Whenever you want to do some maintenance, first take the shop offline. Click on Down for Maintenance: ON/OFF and set its value to true. Visitors to your site will then see a message on the front page about the maintenance.

By default, the name of the file displayed during maintenance is down_for_maintenance. You can change the messages shown in this page by editing its language file, /includes/languages/english/down_for_maintenance.php. Its display can be customized by editing a corresponding template file /includes/templates/template_default/templates/tpl_down_for_maintenance.php. You can also decide whether the header, footer, left column, right column, and the product price will be displayed or not by configuring these options from the Configuration | Website Maintenance page.

Bringing the shop down for maintenance means you want to do some activities and also experiment with the shop. Therefore, it is necessary that at least you access the shop while it is blocked for the others. You can exclude yourself (admin) from being blocked during this down period by entering your IP address into the Down For Maintenance (exclude this IP-Address) field. You can type multiple IP addresses separated by a comma (,).

It is good to inform the visitors about your scheduled maintenance in advance. Set the NOTICE PUBLIC Before going Down for Maintenance: ON/OFF field to true. By default, it is false, and whenever you set the Down for Maintenance: ON/OFF field to true, the value of this field becomes false automatically. Setting this value to true will display a notice for scheduled maintenance. Now is the time to set the schedule. Click on the Date and hours for notice before maintenance field, and set the date and time of maintenance. Then, a notice will be displayed in the header of your online shop before taking it down for maintenance.

You can show visitors when the shop was taken down for maintenance and what the estimated downtime is. Informing your visitors about this will encourage them to come back. Set the fields, Display when webmaster has enabled maintenance and Display website maintenance period, to true. You can also set the duration of the maintenance period in the Website maintenance period field.

Backup has no value in normal time, but it seems invaluable when you have a problem. When your store is not working due to some recent changes in the files or databases, and you want to revert to the previous version of files and/or database (which was working fine), backup seems to be worth a million dollars.

For the following reasons you need to back up your files and databases regularly:

There is no built-in mechanism in Zen Cart to backup its database. You have to use phpMyAdmin, other MySQL tool, or third-party contributions to back up whole databases for Zen Cart. If you have access to phpMyAdmin, please follow these steps to backup your Zen Cart database:

There is a third-party contribution for Zen Cart to facilitate backing up of the Zen Cart database from within Zen Cart. Download Backup Admin MySQL Plugin v.1.3 from Zen Cart website's download section. Installation is as simple as extracting and copying the admin folder to the Zen Cart root folder.

Backup Admin MySQL Plugin v.1.3 uses two MySQL programs: mysql and mysqldump. These two programs usually reside in the /usr/bin directory. This path is indicated in the /admin/includes/languages/english/backup_mysql.php file. If you are using a windows server, you may need to edit this. If MySQL backup Admin Tool is not working, open the /admin/includes/languages/english/backup_mysql.php file and change the following lines:

define('LOCAL_EXE_MYSQL', '/usr/bin/mysql'),
define('LOCAL_EXE_MYSQLDUMP', '/usr/bin/mysqldump'),

Usually, on a Windows server, these paths will look like c:/mysql/bin/mysql.exe and c:/mysql/bin/mysqldump.exe. Be sure about the actual path on your Windows server and replace the previous lines accordingly.

You can run this backup tool from the administration area. Select Tools | Database Backup—MySQL. The Database Backup Manager—MySQL screen will be displayed.

If you are not using SSL, a warning message will be displayed saying that any downloads from this page will be unencrypted. Click on the backup button to create a new backup of the Zen Cart database. The New Backup dialog box will be displayed. If you want to skip the locking of the database during a backup, check the Skip Lock option radio button. Generally, the backup generated is stored in the admin/backups folder, and you can download that by clicking the down arrow icon before the name of the backup. If you want to download the backup file directly to your computer without storing it on the web server, check Download without storing on server.

Backing up files is as simple as backing up any web application. You may need to keep a backup of the initial snapshot, then do some backup for only the changed files. Once you have set up a Zen Cart shop, take the base snapshot. Then after customizing the shop, that is customizing the look and feel and installing third-party modules, you need to take backups.

Zen Cart themes are using overrides, and this override system does not modify or replace original files. Therefore, while adding a new template, you can just care about those new files in the template. Similarly, after adding Zen Cart third-party contributions, you can take a backup of the new files.

Product data are very much important for any online shop. You must ensure that product data are always backed up and readily available for restoration whenever necessary. While product information such as description, price, and so on are stored in the database, product images are not stored in the database. Generally, product images are stored in the images directory under the Zen Cart installation directory of your web server. Therefore, you also need to backup this folder whenever you see that a large number of products have been added to the catalogue.

If you are using Linux hosting and cPanel, you can back up files (and also Zen Cart database) easily from cPanel. Follow these steps to backup files and database from cPanel:

If you have backed up the database using phpMyadmin or Database Backup Tool Plugin, you can restore those backups from phpMyAdmin, or the Database Backup Tool Plugin.

Restoring database from phpMyAdmin is actually executing a query or importing the dump. Follow these steps to restore from a backup:

The database will be restored. If there is any record existing in the database, an error message will indicate the problem with that record. Remember that importing a large database may take some time.

Restoring database backups made by Database Backup Tool Plugin is much easier. Once the backup is generated, that will be listed on the Database Backup Manager—MySQL screen.

For restoring a database backup follow these steps:

Finally, the database will be restored. It may take some time depending on the size of the database you are restoring.

Note that, you have to click on the restore button shown to the right side box. If you click on the restore button shown in the following screenshot, the list of backups will show you options to restore from a file on your computer. Click on the Browse... button, select the .sql file from where you want to restore, and click on the restore button.

Restoring file backups is as simple as uploading the files from the backup set to Zen Cart's directory on the web server. You can do this using web-based uploading tools or FTP programs.

As you have seen you can use cPanel for database and files backup and restoration. We have discussed how to backup home directory and Zen Cart database from cPanel. Follow the steps below to restore those backups:

After installation and configuration of Zen Cart, you need to take appropriate security measures to protect your online shop. The following sections highlights some common steps for securing your online shop.

define('DIR_WS_ADMIN', '/admin/'),

define('DIR_WS_CATALOG', '/'),
define('DIR_WS_HTTPS_ADMIN', '/admin/'),

define('DIR_WS_HTTPS_CATALOG', '/'),
define('DIR_FS_ADMIN', '/home/suhreed/public_html/admin/'),

define('DIR_FS_CATALOG','/home/suhreed/public_html/'),

define('DIR_WS_ADMIN', '/ctkobn/'),

define('DIR_WS_CATALOG', '/'),
define('DIR_WS_HTTPS_ADMIN', '/ctkobn/'),

define('DIR_WS_HTTPS_CATALOG', '/'),
define('DIR_FS_ADMIN', '/home/suhreed/public_html/ctkobn/'),

define('DIR_FS_CATALOG', '/home/suhreed/public_html/'),

Unlike osCommerce, the administration area of Zen Cart is well protected by default. Whenever anyone wants to access the administration area, he or she needs to provide the username and password for an administrative account. Normal users or shoppers cannot login to this area. You do not need to edit .htaccess or any other file for securing this area.

The main administrative account is created during installation. The master administrator has full access to all areas of the administration area. Using this account name and password, you can login to the administration area.

It is not wise to use the same username and passwords for all people administering the online shop. Instead, create a separate administrative account. Once you are logged in to the administrative username and password, you can create other administrative accounts. Follow these steps for creating administrative accounts:

You can also reset the password for administrative accounts. For resetting the password for any administrative account, select that account and click on the reset pwd button. Then, the Reset Password box will be displayed. Type the new password and confirm that by retyping it. Then, click the save button.

Zen Cart has built-in user authentication and security mechanisms for controlling access to catalogues. You can configure your store to allow product browsing by all—both registered and unregistered users. At the same time, you can configure your store to require registration for placing orders. Unregistered users can browse the products, and even add products to their carts, but they must register and log in to Zen Cart to check out. This is a standard setting for online shops.

Unlike osCommerce, Zen Cart runs with Register Globals on or off. It is not required to be on, as it is in osCommerce. Although, Zen Cart can run with register globals on, for better security, it is recommended that you keep it off. However, you may find some hosts which enable this setting to support other applications.

During Zen Cart installation, you will be notified whether Register Globals is on or not. If it is on, you may make it off through editing .htaccess. In the .htaccess file in the webroot, you have to add the following lines:

# to turn off register_globals
php_value register_globals 0

Session handling is an important aspect for any web application such as a shopping cart. Zen Cart has its built-in mechanism to handle session. In fact, Zen Cart uses session handling infrastructure of PHP. It handles login security and keeps the information on each visitor to the Zen Cart shopping cart separately.

SELECT configuration_value FROM configuration WHERE configuration_key = 'SESSION_WRITE_DIRECTORY';

UPDATE configuration SET configuration_value = '/path/to/session/save' WHERE configuration_key = 'SESSION_WRITE_DIRECTORY';

If there is any problem in configuring your Zen Cart shop, you may encounter various error and warning messages. Some of the common warning messages, their causes and remedies are discussed below.

You may encounter this message after modifying some .php files. This warning shows up if you leave a space or extra line at the beginning, or the end of a .php file. The file causing a problem is indicated by its name and line number. Look at after output started at and within brackets in the error message above. Fixing this error is as easy as removing that extra space or extra line. Open that file and go to the line number as reported in the error message. Then ensure that no space or extra line is present before <?php or after the ?> tag.

Usually this kind of error happens when you are working with some custom editors such as Dreamweaver. For example, you have edited files using Dreamweaver and uploaded the files via Dreamweaver without using check-in features. You can avoid this error by using check-in features in Dreamweaver.

Sometimes 'header already sent' error appears after other error messages. In that case, always resolve other errors first, as the other error messages may cause the 'header already sent' error.

This error may be displayed if magic_quotes_runtime is enabled. To be sure, check your phpinfo and see if magic_quotes_runtime is enabled. If it is enabled, you need to turn it off. You can do this by editing the following files:

includes/application_top.php
admin/includes/application_top.php

Open the files in the editor, and just after the licensing terms, add the following lines:

if (get_magic_quotes_runtime()) { set_magic_quotes_runtime(0); }

This error occurs when some files included in the.php files are not found in the set path. For correcting this, first ensure that you have uploaded all files and set correct permissions, especially for the file in question. If that does not fix the problem, check your PHP include_path. You can see these paths along with the error messages you have received. You can also check this setting with phpinfo().

On a Windows server, the include_path needs to start with .; and on a Unix/Linux server, it must start with .:. If the include_path does not contain this, you must configure it in php.ini, or in a .htaccess file.

In the php.ini file, add the following lines:

include_path = ".;Drive:path	ophpincludes" //for windows server
include_path = ".:/path/to/php/includes" //for linux/unix server

Similarly, you configure it by editing the .htaccess file.

For Windows host, add the following line in the .htaccess file:

php_value include_path ".; Drive:path	ophpincludes"

For Unix/Linux host, add the following line in the .htaccess file:

php_value include_path ".:/path/to/php/includes"

This error occurs when you try to access a directory on which you do not have access permission. To get rid of this error message, ensure that the directories listed in the error messages are configured to be accessible by Zen Cart. On a Windows server, the directories are shown separated by a semi-colon (;) and on Unix/Linux servers, these are separated by a colon (:).

This may happen when you are typing a wrong username or password. Remember that passwords are case-sensitive. So, ensure that the Caps Lock is not ON while you are typing your passwords. If you have really forgotten your password there is still hope to recover it, even if it is your admin account password.

The first attempt to recover a forgotten password will be to click on the Resend Password button and enter the admin email address. You will find this button on the admin login screen. Usually, you will get the password in your email box. If, for some reason, you do not receive the password, you can create a temporary password to login only if you have access to a Zen Cart database.

Login to your webhosting control panel, open phpMyAdmin, select the Zen Cart database and click on the SQL tab. In the query box, type the following query and click on run:

DELETE FROM zc_admin WHERE admin_name = 'Admin';
INSERT INTO zc_admin (admin_name, admin_email, admin_pass, admin_level) VALUES ('Admin', 'admin@localhost', '351683ea4e19efe34874b501fdbf9792:9b', 1);

Here zc_ is the prefix for the Zen Cart tables. Your database may use different prefixes or none. In that case, replace zc_ with the prefix you are using. Running this query will create a temporary admin account with a username admin and a password admin. You can now login to the administration area using these usernames and passwords.

It is important that, after you log in, delete this temporary admin account and create a new one from Tools | Admin Settings. Click on the insert button to create a new admin account. You have to provide the username, email address, and password for creating a a new admin account.

Enabling the session.auto_start setting starts a session automatically which creates a problem with proper session management. If you receive this warning, you have to disable this setting. You can do this by editing php.ini or the .htaccess file.

If you have access to the php.ini file, set the directive session.auto_start to 0, as follows:

session.auto_start = 0

In most of the cases you can edit the .htaccess file. If you do not see the .htaccess file in your Zen Cart directory, create one. Then add the following line to that .htaccess file and save it:

php_value session.auto_start 0

Your last resort will be to contact your host provider and ask them to disable this setting on the server.

This error occurs when you forget to put a backslash () before a single quote (') in one of your define() statements in the language file. For example, the following line will result in similar error:

define('TEXT_SOMETHING','This is something simple that's used as an example'),

Here a ' is not escaped, so this will fire an error message. To correct this error, escape the character as follows:

define('TEXT_SOMETHING','This is something simple that's used as an example'),

Sometimes, you may have a symptom whereby clicking on a login link will result in a message saying that the page contains both secure and non-secure items. Usually this happens on all secure pages, especially in My Account and Checkout areas.

This problem occurs when:

To solve the problem on your browser, view the source of the pages creating the problem and search for src=http://. When you find the links, edit the corresponding template files, and remove the hard-coded links. If they are caused by click-tracking scripts somewhere, try converting them to https:// links, or contact the vendor for assistance with alternate scripts.

You may face problems during login as a customer, or in the administration area. These problems are mainly due to some settings which control session handling and the authentication of users. The following sections highlight some common problems related to login.

<label class="inputLabel" for="login-password"> <?php echo ENTRY_PASSWORD; ?></label>
<?php echo zen_draw_password_field('password', '', zen_set_field_length(TABLE_CUSTOMERS, 'customers_password') .
' id="login-password"'), ?>
<br class="clearBoth" />
</fieldset>

<?php echo zen_draw_hidden_field('securityToken', $_SESSION['securityToken']); ?>

function zen_session_start() {
@ini_set('session.gc_probability', 1);
@ini_set('session.gc_divisor', 2);
if (defined('DIR_WS_ADMIN')) {
@ini_set('session.gc_maxlifetime', (SESSION_TIMEOUT_ADMIN < 900 ? 
(SESSION_TIMEOUT_ADMIN + 900) : SESSION_TIMEOUT_ADMIN));
}
return session_start();

}

function zen_session_start() {
@ini_set('session.gc_probability', 1);
@ini_set('session.gc_divisor', 2);
if (defined('DIR_WS_ADMIN')) {
@ini_set('session.gc_maxlifetime', (SESSION_TIMEOUT_ADMIN < 900 ? 
(SESSION_TIMEOUT_ADMIN + 900) : SESSION_TIMEOUT_ADMIN));
}
$temp = session_start();
if (!isset($_SESSION['securityToken'])) {
$_SESSION['securityToken'] = md5(uniqid(rand(), true));
}
if (ereg_replace('[a-zA-Z0-9]', '', session_id()) != '') session_regenerate_id();
return $temp;

}

Forgotten Admin Password

The password for the administrator account is assigned during the installation of Zen Cart. Once the installation of Zen Cart is finished, you can log in to the administration area by using the admin account and its password. If you forget the password for the admin account, there is an easy way to get a new password. In the admin login page, click on Resend Password, and then type the administrator's email address and click on the resend button. A new password will be sent to that email address. You then can log in using that password.

If for some reasons you cannot retrieve the admin password using the Resend Password feature, you have to create a temporary admin password for logging into the administration area. However, you need access to your MySQL database. Usually, you get cPanel and phpMyAdmin installed on your server.

For creating a temporary admin account and password to login to the administration area, follow these steps:

1. Login to cPanel and run phpMyAdmin.

2. Click on the SQL tab and run the following query:

   DELETE FROM admin WHERE admin_name = 'Admin';
   INSERT INTO admin (admin_name, admin_email, admin_pass, admin_level) VALUES ('Admin', 'admin@localhost', '351683ea4e19efe34874b501fdbf9792:9b', 1);
   

   If you are using a prefix to the Zen Cart database tables, add that prefix with the table name, for example, INSERT INTO zc_admin.

3. Running the above query will create an admin account with the password as admin. Now, you can log in to the admin area using the username admin and password admin.

4. Change the password and email address once you have logged in to the administration area.

Zen Cart templates are located in the /includes/templates/ folder. Under this, you will find a folder named classic, the files that exist there can be overridden by placing a copy of the file you wish to alter inside another folder named after your custom template. The name of custom template is defined in the template_info.php file.

The folder with the template_info.php file, a css folder and the .css files needs to be located at includes/templates/your_template. The other folders that are in the template_default can be created in your_template folder, such as includes/templates/your_template/css and so on.

Once this is done, you should be able to see the template name from your administration area in Tools | Template Selection. If you do not see it there and cannot select it, you have done something incorrectly.

Remember that you need to put only the edited files in an override folder. As you edit more files in other locations, you will have several folders that are named after your template name. Note that, wherever there is a classic folder, you can create a template folder to keep your copied and edited files to have an override effect.

Sometimes, the images shown on your online shop may have problems due to inappropriate configurations related to image display or changes in the images directory. The following sections highlights two categories of problems related to images in the Zen Cart online shop.

Emails are very important for an online shop. Customers are notified about the status of their orders through emails, administrators are also notified by e-mail about new orders. Email communication in Zen Cart works fine, once it is configured correctly. However, sometimes you may experience troubles in communicating through emails. The following sections highlight the email related problems in Zen Cart.

Bounce Handling

You may face problems with bounced emails from newsletter subscribers. By default, Zen Cart has no mechanism to handle bounced emails. If you see that newsletters/emails have bounced back, the first thing you should do is turn off that particular subscriber. You can unsubscribe someone by going to the Customers | Customers screen. Enter email address in the search box in the upper right corner, and then press Enter. When you find the customer with that email address, click on that and edit the settings for that customer. Turn off subscription to newsletters.

Note

When you find that a customer's email address is not active, or newsletters bounce from a particular address, you can email that customer directly to test whether their account is really active or not. For your store's security, you should not allow any user without a valid email address.

Database connection errors are very rare if you continue to use the same server after installing Zen Cart. However, connection errors may occur when you are migrating to another server, or when you have upgraded your MySQL database server.

In case of database connection errors, you will get exact error messages indicating connectivity problems. This error may be connected to the server, or a specific database. You will find database connectivity related configurations in the /includes/configure.php file. Check the following settings in this file:

// define our database connection
define('DB_TYPE', 'mysql'),
define('DB_PREFIX', ''),
define('DB_SERVER', 'localhost'),
define('DB_SERVER_USERNAME', 'root'),
define('DB_SERVER_PASSWORD', ''),
define('DB_DATABASE', 'zencart'),
define('USE_PCONNECT', 'false'), // use persistent connections?

The above defines mean:

If you are facing a problem with database connectivity, check whether the database itself is running. Try connecting to the database from another application. If you can connect to the database from other applications, then it is likely that you have a problem with the database configuration for Zen Cart. Check the above variables and test the results.