online. For this, you require the birth date of each customer during account creation. Set the Date of Birth option to true. This will show the Date of Birth field during account creation. However, the customers could leave it blank. To make it a required field, set the value >0 in the Date of Birth field in the Configuration | Minimum Values screen.

You can show or hide the Company, Address Line 2, State, and Fax Number fields. If you want to show the states as a drop-down list, set the State - Always display as pulldown? field to true. Further, if you can set a default country from the Create Account Default Country ID field. If you want to promote your newsletter, set 1 or 2 in the Show Newsletter Checkbox field. Similarly, you can set Customer Default Email Preference to 1 =Text or 2 =HTML.

Some online shops require users to sign up before they can browse products and make purchases. If you want to do this, change the Customer Shop Status-View Shop and Prices field. You can set a value of 0 to 3:

Some of the other settings related to Customer Authorization are also on this screen. Default values will work for most of the shops.

You may want to track customer referrals, and provide a discount coupon up on signing up to your shop. In this case, you must define the necessary setting in the Customer Referral Status field. You may keep it off (0), use 1st Discount Coupon Code (1), or allow customer to type a coupon code during account creation (2). If you really want to give your customers a discount coupon on signing up, create a discount coupon via Gift Certificates/Coupon | Coupon Admin first. Then, select that coupon in the New Signup Discount Coupon ID# field from the Configuration | GV Coupons screen.

You can configure for how the product list and descriptions will be shown. From Configuration | Product Listing, you can define the fields that will be displayed on the product listing page. The first half of the options controls the fields that appear in the product listing, and their order. If you want an element to not appear on the page, give it a value of 0. A non-zero value means the element will be shown, and the number defines the sort order for the field.

The Display Product Listing Default Sort Order setting on the same page depends on these settings. Settings with a value (that is, sort order) of 0 will be ignored, while the rest will be assigned an incrementing ID based on the sort order. For example, if you set Display Product Name to 1, Display Product Price/Add to Cart to 3 and the rest to 0, then Display Product Name is assigned an ID of 1 and Display Product Price/Add to Cart is assigned an ID of 2 (not 3, which is the sort order).

You can also edit Display Product Listing Default Sort Order. This setting should contain two characters; the first character is the ID of the field which has already been discussed, and the second character should be the letter 'a' for ascending, or 'd' for descending. If you want to sort product field, in descending order, then use 2d.

From this screen, you can also enable or disable display of product images, the add to cart box, product name, module, manufacturer, price, weight, quantity box, category, and so on.

Several emails can be sent to your customers from your Zen Cart shop. Usually, customers who subscribe to newsletters and product notifications receive regular emails. However, whenever a customer registers or places an order, he or she receives an email. For some other reasons, you may also need to notify the customers from time to time. You can set various email configuration options via Configuration | Email Options. As a minimum, you have to configure the following options:

Logging is important for your online shop, especially when you face problems with your shop. You can set the options for controlling how events are logged via Configuration | Logging. The following are some of the options:

Log files are always helpful for troubleshooting. It is recommended that you enable logging for your online shop. This will give you the opportunity to analyze what happens in your shop. Also remember to manage the log file. You may need to clear the log file regularly to limit its growth.

Every online store has some rules and regulations that must be followed by the customers. You must always provide the terms and conditions of purchasing products from your online shop, and obtain the customers' acceptance of these. You can set the terms and conditions for the customers in Configuration | Regulations.

If you set Confirm Terms and Conditions During Checkout Procedure to true, the Terms and Conditions page will be shown during the checkout procedure, and the customer must agree to them before they can complete their purchase. This is a good way of reminding the customer of the terms and conditions of purchasing products from your shop.

Nowadays, most of the customers are aware of their privacy. As you collect some private information from the customers, it would be good to show a privacy notice during account creation. Set Confirm Privacy Notice During Account Creation Procedure to true to show the privacy notice during the account creation procedure, which the customer must agree to before they can create their account.

EZ-pages in Zen Cart give us opportunities to easily create static pages. From the Configuration | EZ Pages Settings page, you can set various options to configure the EZ-Pages. Creation and editing of EZ-Pages is controlled via Tools | EZ-Pages.

You can set the elements of an EZ Page that will be shown—header, footer, left sidebar, right sidebar, Prev/Next buttons, table of contents, and so on. The default settings for these fields are suitable for most of online shops. However, you have the option of changing them to suit your requirements.

A variety of images are shown in Zen Cart shop. You can configure the images and the way these images will be shown. Via Configuration | Images, you can set the options used to control the size of images on each page/for each type of content. Set these to the same size as the images you create. Otherwise, your images will appear distorted. There are some general options on how the images are handled, and a single option that controls the layout of additional product images on the Product Info page. You can set the options any way that you want them.

From the Configuration | GZip Compression page, you can control the GZip compression settings for your online shop. Enabling GZip Compression means that all content from your store is compressed before it is downloaded to the user. The contents are then decompressed by the user's web browser. This compression and decompression is transparent to the user and significantly speeds up their browsing. It is therefore recommended that you turn this on if your webserver supports it.

You can set options to control various options regarding stock control via Configuration | Stock. There are also two Shopping Cart page layout options here. To get an updated stock level, enable Check stock level and Subtract stock. Specify a mark that will be shown when a product is out of stock. In Show Sold Out Image in Place of Add to Cart field, set 1 to show an image when a product is out of stock. You may set a Stock Re-order Level to a convenient value, instead of the default of 5. If you want to show products that are out of stock, select 1 in the Products status in Catalog when out of stock should be set to field.

If you are selling physical products, then shipping and packaging options will be an important issue for your shop. You can set general shipping information including locations, and weight and size limits via Configuration | Shipping/Packaging. The following options needed to be configured:

Via Configuration | Attribute Settings, you can set options for controlling which product attributes are maintained, and whether downloadable products are allowed, and how they are handled. For downloadable products, there are eight options. First, you have to set Enable Downloads to true. Then, you have options to set the following:

Other attribute settings are for pricing. You can enable price factors, quantity price discounts, attribute images, and text pricing by word or by letter.

For online payments, you have the option to enable use of the credit cards. Via Configuration | Credit Cards, you can determine which credit cards can be accepted. However, this will not turn payment processing on. It will simply enable customers to use specific credit card, and display the credit card on the payment page. We can show the credit cards list as text or images. To show the image, set 2 in the Credit Card Enabled - Show on Payment field. You also need to upload the credit card images to the images directory and define these images in the language file. Editing the language file is discussed in Chapter 5, Localization of Zen Cart.

From Configuration | Product Info, you can set some basic options for controlling the elements that are included on the Product Info page. You can also set some page layout options for the Previous and Next buttons. These settings will be applied to all product types.

You may define the product image, height and weight, previous and next buttons, previous and next bar position, and so on. From here, you can set the contents of the product information page.

A wide range of options for controlling different layout options are available via Configuration | Layout Settings. These are global options that will appear on all pages, and there are also some options for individual sideboxes. From here, you can set column widths, breadcrumb positions and option, category display, banner display, and so on. Although you can change the width of the left and right columns, it would be wiser to look at your templates first. Changing these values may change your look and feel unexpectedly.

Product Types in Zen Cart allow us to present different information for types of products in the shop (and possibly in a different format). If you are selling books, for example, you should show some special information, such as author name, edition, ISBN, number of pages, cover type, and so on. A product type, say a book, can collect this custom information in addition to other generic product information for that book. Similarly, a product type, say music, will collect different information (artist name, download size, mp3 clip) and will be displayed differently. Catalog | Product Types allows us to view and edit product types.

On the Catalog | Product Types page, you will see a listing of product types. For each product type, you can select the default settings, such as default tax class for the new products of that type. You can also set layout options by clicking on the edit layout button. You will see the layout options for the product type you have chosen.

When you are creating products via Catalog | Categories/Products, beside the New Product button you will see a pull-down menu for choosing a product type. The product type that you select from this menu is the type of product that you will create. The product creation form will be different depending on the product type you have chosen.

Products should be cataloged according to manufacturer. This manufacturer information can also be displayed on the product details page. Catalog | Manufacturers allows us to view, add, edit, or delete manufacturer information.

You can add a manufacturer by clicking on the insert button. This will display the new manufacturer screen (shown above). The following information should be provided on this screen:

Once you have added the product types and manufacturers, you can create the product categories and products. Create and edit your products and categories via Catalog | Categories/Products.

Managing Categories

In order to add products to your store, you need at least one category. Create a category by clicking the new category button. Products must be placed inside categories. Otherwise, Zen Cart may experience various problems. For example, it may not display the products, or searches may not work.

You can create multiple nested categories. For the new categories, you have to enter a name, description (in each active language), image to be uploaded for that category (or the filename of the image on the webserver), image upload directory, and sort order. To create a sub-category, click on the parent category and then click on the new category button.

To edit a category, click on the edit icon on the right of the row for that category. From the edit screen, you can restrict that category (including sub-categories) to only contain a certain product type. For example, if you have a category named books, you can restrict this category to the book product type only. Similarly, the music category can be restricted to the music product type only. Select the appropriate product type in the Restrict to Product Type drop-down list and click on Add include SubCategories or Add without SubCategories.

Each category may have multiple sub-categories, but it cannot contain both sub-categories and products. There is no restriction on the number of products or categories you can have in a category. Moreover, there is no restriction on the number of levels of subcategories. However, keep the nesting to a minimum for better management of the product catalog.

You can copy one category to another category and make it a sub-category. You can also delete a category, or a sub-category. Deleting a category does not automatically delete the products under it, but if the products lose their master category ID, they will no longer be shown in the catalog. Therefore, you must always move the products to another category before deleting their parent category.

Managing Products

Once you have created all of the categories and know which products to be included in each category, you can start adding products to these categories. For helping catalogers, you can prepare a guideline for choosing the appropriate categories. Restricting categories to specific product types will also help.

To add a product to a category, click on that category's icon. If that category has a sub-category, you will not see the new product button. So, click on the subcategories, until you see a new product button. Then, select the appropriate product type and click on the new product button. The following figure shows how a product is added:

Based on the product type you have chosen, you will have to provide specific information about that product. Typical information that you may need to provide includes: product name, manufacturer name, stock status, availability date, tax class, net and gross price, minimum and maximum order quantity, product description, quantity, model, product image, URL, shipping weight, and sort order. If you are adding a product of music product type, you need to provide music genre, recording company, recording artist, and so on. For book type products, you need to add author(s) name, edition, number of pages, publisher, sub-title, subject, format, publication date, and so on.

Before adding a product to the catalog, you must prepare images for that product. Images for product should be high-quality but, at the same time, small in size. Although Zen Cart displays images according to the configured size, do not use very large images as these will take more webserver space and more time to load.

You may sell products with options and attributes. For example, if you are selling T-shirts, you may offer four colors and four sizes S, M, L, and XL. For a change of color the price remains the same, but for a size change the price changes too. This type of product is appropriate for selling using attributes. We have to select Yes in the Product Priced by Attributes field while creating that product.

For using options and attributes with products, you have to create the options and values first, and then assign those option-value pairs to products through the attribute manager.

Option Value Manager

Once you have defined the option name, you can add values to it via Catalog | Option Value Manager. You will see the list of option names, values, and sort orders. At the bottom of the list, select the option name from the drop-down list, and then enter the value into the en: text box, and specify the sort order in order textbox. Now, click on insert to save it. Add all the other values for the same option name. Now, your option-value pairs are ready to be added in the attributes controller.

Attributes Controller

Once you have added option names and values using Catalog | Option Name Manager and Catalog | Option Value Manager, you can add these options to products via Catalog | Attributes Controller. You can also start attribute controller from product list by clicking on attribute controller icon ( )

To add an attribute to a product, you must follow these steps:

1. Go to the large gray box titled Adding New Attributes.

2. Select the option name that you want to add from the first scroll box .

3. Select a matching option value from the second scroll box, for example, select option name Size [dropdown] from the first box and Small [SIZE:] from the second box.

4. Click the insert button.

The price and weight of the product may vary depending on the product attributes. When adding attributes to a product, you can configure the price and weight changes. When selecting an option and a value, Price can be entered with a prefix of + (plus) or — (minus) or blank. '+' or blank means an increase, and '—' means a decrease. Generally, the price we enter here will be added to, or subtracted from, our base price based on the use of the + or — prefix. But when Price by Attribute is enabled, the price we enter here will be added to your base price regardless of the prefix.

Weight can optionally be entered if it affects the product weight. You can use a prefix of '+' or '—' or blank. Using '+' and blank will add the attribute weight, while '—' will subtract the attribute weight, from the product's base weight.

You can also define quantity discounts. Quantity discounts (Attributes Qty Price Discount) are useful when the entire group of products being ordered has a different price depending on the quantity purchased. You can also specify the quantity discounts as: 1:11, 5:10.00, 8:9.00,10:8.00,15:7.00,20:6.00, 50:5.00.

This can be best expressed as shown in the following table:

As you can see, definition consists of a number of quantity:price pairs. The first number in the pair is the minimum quantity that must be purchased, and the second number in the pair is the price that the customer will pay if they purchase (at least) that quantity. The quantity discount will be applied only to products with specific attributes (here, size XL).

One-time quantity discounts (Onetime Attributes Qty Price Discount) allow specific amounts to be applied to quantity discounts. For example, 400:5 will apply a one-time charge of $5 to an order with any number of items less than 400. Negative numbers work in these entries as well, creating a quantity discount. This is useful if you define a base price and would like to allow the user to have the discount off the base price.

Copying Attributes to Other Products or Categories

One easy way to use attributes on a group of products is to copy the attributes from one product to another, or to every product in a category. The attribute images and any other attribute options for price or weight also get copied and can be edited once copied.

At the top of the attributes controller are several self-explanatory buttons that link to other sections of the admin panel. The last two are both copy to—the first is to a product, the second to a category.

Click copy to (product or category depending on our preference), and in the large scroll box choose the category or product to which you want to copy the selected product attributes.

Then, you have three options:

1. Delete first, then copy new attributes: This will delete any existing attributes that are attached to the products to which you are copying the new attributes. New attributes are then added to the products.

2. Update with new attribute settings/prices, then add new ones: If the product you are copying to already has the same attributes, the values of those existing attributes will be updated. Then, the new attributes will be added to that product.

3. Ignore and add only new attributes: This will not alter any existing attributes, but will only add new ones.

You select one of the above options and click the copy button. You will then be notified about the success of copying the attributes. You can copy the attributes of the product to a category in similar way. In that case, the attributes will be applied to all of the products in that category.

Downloads Manager

Products for downloads can be managed via Catalog | Downloads Manager. You will see a list of all downloadable products, along with the associated product ID and name. You will also see the names of the files to be downloaded. A red icon in the Filename column indicates that the file is not on the webserver. A green icon means that the file is available on the webserver. For a red icon, upload the file to Zen Cart's download directory or, if the file is named differently, change the filename via the attribute controller. You can also do this by clicking on the edit button.

The Catalog | Products Price Manager menu allows us to edit product pricing by category. You can change the price, availability date, in stock / out of stock setting, quantity minimum (qty min), quantity units (qty units), quantity maximum (qty max), quantity minimum, and unit mix (qty min/unit mix), and whether the product is free, call for price, or priced by attributes, all from the products price manager. You can also edit special product and featured product information from this screen.

For building a catalogue, it will be useful if you could bulk import/export products from, the catalog. If you have an existing shop, then bulk import may help. Bulk export may help you when moving the catalog to another shop. It may also help if you want to build the catalog offline, and then upload it to the online shop. You may ask the manufacturers to send their catalog in a specified format and upload that to the webserver. By default, Zen Cart has no feature to bulk import/export products. However, some third party add-ons are available for this.

One of the easiest bulk import tools for Zen Cart is EasyPopulate by Langer (http://www.modhole.com). You can download it from the Zen Cart website's download section. Once downloaded, you just have to unzip it and upload the files, keeping the directory structure intact. EasyPopulate does not overwrite any core files. Apply the install_sql.sql file via Tools | Install SQL Patches. This will give you options for configuration.

To configure Easy Populate, select Configuration | Easy Populate. You will see only one option to configure—Uploads Directory. The default is temp/. You change it to be any path you choose. You may create a directory named ep in the Zen Cart directory and enter the path of that directory in this field. Then all Easy Populate files will be created in this directory. You must also remember to set the file permission on this directory to 777.

After uploading the files and configuring the Upload Directory, select Tools | Easy Populate. Here, you will see some links to download and create Easy Populate and Froogle files. Click on the Download Complete tab-delimited .txt file to edit (Attributes Not Included) link. This will download a tab-delimited text file, which can be opened using Microsoft Excel or the OpenOffice.org Calc spreadsheet program. If you want to build your own catalog based on this file, you must only keep the header row and delete/overwrite all other rows. You should type only the necessary information in these rows and save it. Once the file is ready, select Tools | Easy Populate and click on browse to select the file to upload in the Upload EP file field. Then, click on the Insert into db button. New product information will be added to catalog.

Similarly, you can download template for model/category, model/price/quantity, and prepare your file for uploading. In all of these cases, keep the header row intact. Otherwise, bulk import will not work.

Modules in Zen Cart are automatically added to the shopping cart system when you put the module files in the appropriate directories. All of the modules in Zen Cart are located in the includes/modules directory. Under this directory, there are at least three subdirectories: payment, shipping and order_total. Once we put the files in these directories, we will find the module listed in the respective configuration screens, that is, Modules | Payment, Modules | Shipping, or Modules | Order Total screen. When you select that module for the first time you will see the install button on the right. You can install the module by clicking on this button.

Payment modules are for processing payment through a payment processing gateway. For example, you may use the Authorize.net payment module to receive payment through the Authorize.net gateway. By default, there are about nine payment modules installed. The functions and configuration of each payment module are described below:

Cash on Delivery

For some products, or in some areas, your payment option may be pay by cash when the product is delivered. As for Bangladesh, we have no online transaction facility. So cash on delivery may be a suitable payment method.

If you want to use this module, then click on it to install it. Then, change its configuration. It has very few options: enable the module, set the Payment Zone, Order Status and Sort order of display.

Shipping is one of the important features of your online shop. You have to give customers a choice of shipping options. Several modules are used to provide shipping options to the customers. Shipping modules are administered from the Modules | Shipping screen.

Flat Rate

A flat rate shipping charge is simple to use and is the most straight-forward method. If you use flat rate shipping for all products, you charge the same shipping fee. To use a flat rate for shipping, enable this module and enter the shipping cost for all orders in the Shipping cost field. You may also define the Tax Class, Tax Basis, Shipping Zone, and Sort Order for this module.

Order Total modules are used to calculate the total cost due during checkout. You can see the list of Order Total modules on the Modules | Order Total screen. These modules are located in the includes/modules/order_total/ directory. The following list shows the default Order Total modules:

These are the default Order Total modules. If you install other modules, you may find some other order total module in the Modules | Order Total screen. For example, installing Better Together module (which we will discuss in Chapter 6) will show the Better Together Discount moduel in this list.

Generally, users need to register with the Zen Cart shop before shopping. An unregistered customer may add items to the shopping cart, but before checking out, he or she needs to register. A customer can always register by clicking on the Log In link on the home page. You may specify the required fields for user registration via Configuration | Customer Details.

Once registered, a confirmation email containing a verification code is sent to the customer. The customer clicks on the link provided to visit your shop and enter the verification code. This way, the customer is verified. Once a customer is verified, he or she can place orders in the shop.

Customers can retrieve their forgotten password by clicking on the Forgot your password? link on the Login page. Administrators can change customer information (but not the password) on the Customers | Customers screen.

All customer accounts are listed on the Customers | Customers screen. Select a customer name and you will see some command buttons in the right side box. Click on edit to change a customer's information. Although you can change any information in the customer's profile, it is not wise to change their address or other personal information. However, you may change the customer's authorization status, if you need to disable a customer for some reason.

We can see a customer's orders by clicking the orders button. A summary of the customer's activities will be shown in the right-side box.

You may need to communicate with the customers to clarify some order, items or any other reason. In this case, select that customer and click on the email button shown in the right-side box. E-mail screen will be shown, where you can type the email subject and message, and can send it by clicking on the send button. From this screen you can also send mails to a group of customers.

Order statistics can be seen from dashboard. In the orders section, you can see the order status, which shows the pending orders, orders being processed, orders delivered, and orders that have been updated. In the new orders section, you will find all new orders. The list of products sold can be seen on the Reports | Products Purchased screen.

Managing inventory includes knowing the stock levels of all products and adding products to the catalog as and when necessary. You can identify products with low stock from the Reports | Products Low Stock screen. The screen will show the products that need immediate repletion.

Group pricing can be used to provide a discount to a group of customers. You can manage group pricings from Customers | Group Pricing. To create a new group price, click on the insert button. Enter a group name and a discount percentage. Save the group. Now add customers to that group by editing the customer's profiles. From the Customers | Customers screen, select a customer and click on the edit button. In the options section, select the appropriate group in Discount Pricing Group field.

You need to update the order status manually. When an order is shipped or delivered, you need to change the order status. For managing an order, select that order from the list and click on the edit button. Now, change the Status field, for example, to Processing. You can also add a comment and select the Notify Customer and Append Comments checkboxes. You click on the update button to update the status. An email will be sent to the customer notifying them of the status of this order. When you have shipped the product, update the status to Shipped, and notify the customer. Again, you will need to update the status when the product is delivered.

When shipping products, you need to enclose an invoice. This invoice can be generated by clicking on the invoice button. You can also generate a packing slip by clicking on the packing slip button. The difference between an invoice and a packing slip is that the invoice includes the prices of the products, whereas a packing slip only lists the products.