January 2009

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At this point we are going to assume you already have ZenCart installed on your site. It will be in either the root directory of your website with a url like: http://www.yourdomain.com or be in a subdirectory and have a url like: http://www.yourdomain.com/cart

For example, the URL for my project cart is: http://www.valhalla-computers.com/project and the admin panel is located at: http://www.valhalla-computers.com/project/admin

To access the admin panel for ZenCart, where you will gain control of 98% of the features it has to offer, you will need to point your browser to the admin page by one the following means:

• http://www.yourdomain.com/admin
• http://www.yourdomain.com/cart/admin

In either of the above cases replace yourdomain with the name of your domain, and if it's installed in a directory other then cart, replace that with the proper directory name as well.

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Right now you're probably looking at everything and thinking "What have I gotten myself into ???" and getting ready to send me an email and screaming for help. First, don't send that email, keep reading.

What you are looking at right now is the main screen for the Admin Panel in Zencart. It's from here that you will find links to control all of the various functions of Zencart.

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Take a look at the picture to the right, it has numbers on it much like a diagram for a toy. While looking at the image, you can come back here and see what the numbers mean and what function it has on the cart.

1. ZenCart status - This is important, here is where you can tell if your version of ZenCart is up to date, it will do one of three things, show a button to check for updates, tell you that your version is up to date, or inform you that a new version of ZenCart is available and you should upgrade.
   
   
2. Primary Navigation Bar - Here are the main links for the admin panel that allow you to return to the main admin page, view the shopping cart from a customers point of view, visit the ZenCart website, check your version, or logout. On the right it also includes the time of day and your IP address.
   
   
3. Secondary Navigation Bar - This is the light green bar across the screen under the Primary Navigation Bar. It contains links that you can hover your mouse over and they will dropdown a list of links you can then click on to go to the various sections of the admin panel. It's this link bar that will be used throughout most of the tutorials.
   
   
4. Primary Navigation Bar - This is just to show you exactly where the links are in the bar mentioned in section 2.
   
   
5. Site Statistics - Here you can view some great information about your site. It includes information on how many hits you've had to your cart, how many registered customers you have, the number of products on your site, how many reviews you have and the number of newsletter subscribers.
   
   
6. Site Statistics - This portion here lets you quickly see what specials have expired on your site, how many are active, and the same for featured products and sales that you are running on your site.
   
   
7. Site Statistics - this section shows you the number of orders you have and what their status is. You can click on these links to see a list of the orders in the various stages.
   
   
8. New Customers - Here is a useful little block that shows you the most recent customers that have registered on your site.
   
   
9. Counter History - This little block will show the number of pageviews and sessions that your site has had each day and lets you compare it to several days before so you can try different things and see what results it has on the traffic to your site.
   
   
10. New Orders - Here you can view the latest orders that have been completed on your site.

The second picture to the right, shows an admin panel that's been in use for some times and all of the sections are populated with information just to give you an idea of what you can see there.

The main bar you will need to pay attention to is the Secondary Navigation Bar which again, is the light green bar that run across the screen. This is where you will be starting your journey to other screen in the admin panel.

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