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Getting your shopping cart running is like preparing your store for its opening. There are some settings you’d have to check. Keep in mind, an organized shopping cart is an easier one to maintain. There are 15 configuration options that you will be asked to set under the Admin> Configuration, this is setting up the foundation for your store billing and shipping and your market overlay. 

Admin> Configuration> My Store

This is where you set computations for both level taxes for every purchase made and shipping done.

Basic of Product Tax  - tax calculations for products purchased

Basis of Shipping Tax – tax calculations for shipped products

HTML Editor -There is also the matter of what editor you choose for your product descriptions and customer service related activity (e-mails and newsletters).

Admin> Configuration> E-Mail Options

E-mail to customers can be text or you can choose HTML based. If this is the case, enable USE MIME HTML When Sending Emails.

Settings for Admin receiving e-mails are found under the E-mail Admin Format

Settings for Admin receiving copies of messages automatically sent to your customer.

Admin> Configuration> Images

This is where you set image sizes best for your set-up

Admin> Configuration> GZip Compression

Page upload and display is faster using the GZip Compression. Some servers support this. As we have written from the start, knowing how you want your site to look helps you choose the features you need in a server. A virtual store site that is image heavy needs GZip as opposed to a moderately image based one.

Admin> Configuration> Customer Details

This is where you choose to have displayed/requested components or not.

Customer access authorization settings are found here. It is advisable to enable this setting for Customer Service purposes

Admin> Configuration> Credit Cards

Preference for card acceptance is enabled here.

Admin> Modules> Payment

Payment methods for your clients can be set under here.

Admin> Configuration> Shipping/Packaging

Setting indicating the Country of origin is enabled here.

Settings for Postal / Zip Codes are also enabled here.      

*keep in mind Zip codes can effectively assist you in shipping cost quotations.

Admin> Modules> Shipping

This is where you choose your preferred shipping providers.        

Admin> Locations/Taxes> Zones Definitions

There are tax zones in some regions and countries where taxes are required.

Admin> Locations/Taxes> Tax Classes

Some merchants have different tax combinations for every product, especially for distributor sites that deal with several suppliers from different locations. In lone product or solo brand sites one category is advisable.

Admin> Locations/Taxes> Tax Rates

This is where you link tax classes and zones. After this you can enter the tax rate for those combinations here.

Admin> Localization> Currencies

Currencies from the regions and countries you sell products to are set here for accept and process

Admin> Localization> Languages

The Zen Cart supports languages aside from English.

Admin – Catalog – Manufacturers

This setting is to link products on your site to its manufacturers, some online shops prefer to extend link as such.

Admin> Catalog> Categories/ Products

After setting all the information you will need for keeping track of your customer carts, now is the time to name categories for your products and assign products per category. For online stores that sell only one product, you could organize this by size or flavor or even variant.

These settings are set at the beginning of opening your store online, once made this would only be changed when needed. Some are eager to get started with their online cart with the thought that there is only product information to be uploaded. The set Admin> Configuration settings are put for your shopping cart to do the computing and assigning that needs to be done. If possible, have settings done before you even open your virtual store to save you time from having to go back once you site is online.

In our previous entry, choosing the right FTP will figure in the next step you’ll be going through to get your Zen Shopping Cart up. What may keep you from uploading FTP files onto your webserver may be the long file names of your cart settings. 

Let’s say that your FTP software is just the right one, upload your files through FTP on to your directory in the web host server. Keep file name preferences simple and easily remembered. Building up your directory is easier if you know what file went where.

File preference by most web hosts aren’t shown in public, then again there are some files that your client can have access to. Such as the link to your landing page from your e-mail:

/Home/MYPRODUCT/landingpage_html

Or some document files about your store

/var/www/YOURSTORE/httpdocs

Or even about user account information

/user/accounts/a/YOURNAME/httpd.

Notice the last string of letters for every file path? These are where all your shopping cart’s content is served from in short the webroot. The suffixes “html” “httpdocs” and “httpd” or sometimes “wwwroot” folder are common file names for your webroot. 

A shopping cart’s webroot is where all ZenCart files, site images and coded content must be found under this folder. When checking you uploaded cart software and a page 404’s then most often your content is not found because it isn’t where it is supposed to be.

Once you’ve uploaded your FTP files to your web host server, you would need to create (2) files. One file identifies the settings of your server while the other contains the location of the FTP files you’ve recently uploaded. Don’t forget to change the access permissions to these files, through your FTP change these permissions with the use of the chmod feature:

Right click on directory or file name opens to a menu under ‘properties’ gives this option. 

Once this is done, you can go to your server to rename configure files and change permissions to read-write-execute for all.

Locate file: /catalog/includes/dist-configure.php rename to configure.php and proceed to change permissions to 777 (read-write-execute for all).

Locate the 2nd file: /catalog/admin/includes/dist-configure.php rename to configure.php and proceed to change permissions to 777 (read-write-execute for all).

The difference of both files renamed configure.php is the first file are your cart’s inclusions and the second is the admin inclusion.

Owning a shopping cart site calls for indepth involvement, the ZenCart is one of the easiest to master in osCommerce programs. When in doubt contact your customer support for your domain.