Building your own ecommerce site with ZenCart is surprisingly easy. If you’ve had any experience with HTML you can probably get the job done, but an understanding of PHP and especially includes and the ZenCart overrides system can be very helpful.
What you need to know before you start installing ZenCart:
1. creating a template of your own is a smart move, and can save you time by letting you switch back to default to isolate theme related issues.
2. You need to change the name of the admin directory for security, but here we’ll just refer to it as /admin.
3. There are other more robust CMS systems out there, but Zen Cart offers a focused community and product and can be a great choice if you want tight control over your site and a generally simpler code base than some of the more robust CMS.
4. Plan your module choices well. Choosing modules relevant to your business is critical, and matching to your version is as well here.
5. Signup for the ZenCart forums! People are very helpful, and if you are respectful and informative AFTER doing a few searches you’ll find a relevant thread to get guidance in.
If you’re convinced go ahead and hit their download page or check out this site I helped build with ZenCart.
