New User Tutorials for ZenCart


New User Tutorials for ZenCart 1.3.8a		January 2009

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Adding Products Now for the moment I know you've all been waiting for.... adding your products to the store so people can buy them and you can enjoy some money in your pocket. Well hold on, because other then coding this might be one of the most complicated parts about ZenCart, but you've made it this far so bear with me and I will get you through this with no problems at all. Some things you're going to need before we get started. A Zip file, anything will do, something around a megabyte in size perfect An image for the product we'll be adding I'll be covering two kinds of products here, downloadable, and shippable. These products differ in that one is virtual, doesn't really exist in the sense that you can't eat it or touch it, and the other is a tangible product that will need to be mailed to your customer. Both products follow the same steps for the most part, and I will make sure to illustrate the differences as we go through this. Let's start by going here: CATALOG > CATEGORIES & PRODUCTS >
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Step One: Where to add the product Before we can actually start I need to let you know that if you create a category, and inside of it have subcategories, you can not have products and subcategories in the same category so to speak. You'll notice that once you add a subcategory into a category, the button vanishes. In order to add a product you have to go into one of the subcategories and add the product there provided that subcategory doesn't have any subs in it as well. The easiest way to know when you can add a product is to look for the button. You'll also notice that once you've reached the bottom of the category, there's no more icons for you to click on.
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Step One: Adding your product Assuming you're looking at the screen as shown in the picture from Step One, click on the button to be taken to the page where we will be adding our product into the cart. To the right are two images that together make up the page for adding new products. Use them for reference as I walk you through adding products. Starting at the top of the page I'll go down line by line and guide you on what to do, we're just going to setup a simple product now so it won't be that hard. Products Status - unless you are editing a product, this will automatically start out as "In Stock", if you want to turn your product off, you can move the dot over to "Out of Stock" as well. If a products stock runs out, it will turn off as well and then once you update the quantity you can turn it back on. Data Available - self explanatory, however, this is good if you are wanting to have a sale but want to let people know something's coming out. Just set the date that the product will be available and when that date comes the product will be available for purchase. Products Name - this one is really self explanatory, put in something "Test Product". Product is Free - put a check in the "Yes" dot if you want your product is free. Product is Call for Price - If you don't want to list prices for a product, or it's something that changes regularly. If you put a tick in the "Yes" box then in the place of the products price the customer will see "CALL FOR PRICE" listed. Tax Class - Please be careful here, not because it will damage the cart, but because you need to be sure that you either need to, or not need to collect tax for the products you sell in your state. You have the option to leave this as "None" or select "Taxable Goods". If you select taxable then the products price will automatically be adjusted. Products Price ( Net ) - Enter the price you want to charge for your product. Products Price ( Gross ) - This will automatically be filled when you add the products price ( net ). Product is Virtual - Here is where you determine whether your product is a download or something that is actually mailed to the customer. Click "Yes" if the product is going to be a downloadable item like a picture or poem or something. Otherwise leave it set to "No" so that the cart knows that during checkout it needs to get the customers shipping address. Always Free Shipping - If your product is something that gets mailed, but you want to have free shipping then click on "Yes, Always Free Shipping". This is useful if you want to inflate your prices then offer free shipping. Products Quantity Box Shows - Leave this set to yes if you want people to be able to purchase more then one of your item. Products Qty Minimum - normally you can leave this alone Products Qty Maximum - normally you can leave this alone Products Qty Units - normally you can leave this alone Products Qty Min/Unit Mix - normally you can leave this alone Products Description - This is pretty self explanatory and is where you will enter a description for your product so that your customers can learn more about it and read details about it. Products Quantity - Here is where you will enter how many of this product you have in stock. If this is a downloadable product you can set this to 1000 or if it's a physical product, you can enter how many of them you have available to mail out. This is very useful in avoiding backorders. Products Model - If you have an item number to help you identify this product then enter it here. I like to name my products in this format: GCW-GR-0001. The GCW tells me it's from GotCandyWraps, the GR tells me it's a graphics pack, and the 0001 is the actual product number. This makes it much easier to find products and keep everything organized. Products Image - Click on the browse button to locate the image file you want to use for this product. In keeping things organized, I also name my pictures to match the Products Model, so my display image would be GCW-GR-0001.jpg. You can use GIF, JPG, BMP, and PNG images here. Once you've found the image you're going to use, click on it and then click on "Open" to add it to the product. This image will automatically be uploaded to the server during the next step. Products URL - This can be used for linking to a manufacturers website that has more information about the product you're selling. Products Shipping Weight - This is important to put in for products that have to be mailed. If you're using the USPS shipping module it will help to calculate the actual shipping charges based on your customers address, your address, and the products weight. There's no need to put "lbs" or "k" for the weight, just add the number there. Sort Order - As mentioned before in setting up your categories, this is useful for listing your products in a specific order. At this point we're ready to take our first look at our new product. Click on the button to go to the next screen where you can get an idea of what your product will look like and check for any spelling errors and make sure that your image loaded up to the site. If everything looks good then click on the button and the product will be added to the cart. If there's an error you want to correct, click on the button, correct it, then proceed.		Part One Part Two Adding An Image Preview Page
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Step Two: New Buttons to play with Now that you've actually added your product you should now be looking at a screen like the one to the right. There's a series of buttons on the right similar to the ones you learned about when adding your categories. Below is what those buttons are for. - Status - As with the categories, this button will allow you to turn a product on or off, it will also turn off automatically and become red if the products inventory falls to zero. - Edit - This button does the same thing as it did for the categories and allows you to edit the product. - Delete - This again is a bad button and will delete the product from the store. There is no way to recover it after you do this so be careful. - Move - This button will allow you to move your product to a different category. - Copy - With this button you have the option to duplicate the product, so that if you want to list the same product several times and want separate listings for each, then this would help. - Attributes - Remember this button as we will be working with it on the next tutorial. - Price - You can use this to setup various pricing functions for this product and I will touch on that more in another tutorial. - Meta - This button allows you to edit the meta tags just like it did with the categories. Enter your keywords and go. - Preview - Here you can get a quick look at the product without having to edit it and all that. At this point stay right where you are in ZenCart and click on the NEXT link below to go to the next tutorial where we'll add product attributes to this product.