Zen Cart Customization

Every Zen Cart owner goes through the same thing:
"Yahoo, it's free!" "Geez, such an easy install thru my hosting control panel!" "Uh, now what? I don't like what it looks like and don't want it to be an obviously Zen Cart website."

The Most Important Customizations

1. Admin configuration changes:  a few key things can make a big difference.
2. Choosing your Sideboxes and Banners: add in a secure shopping box to increase your
    site's trust factor. Remove obvious sideboxes you don't want or need.
3. Changing the default Zen Cart color scheme: can be a simple set of CSS instructions
    that totally changes the look.
4. Adding customization through additional modules or add-ons.

It's number three that really creates the problem. No matter how many books you read, tutorials you search, or videos you watch, getting the look you want or an improved look you like is not easy. 

And if not done correctly, doing it yourself may lead to future problems in your improperly customized Zen Cart.

Your Customization Options are:

  1. Some Zen Cart owners customize by purchasing a template but then they find they want changes to that template. (Buyer Beware! Read more about Zen Cart templates.)
  2. Hire me: template customization, standard, new or edited modules, design installation, customizing your cart to match your existing website.

Oh, and if you are talking to other professionals, ask them if they are Zen Cart experts.  If they reply that they do work on Zen Cart sites, note the omission of the expert label.

Any PHP coder worth his/her salt will tell you they can work on Zen Cart but if they aren't immersed in it, they tend to hack it up to get the desired customized results. That can make future work and upgrades harder and, therefore, increase the cost of your site's maintenance and possibly even lose the previous customizations.

Also, Zen Cart design and layout are CSS based.  This means whoever you hire needs to be extremely well-versed in CSS and preferably already knows the CSS that comes with Zen Cart.

So be careful who you choose to do your Zen Cart Customization.