ZenCart is one of our free one-click installs that often gets overlooked, but it’s a surprisingly powerful ecommerce solution perfect for small budgets. Whilst you could use a variety of CMSs to set up an online store, ZenCart has an integrated ordering system and shopping cart so you can just change your settings, tweak your template, add your product information and you’re ready to go. You can accept payments via Paypal, and you can also securely accept card payments with the addition of an SSL certificate.

You can sell physical products, downloads such as PDFs, or a combination of the two. If you’re a designer, this makes Zen Cart a great option for selling things such as patterns and themes which customers can buy and download instantly with no work required on your part. If you sell on websites such as eBay, Amazon or Etsy but are ready to take it to the next level then selling via your own website is a great way to cut out listing fees and third party design/content restrictions.

An example of a Zen Cart store (click the image to view the demo or download the template):

How to install Zen Cart:

What else do I need?

Getting Started

Just like any ecommerce platform, Zen Cart takes a bit of getting used to at first…largely because of the number of features on offer and the customisation you’ll probably want to do. Once you’ve installed Zen Cart, sign up at the free support forum, which has plenty of knowledgeable members who are happy to help out with any specific problems you may have.

1st Web Designer also has an excellent beginner’s guide to Zen Cart. Tutorials are widely available via a quick search, and the official Zen Cart website contains plenty of useful articles which can be found here.

Tip:

Free Zen Cart Templates

There are plenty of free and premium templates available for Zen Cart if you don’t like the look of the standard ones. Some free template sites to get started are:

ZenCartTemplates.info

Zen-Cart-Power.net – Free Templates

Hidden Pixels – Zen Cart Templates

Add-Ons

Whilst the Zen Cart add-on community is small, there are still plenty of decent extensions available. In many cases, you’ll be able to tweak your code to do what you want without an add-on. The Zen Cart add-on directory is located here, and well worth bookmarking.

Warning:

Quick Answers

How to change the page title:

How to remove a product’s weight, model number, ‘date added to catalog’ and more:

How to remove product categories from the template header:

How to set free postage for orders over a certain amount:

How to edit your Zen Cart footer:

How to automatically print orders:

Keeping up to date

As with any software, it’s important to keep up to date with upgrades and security fixes, particularly with the personal details accrued from running an ecommerce website. Once you’ve signed up to the Zen Cart support form, you can subscribe to this thread to receive email notifications of upgrade announcements.