Zen Cart

Zen Cart is an incredible shopping cart software. It is editable, has great support (via forums), a great team and alot of contributions. It is the best open source shopping cart in my opinion. Visit their website at http://www.zen-cart.com for more information.

Open-source software generally allows anybody to make a new version of the software, port it to new operating systems and processor architectures, share it with others or market it. The aim of open source is to let the product be more understandable, modifiable, duplicatable, or simply accessible, while it is still marketable. - Wikipedia.com

How To Add An Attribute

The first step to creating a category is to log into your administration area in Zen. To do this, goto the web address of your store followed by /admin.

It would look something like this:

http://www.yourdomain.com/admin
or
http://www.yourdomain.com/store/admin
This would be used if your store is located in another directory.

Of course, change yourdomain.com to whatever your domain (web address) would be.

Once you get to the administration area, you will see the following:

Enter the username and password you chose or were assigned. If you do not know this information, contact the person who set up your cart.

MAIN ZEN SCREEN

Alright! You are now logged in to the administration area of Zen Cart! This is also know as the backend because your users do not have access to this area and it is more or less behind the scenes.

Now that you are logged into your administration area, you will see the following screen:

Please click on this image to see the full picture. This will open a new window.

For now, we will just concentrate on the 'Catalog' menu option.

Hover over the 'Catalog' menu option and select the Option Name Manager.

Please click on this image to see the full picture. This will open a new window.

OPTION NAME MANAGER SCREEN

You are now at the option name manager screen. This allows you add a main option such as size, color or any other options. You can further narrow down your options a little later.

We will now create our main option as demonstrated below:

Please click on this image to see the full picture. This will open a new window.

1. Option Name - Here you enter option name.. such as size or color.
2. Order - What order you want it to be displayed in.
3. Type of Option - Select how you want your options to be displayed.
4. Insert - Click this button to add the attribute.

Now that we have this completed, we can narrow down options. To do this, click on the 'Option Names' screen as demondstrated below.

Making that selection, will bring up the following screen:

Please click on this image to see the full picture. This will open a new window.

Now that we are at this screen we can narrow down the options. You need to fill in the following option:

1. Drop Down Box - This is where we select what option we want to add our attributes to. So, if you were to use the color attribute, you would select color. But for this we will select 'Options'.
2. Option Description - Having selected the proper option now we will enter the description. If you were to use color you would enter blue, green or whatever you want it to be.
3. Order - This is just the order you would like .
4. Insert - Click this button to add the attribute

For more than one attribute, just repeat the steps mentioned above. We can now move on to adding the attributes to the individual products. To do this, please click on the 'Attribute Controller' button.

This will bring us to the product selection screen. From here, select the category your product is in with the drop down box.

Our category is now selected and we can select the product from the list below. Find your product and select it. Once it is selected, press 'Display'.

This is the last step! You will have some options but for now, we will just concentrate on the additional price and weight.

Please click on this image to see the full picture. This will open a new window.

1. Option Name - Select the option type such as color or size.
2. Option Value - Select the value such as blue or large.
3. Price - Set the price of the extra attribute (if any).
4. Weight - Add the weight of the extra attribute.
5. Insert - Click insert to add this to your product

It is important to note that if you have a quantity box for your attributes, you must enter some amount or they wont show up!

Now we are all finished! Just repeat the process to add as many attributes as you would like!