Here are the steps to add featured products to your website. It’s best to add 3 to 6 products. If you feature too many products then the message will get lost.

1. To add a featured product

- Navigate to Catalog -> Featured Products
- Click the New Product button
- Select the Product from the dropdown box 
  
- Select the Available Date and Expriy Date (Note: The date ranges selected are the dates that the product will display in the featured products box. Once the date range is over, the product will no longer display in the featured products section)
- Click the insert button

2. Edit a product

To edit a product, click the e icon  in the Action column.

3. Delete a product

To delete a product, click the x icon  in the Action column.

Adding or editing informational content to your zen cart store is really quite easy!  But just like everything else with Zen Cart, you have to know where to make the changes.

How to Edit Pages in Zen Cart’s Define Pages Editor

Zen Cart comes with multiple information pages pre-installed which are viewable via the “Information” sidebox.

To edit these pages
- navigate to Tools –> Define Pages Editor
- select HTMLarea as your Text Editor if you do not know html
- select a file to edit in the dropdown list

Note: the following buttons might come in handy when editing your page:
- : Toggle html source, this button will show the html code
- : Enlarge editor, this button will enlarge the screen, which makes it easier to edit

Below is a list of the files you can edit and which page they change, most are self explanatory. 

• define_checkout_success.php:  The page customers see when they have completed placing an order.
• define_conditions.php:  Terms and Conditions for using your web site.
• define_contact_us.php: Changes to this file will add text above the Contact Us form that comes standard with zen cart.
• define_discount_coupon.php: Text to help customers search for available discount coupons.
• define_mainpage.php: This is your home page text.
• define_page2.php: An additional information page provided by zen cart. To turn off the file so that it is not viewable from the front end of your site go to Configuration –> Define Pages Status in the admin and check option 3 for Define Page 2. NOTE: Also turn off sideboxes/more_information.php on the Tools –> Layout Box Controller page of the admin area of your site.
• define_page3.php: An additional information page provided by zen cart.
• define_page4.php: An additional information page provided by zen cart.
• define_page_not_found.php: Zen Cart will automatically show the site map if a visitor tries to access a page that is no longer available. Changing this text will add a message above the site map links.
• define_privacy.php: A word about your privacy policy.
• define_shippinginfo.php: A word about your shipping rates and return policy.
• define_site_map.php: A few words to place above your site map links.

How To Edit Zen Cart EZ Pages

You may want to add more personalized informational pages to your web site such as Schedule of Events, Press, etc.
To accomplish this, Zen Cart has provided the ezPages section.

• Navigate to Tools –> EZ-Pages in the admin panel.
• Click on the “New File” button
• Fill in the Page Title.
• Select whether the page will open in a new window and if the page needs to be secure (SSL).
• The next section determines which area of the layout the link will appear. Select Header, Sidebox, or Footer and assign a sort order. This number must be 1 or higher, the links will appear in the order you assign here. Pages with the same sort order number will appear alphabetically.
• Enter your content in the box provided.
• There may be instances where you want another page to appear with the EZ Pages. For example, when I design web sites I like to have a site map and privacy link in the footer section. The text for these pages has already been defined in the Define Languages Editor (see section above). If this is the case, do not enter any text in the box provided, instead enter the url of the page in the Internal Link URL box. The link to add for the site map is index.php?main_page=site_map The link to add for a copy of the privacy page is index.php?main_page=privacy If you would like to add a copy of another page to the EZ Pages section, navigate to that page on the front end of your web site and copy the text after the .com/ of the web address.
• Click on the Insert button

NOTE: If you want your EZ Pages to appear in a sidebox, make sure that sideboxes/ezpages.php is turned on and assigned a value in the Tools –> Layout Boxes Controller section of your admin panel.

Your web site is now looking good!

In this tutorial you’ll learn how to backup your Zen Cart Store.

Doing a backup of your Zen Cart store requires TWO components:
1) A copy of all the files in your Zen Cart folder via FTP 
2) a copy of your database

There is a different tutorial on this site to learn how to backup using FTP, here I’ll only explain the second step: how to backup the database.

Backup the Zen Cart database

I use the plugin Backup MYSQL Plugin.

Click Tools > Database Backup MySQL.

Click Backup.

I pefer the option “use GZIP” and “download without storing on server“, click Backup.

A window will open, click Save and choose the folder you want so save in and click Save again.

The file will now be downloaded and will be saved on your computer.

In this tutorial you’ll learn how to add attributes like color and size to your products in your Zen Cart store.

There are 3 steps to adding attributes to a product:

• Define Option Name – for instance “color”
• Define Option Value – for instance “blue”, “white” and “black”
• Set the Attributes for the product

1.1   Defining Option Names

Click Catalog > Option Name Manager

On the empty line at the bottom:

- enter the option name
- enter the sort order (this is the sort order the Option Name displays on the screen.)
- select option type:

• Dropdown
• Radio Button
• Checkbox
• TEXT (this does not get an Option Value)
• FILE (This does not get an Option Value)
• READONLY (this is for display purposes only. It is more or less an informational attribute.)

On some Option Names, based on the Type … there are more settings:
For Option Type TEXT:

• Comments

• Max Display Size (size of input box on screen)
• Max Length (max number of characters/spaces)

For Option Type Radio buttons and checkboxes: There are choices of image layout

- select Insert

1.2   Defining Option Values

Now … you should have made all the Option Names you need, like “Color”, “Size” etc.
Now you have to set all the Option Values for these like: “Red”, “Orange”, “Yellow”, … and “Small”, “Medium”, “Large”, …

Click Catalog > Option Value Manager

On the empty line at the bottom:

-   Select  the Option Name

-  Give a Name like Red

-  Give a default Sort Order (I usually leave it at 0 and set these manually per product)

-  Click Insert

1.3     Attributes Controller

Now we have to add the attributes to the products.

Adding the Attributes to the Products
Click Catalog > Attributes Controller

a) Select a Product to add Attributes to
You can look up a product in a couple ways …
- Either pick a Category or a Product
- When you pick a category, the ones with a * have products in them and this will display the first product Previous/Next
- When you pick a product,  click display … this sets the category to this product’s master category id … so you can now use the Previous/Next if you like.

b) Add the Attribute Option Name+Value Pairs
Once the Product is displayed that you want to add attributes to … go to the Add Attributes box

 1. Now select the Option Name, for instance color

 2. Next select a matching Option Value, the option nam between parentheses must match, for instance red [COLOR].
I always start with the value “please select ..” to make sure a buyer makes  conscious decision.

 3. Depending on what you want to do with attributes there are several methods to price, add weight, sort order, …
- Price can be entered with a prefix of + or – or blank. + and blank will add the attribute price – will subtract the attribute price
- Weight can be entered optionally if it effects the product weight with a prefix of + or – or blank.
- Sort order, to sort the option values in a certain order

4. Then there are the Attribute Flags in the colored boxes.
These are used to help distinquish other features of the attribute such as:

• Use for display only (attribute cannot be selected and added to cart. Good for things like “Select from Below” to force the customer to make their own choice and not just hit Add to Cart and get a pink snail instead of a blue snail.
• Attribute is Free when product is Free (Some products you may set to Free … but the some attributes are free and some attributes cost money.)
• Default Attribute (Should be used especially on Radio buttons, or if you have an attribute you prefer the customer selects.)
• Apply Discounts used by Product Sale/Special (this will apply the same type of discount that the product is getting from the products_price vs the special or sale price.)
• Include in Base Price (when products are priced by attributes mark the attributes include in base price then the lowest price in each Option Name group are added together to make up the product price. NOTE: when not the product is not marked priced by attribute this setting has no effect on the price.)
• Attribute Required for TEXT (Some text is required text and cannot be left blank by the customer.)

5. If this attribute is a downloadable file, enter the filename. This file needs to be uploaded with FTP to the “download” folder. 

6. Click Insert..

All the Product attributes will apear above the “add attribute” box.  

You can edit the attributes by clicking on the Edit button or clicking on the color coded buttons.

In this tutorial you’ll learn how to add products in your Zen Cart store, how to edit products in your Zen Cart store and how to add attributes to your products in your Zen Cart Store.

1. Add a new product
2. Edit a product
3. Delete a product
4. Move a product
5. Copy a product
6. Add and edit Attributes
7. Edit price
8. Add metatags

1. Add a new product

To create a new product :
- click the category in which you want to add the product
- click the New product button.

Enter the preferred product details.

• Products Status:  if you select “out of stock”, the product will NOT be shown.  If you want it to show as “sold out”, you need to select “in stock” and then later change the product quantity
• Date Available:  If you want to add the product now, but want it to become available for purchase later, then enter a date, if not then just leave blank
• Products Manufacturer: enter the products manufacturer, or leave blank
• Products Name: enter the products name
• Product is Free: select yes or no (you can use this for giveaways)
• Product is Call for Price: select this option if you want it do display “call or email for price”
• Product Priced by Attributes: attributes are options you can add to the product, for instance if you give the option of purchasing a product in blue, red or yellow and those options have different prices, then select “yes”.
•  Tax Class: select “taxable goods” if applicable
• Products Price (Net): enter price (no $ sign)
• Products Price (Gross): will be calculated upon the tax you entered in the settings
• Product is Virtual: select “yes” for digital products or downloads
• Always Free Shipping: select “yes” or “no”
• Products Quantity Box Shows: select “yes” if you want customers to be able to select the quantity
• Product Qty Minimum: enter the minimum amount of products that a customer needs to purchase
• Product Qty Maximum: enter the maximum amount of products that a customer can purchase
• Product Qty Units: How many products are in 1 unit, I always have 1 here, because even if I sell a set of 4 glasses, I will sell them as 1 product and not as 4
• Product Qty Min/Unit Mix: select “yes” if the minimum quantity can be a Mix of Attributes
• Products Description: enter the product description
• Products Quantity: enter the products quantity, enter “0” for “out of stock” and I use “-1” for “coming soon” (you can program a different status for every negative amount)
• Products Model: enter the model, for instance a color, a quantity, a design, a product number, …
• Products Image:
  - first prepare the image with photo editing software (I crop all my images square, so I can use landscape and portrait images)
  - then click the “browse button” and add the image
  - to make your site more structured, you an choose to add the image in a certain folder, but that folder needs to be created first with ftp
  - to add multiple images: you need to add a number to the filename, for instance you name the main image “flowervase”, then the other images can have the name “flowervase-01” and “flowervase-02”, you have to add those extra images with FTP
• Products URL: If the product’s manufacturer has a description page for the product, you can use this link to access it, I usually leave it blank
• Products Shipping Weight: very important if you use an automated shipping calculator!!
• Sort Order: Sort Order will dictate the order in which products are displayed on the category product page, if left to 0, it will sort alphabetically

When done, please click the Preview button at the top/bottom of the page. That will show the product preview.

Click Insert to proceed, or Back to continue editing the item.

2. Edit a product

To edit a product, click the e icon  in the Action column.

3. Delete a product

To delete a product, click the x icon  in the Action column.

4. Move a product

To move a product, click the m icon  in the Action column.

5. Copy a product

To copy a product, click the c icon  in the Action column.  A linked product is a product that is set up to display in more than one category.  This means that you only have to edit that product in one place in order to have changes take effect everywhere it is displayed. Linking also means that you’ll not see the same product appear more than once in a given list of products.
If you make a “copy” of a product, instead of linking it, then you will have two distinct and separate products which would require separate editing if you were to make changes later.  In the case of a copy, you might end up seeing both versions of the product appearing in various product lists. 
Use the button “Multiple Categories Link Manager” to quickly add the products to several categories.

6. Add and edit Attributes

To add attributes to a product, click the A icon  in the Action column (I will explain about attributes later).
To edit the attributes of a product, click the A icon  in the Action column.

7. Edit price

To edit the price of a product, click the $ icon  in the Action column.

8. Add metatags

To add metatags to a product, click the icon  in the Action column, it might make it easier to be found by search engines.

In this tutorial you’ll learn how to add and edit categories to your Zen Cart store.

1. Add a new category in Zencart
2. Edit a category in Zencart
3. Move a category in Zencart
4. Delete a category in Zencart
5. Add metatags to a category in Zencart

1. Add a new category in Zencart

To add a new category, start by selecting the Categories/Products from the Catalog menu.

Click the New Category button and then fill in the details.
Click Save when done.

2. Edit a category in Zencart

In order to edit a category that you have created, click the e icon  in the Action column.

3. Move a category in Zencart

To move a category, click the m icon   in the Action column.

4. Delete a category in Zencart

In order to delete a category, click the x icon  in the Action column.
Warning: deleting a category will remove all subcategories and products! You can either confirm removal or cancel the action on the next page.

5. Add metatags to a category in Zencart

To add metatags to categories, click the icon  in the Action column, it might make it easier to be found by search engines.