Black Zen

And yet another free template created by us, for you to download and use for free. Click here to download this free zen cart template from zen-cart.com

Based around the “A Modern Zen” template we created, with a change of colour, this template comes with a built in jquery-ui slider on the main page with an adapter script written by me, that draws four random products from the database and passes the info to the slider to display, image, product name, price etc.
All popup boxes are controlled with jquery aswell, larger images, shipping estimator, help boxes etc.

With this zen cart template, you dont need a lightbox to handle the product images, this template does that for you using jquery, neither do you need to worry about setting up the front page image slider, this template sorts out the images and text for you, pulling all its content straight from your products.

Click here to download this free zen cart template from zen-cart.com

A Modern Zen

This template is available to download for free from zen-cart.com

This template comes with a built in jquery-ui slider on the main page with an adapter script written by me, that draws four random products from the database and passes the info to the slider to display, image, product name, price etc.
All popup boxes are controlled with jquery aswell, larger images, shipping estimator, help boxes etc.

With this zen cart template, you dont need a lightbox to handle the product images, this template does that for you using jquery, neither do you need to worry about setting up the front page image slider, this template sorts out the images and text for you, pulling all its content straight from your products.

For a look at the template on our demo site, click here.
To download the template for free, click here.

Coin Slider Admin Panel

Here is a sneaky peek at the coin slider admin panel for zen cart that I’m creating. The admin panel allows you to choose either to display four random products (on every page load, the coin slider is given four new random products to display) or to set the images and text that you would like displayed instead.

I have given the user an easy to use panel where they can upload the images they want and add the text to each image. When uploading a new image, the old one is deleted from the server.

I have some tidying up to do with the code, but apart from that, the coin slider adapter script for zen cart is pretty much finished and working.

Once I finish the last few bits, I’ll put up a post showing it working properly, front end and admin panel aswell.

To have a look at the coin slider front end, click here, at the moment (as you can see from the image above) the coin slider is set to show four random products.

Coin Slider Adapter, Extra Bits

As you would have noticed from my previous post, Im writing an adapter script for the jquery coin slider to enable it to be slotted into any zen cart and run without the user having to even look at a piece of code. So far the script I’ve written collects four products from the database at random, on every page load on the sites index page, then it presents the relevant info to the coin slider to enable it to display the four products. I’ve decided to go further with it and have started writing an admin panel for zen cart that allows users to either specify images and text for the coin slider to display or let them set the coin slider to pull products from the database and display them.

The next stage is to get the admin panel finished. This will let users upload their own images and enter their own text to display along side each image, in an easy to use manner using an image upload system and easy to use text boxes to enter the info they want to display. All info will be contained within the database and a quick script will pull that info and sort it for the coin slider to read.

I should have this coin slider mod finished within the next few days, so in the mean time, if you want a look at the coin slider (at the moment it pulls four random products from the database and uses them as the slider content) click here

I have one bug to fix still, and its due to IE8 not taking any notice of css background image resizing, easily fixed, but I’ll do that once I’ve finished the admin panel. Once it is finished properly, I’ll post up details of how I coded the adapter and let you look around the admin panel that I am creating.

Coin Slider Adapter

I quite like the jquery coin slider plugin and thought I would write a quick adapter for it to make it easier to use in a zen cart.

The script I wrote collects four random products from the database and presents the relevant info for the coin slider to handle. (I didn’t think there was any need for more than four, I’ll add in an option to specify an amount to show, later) It’s not a complicated script but it does mean this jquery coin slider including the adapter can be slotted straight into any zen cart and will run straight away, collecting its own content straight from the product list.

There is some tidying up to do with the script and one bug to iron out (IE8 is always the problem, it wont take any notice of css background resizing so the images are to big for the slider. Easy fix, dont use css to resize the background images I’ll sort that out soon, although it would be better if people stopped using IE8, I mean come on, it’s useless ).

If you want a look at it in action, while Im working out the last wee bug, have a look here.

New Free Template

This is the zencart template that was created in the “watch me work” video.

This was a quick template, based on the default template which I have altered to change the look and layout. The product page has been rearranged to make it easier for customers, aswell as other changes

To have a look around this template on a demo site, click here.

To download this template for free,click here.

Hosted Solutions

If you are a business that is new to e-commerce, no doubt while doing your research you have came across the myriad of hosted solutions that are offered online. For those that don’t know, a hosted solution is a shopping cart system that is hosted for you by the company that developed the shopping cart system. You are not free to move your website to another hosting provider if you feel the need. You are usually limited by the provider in quite a few ways, from the amount of products you can add to your site, the amount of traffic that visits your site, the amount of email accounts you can have, the list goes on.
Some hosted solutions will give you the contents of the database if you choose to move from their system but most won’t, but whether this data is of any use is debatable. To your average person that has no experience with databases, they will most probably find it quite difficult to import that data into another shopping cart system. It is not impossible, a good web developer should be able to reformat the data and import it into a shopping cart of your choice.
I have a few issues with hosted solutions. If you are running a business online, would you want full control over your own website or would you rather someone else had that control? If you register your domain name through the company that is providing the hosted solution, will they register the domain correctly in your name or will they register your domain name as their own? I have came across too many people who have lost domain names because their provider did not register the domain name properly, instead they registered it to themselves, meaning they own the domain, not the customer, so when the customer chooses to move they no longer have any claim on that domain name at all. So the domain name that they have been trading through is not theirs and there is no way for them to get it back.
What happens if the hosted solution provider goes under? Basically you loose your website, you will more than likely have to start from scratch all over again.
A business using a hosted solution is putting ALL their trust in that company. They have total control over your website and if there are any problems then usually it is you that looses out as you can not just pick your website up and move it to a new host. If you pay for your own hosting account and use a web developer to build a site for you, then you have the control. The website is yours, not the hosting provider, so if anything goes wrong or you choose to move your website you can litterally pick it up and move it to where ever you want. With a hosted solution you can’t, you are tied to that company, they hold all the cards, not you.

If you buy a ready made site from us, or if you employ us to create a website for you, you own that website. If you feel you would rather move your site to another hosting provider you are free to do so, we give you full FTP access and full Cpanel access which means you can download your whole website and database and move it to another hosting provider, you own your website, not us. With a hosted solution, they own the website not you.

Now I am not saying that all hosted solutions are bad and you should steer clear of them all, but you need to consider the facts. Are they providing a service at a reasonable cost? Are they registering your domain name properly in your name? Are they restricting what you can do with your own website in order to charge you extra for more features and functions? Can you get the same features and functions on a cart system that is not a hosted solution? Is it really value for money? Are you willing to put your total trust in a company that owns your website? Or would you rather pay for a hosting account and install a shopping cart system that you have total control over? The choice is yours.

Watch me work

Ever wondered what goes into making a custom Zen Cart template? I decided to record a quick video of me working, creating a template from scratch using the default template as a base to start from, just to let you see for yourself.
To keep the video quite small, I decided to do somthing quite simple and created a template that will be available for you to download and use for free.

Click on the image above (or here) to see the video.

If you want a quick look around the template on our demo site, click here.

To download this template for free, click here

My CodeIgniter project seems to have grown slightly.
Originally I was intending to build quite a simple gallery, that lets you upload and edit images just so I could get used to using the framework, but I thought I could add more, so I did.

Seeing as you can get on the internet from a dozen or so different devices, holding loads of useful info on your desktop seems slightly pointless if you cant access it from every other device you use to browse the net, your phone, laptop, home pc, work pc etc. So a webpanel that holds all this stuff could be rather useful. All your bookmarks, pictures and files, twitter and facebook routed through the same webpanel and connected to your emails aswell. It means you can sign in to your webpanel from any device and access everything you need, post to facebook and twitter from the webpanel, write blog posts and post them directly to your blog from your webpanel etc.

So far I’ve built the registration and user models, gallery, calendar, facebook connection, basics for the twitter connection, I’ve started on the email models and I’ll create a template system to allow users to customise their own webpanel, that and connecting it to blogs, and other useful features that I have ideas for will be added in aswell, which I’ll explain here as I build them.

Once I’ve got it halfway finished, I’ll open it up to let people poke about the application and see what you think

Dropship Computers re-design

We’re at the moment re-designing dropshipcomputers.co.uk
The majority of the design is done, whats left to do is a tidy up with the page contents and it should be pretty much finished.

As usual, this Zen Cart template was designed from scratch by us, I had a play about with the header images, trying to make somthing that looks slightly different to the usual website header. The result was the curvy blue logo backround and just for an added detail I wrapped the logo backround around the menu bar. I decided to tone down the menu bar as my first few efforts were slightly too shiney and it didnt sit well with the curvy blue logo background, so I went for a light grey, less shiney looking bar, and yes we do make all these images ourselves

I’ll post more when the re-design is totally finished and explain what’s been done in slightly more detail, feel free to have a look around the site while I tidy up the last few bits.