Zen Cart rating stars images for dark and light background

June 8, 2009 in Free Images | 2 Comments

The original yellow/gold star images for the Zen Cart rating and review system are not suitable for dark colored backgrounds. As the images are saved as transparent GIF, you can see white fringes if your background is dark in color. See example below:

The original rating stars

You can create a set of images suitable for dark background, but this will work only if your whole page has dark background. If your sideboxes are dark but the main area is light in color, then it may not work, as you may see dark fringes.

Zen Cart and shared hosting

April 21, 2009 in Zen Cart Guides | 1 Comment

When I started to use Zen Cart some time ago, one of the first questions I asked was ‘Is shared web hosting good enough for running Zen Cart?’

Now, after a few years, and after dealing with a number of web hosting companies, I’ll share my experiences of using shared hosting.

Free Zen Cart Template 3

April 19, 2009 in Free Zen Cart Templates | 56 Comments

This is a minimalistic, yet elegant looking Zen Cart e-commerce template suitable for fashion related products (or well, any product you think suitable).

Free Zen Cart Template 3 (Click for large image)

Lightbox for Zen Cart

March 25, 2009 in Zen Cart Add Ons | 38 Comments

If you’re not sure what it is, see demo here (it’s not a Zen Cart site but the same effects — fades the page into dark background and shows the product photo in the same window).

There are already modules available from Zencart.com for adding the lightbox feature for displaying your product images. If you’re interested, you can search the site for the add-ons. But please do read the forum’s support thread for the add-on and see if you’re comfortable with the issues faced by the other users. The add-ons are powerful but a bit complicated (many files involved, cumbersome un-installing and some users faced compatibility issues).

Here is a much easier method to add the Lightbox (this version is actually a Lightbox clone called Slimbox) feature to your Zen Cart store. Only a few additional files, no need to overwrite any files and no database patching involved. Uninstalling means deleting the few files that you have uploaded — simple and painless.

Star Images for Zen Cart Product Reviews and Ratings

December 13, 2008 in Free Images | Leave a Comment

The original gold/yellow color star images are a bit too “outdated”, in my opinion. Most professional sites are using simple and clean designs now — just look at Youtube.com and Yelp.com.

I’ve created a set of very simple star images that can be incorporated into most Zen Cart templates. Have a try — if you do not like them, just delete the images from your template’s folder.

Zen Cart Stylesheets (CSS) System

November 22, 2008 in CSS, Zen Cart Guides | 4 Comments

A while ago, I’ve got a client who asked me why modifications to his CSS file won’t change the look of his Zen Cart e-commerce website (The CSS files for a template are located in the \includes\templates\YOUR_TEMPLATE\css\ ). Anyway, I checked and found that he made a copy of the original CSS file and rename the original file to stylesheet.bak.css, so the new and old CSS files were both in the same folder.

The reason that modifications to the stylesheet.css do not affect the site is because Zen Cart sends BOTH CSS files to the browser. Stylesheet.css is loaded first, then stylesheet.bak.css — The latest loaded file will have the priority over the files before. And, if a CSS selector appears in multiple files (multiple times in a same CSS file), the one loaded last will always be the one used by the browser.

Free Zen Cart Template 2 - Wide

November 13, 2008 in Free Zen Cart Templates | 52 Comments

Some users have told me that most free Zen Cart templates or even commercial Zen Cart templates are just too narrow for their liking. It seems that there is a demand for wider (fixed-width) templates. Here’s one I created — 1000px width. Good enough to accommodate the left and right columns at 200px or more, and still leave enough room to fit 3~4 products per row in the center column comfortably.

Screenshot - Free Zen Cart template 2 (Click for larger image)

Zen Cart Shopping Cart Sidebox with Checkout Button

November 11, 2008 in Zen Cart Add Ons, Zen Cart Customization | 10 Comments

This simple single-file contribution adds a checkout button to the Shopping Cart side box. The button will be displayed only if the shopping cart is not empty and it links directly to the checkout page (index.php?main_page=checkout_shipping).

The appearance of the shopping cart sidebox and checkout button depends on your current template - it’ll NOT be the same as the screen shot above, which is shown only as an example.

How to easily add a ‘Bookmark Us’ link

November 8, 2008 in Zen Cart Customization | 1 Comment

You can easily add a ‘Bookmark Us’ link to anywhere on your Zen Cart e-commerce website. This post will show you the steps to add/append a ‘Bookmark Us’ link to the top navigation links.

The code

You just need to add a small block of code to your template’s tpl_header.php file. The file is located at:
includes\templates\YOUR_TEMPLATE\common\tpl_header.php

Zen Cart Add to Cart Buttons 1 (Large Rounded)

November 5, 2008 in Free Buttons | Leave a Comment

One way to improve your e-commerce online store’s conversion rate is by having a prominent “add to cart” (and checkout) button.

Here are some “add to cart” buttons that you can use to improve your store’s conversion rate and also to make it look nicer. Just choose the one you like from the variations.

Sample of this button in action

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Latest Update: Feb 28, 2010

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