Zen Cart Documentation
Prepare
Before you proceed to setting up your Zen Cart Web site, please make sure you are fully prepared. Please complete the following preparation steps:
Editing software
To feel comfortable working with Zen Cart template, we recommend downloading all applications required. You can see
the list of required software on the template preview page.
The requirements may vary for different templates so
we'll tell you here what is needed in general:
- First, you need the right applications to extract the password protected sources_#########.zip archive. WinZip 9+ (Windows) and Stuffit Expander 10+ (Mac) is the required software.
- You may also need Adobe Photoshop application. It is used to edit .PSD source files and it is necessary if you want to edit template design graphics and images.
- To edit template source code files, you need some code editor like Sublime Text, Adobe Dreamweaver (code mode only), Notepad++, etc.
- To upload files to the hosting server, you may need an FTP Manager like Total Commander, FileZilla, CuteFTP, etc.
Hosting
As Zen Cart is a PHP/MySQL based application, you need to prepare a hosting environment to run Zen Cart.
If you have a live hosting, please make sure it matches Zen Cart software requirements and it is ready to be used for Zen Cart websites.
Otherwise you can run Zen Cart locally on your computer using the local server. To create a local hosting server, please use the localhost applications as WAMP, AppServ, MAMP, etc. Any of those can be easily installed as any other program and used to run Zen Cart.
Please check the tutorials below on how to configure local development environment: