Zen Cart for WordPress (zen4wp)

If you are interested integrating Zen Cart and WordPress, it’s probably because you want to mention the products from your Zen Cart store in your WordPress blog. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to put links to your products into the relevant blog posts and pages? Wouldn’t it be nice to have the ability to display your New or Featured Products on the home page of your WordPress blog and have those listings update automatically as your Zen Cart store changes?

WordPress is known as one of the best open-source Content Management Systems (CMS) for creating blogs while Zen Cart is a one of the best open-source frameworks to build an on-line shopping cart. Each has its own outstanding features, but the combination of them will create a great product which we are calling “Zen Cart for WordPress (zen4wp)”.

Basically, Zen4WP is a WordPress plugin that can be used to integrate Zen Cart INSIDE WordPress so that shopowners can display Zen Cart content DIRECTLY on their WordPress site via a series of widgets and shortcodes (shortcodes are a Premium Feature).

Prerequisites for Zen Cart for WordPress (zen4wp)

• A Zen Cart store installed and operable. Tested with Zen Cart v1.5.x.
• WordPress installed and operable. Tested with WordPress v3.5.x – v4.5.x.
• The Zen Cart and WordPress installations share a common mySQL database. (use table prefixes to separate WordPress tables from Zen Cart tables)
• The Zen Cart and WordPress installations must share the same domain.
• Update the admin configuration options with the correct filepath to the WordPress installation.

Note: If your store/blog configuration does NOT match these prerequisites, then Zen Cart for WordPress (zen4wp) will not function

Want more??? Get Zen Cart for WordPress Premium (zen4wp)

Zen Cart for WordPress Premium (zen4wp) adds more widgets (including the shopping cart, categories, manufacturers, reviews, and testimonials widget) and shortcodes.

To use the premium (paid) features, you must first install the (free) base plugin (Zen Cart for WordPress)

Zen Cart for WordPress Features

This list identifies each of the features provided by zen4wp and the zen4wp level that includes the feature. Premium – Option 1 includes all Base features; Premium – Option 2 includes all Base and Premium – Option 1 features.

• zen4wp_best_sellers – Displays an ordered-list that contains the current best-sellers from the Zen Cart store, each list-item is a link back to the associated product’s detailed information page. You configure the number to display and whether the purchase-count is included.
  (Base)

• zen4wp_featured – Displays a collection of featured-products from the Zen Cart store, including the product’s name, image and price with a link back to the product’s detailed information page. You configure the total number and the number-per-row for each instance.
  (Base)

• zen4wp_new – Displays a collection of new-products from the Zen Cart store, including the product’s name, image and price with a link back to the product’s detailed information page. You configure the total number and the number-per-row for each instance. The Zen Cart configuration controls what products are considered new.
  (Base)

• zen4wp_specials – Displays a collection of products-on-special from the Zen Cart store, including the product’s name, image and price with a link back to the product’s detailed information page. You configure the total number and the number-per-row for each instance.
  (Base)

• zen4wp_categories – Displays a list of top-level category links from the Zen Cart store, including each category’s name. This widget is hideCategories-aware, i.e. if a top-level category is hidden, its link will not be shown.
  (Premium – Option 1)

• zen4wp_manufacturers – Displays a list of links to the index-listing page for each of the manufacturers from the Zen Cart store.
  (Premium – Option 1)

• zen4wp_reviews – Displays a collection of product reviews from the Zen Cart store, including the review’s text and rating and the product’s image with a link back to the review. You configure the total number and the number-per-row for each instance as well as the number of characters of the reviews text to include.
  (Premium – Option 1)

• [zenprod id=nn] – Generates an HTML link to the specified product in the Zen Cart store, if the product ID specified is a valid product ID, using the product’s name as the anchor-text. If the ID value is not valid, the string The product with an ID of “nn” was not found. is output.
  (Premium – Option 1)

• [zenprod id=nn name=ww image=xx price=yy] – Generates an HTML block for the specified product in the Zen Cart store, if the product ID specified is a valid product ID, optionally including the product’s name, image and price. If the ID value is not valid, the string The product with an ID of “nn” was not found. is output.
  (Premium – Option 1)

• [zenprod id=nn name=ww image=xx price=yy cart=zz] – Generates an HTML block for the specified product in the Zen Cart store, if the product ID specified is a valid product ID, optionally including the product’s name, image, price and add-to-cart button. If the ID value is not valid, the string The product with an ID of “nn” was not found. is output.
  (Premium – Option 1)

• [zencat id=xx] – Generates an HTML link to the specified category in the Zen Cart store, if the category ID specified is a valid category ID, using the category’s name as the anchor-text. If the ID value is not valid, the string The category with an ID of “xx” was not found. is output.
  (Premium – Option 1)

• [zenmfgr id=xx] – Generates an HTML link to the specified manufacturer’s index page in the Zen Cart store, if the manufacturers ID specified is a valid manufacturers ID, using the manufacturer’s name as the anchor-text. If the ID value is not valid, the string The manufacturer with an ID of “xx” was not found. is output.
  (Premium – Option 1)

• zen4wp_shopping_cart – If enabled via the Zen Cart admin, this widget shows the number of items and current total amount associated with a customer’s Zen Cart shopping cart. You configure whether the Zen Cart login/logoff and shopping_cart page links are shown, the format of the cart (sidebox vs. header) and whether the cart widget displays when the cart is empty. Requires a SQL patch and a piece of code running on the Zen Cart store.
  (Premium – Option 2)

• zen4wp_testimonials – If the testimonials_manager plugin is installed, displays a collection of testimonials from the Zen Cart store, modelled after the Testimonials sidebox. You configure the total number and the number-per-row for each instance as well as the number of characters of the testimonials text to include.
  (Premium – Option 2)

Other Modules/Plugins

For a COMPLETE integration solution, see also: WordPress for Zen Cart Basic (wp4zen)
WordPress for Zen Cart (wp4zen) is a Zen Cart module that allows shopowners to display WordPress content on their Zen Cart site simply using sideboxes.

These admin configurable sideboxes are meant to link your WordPress blog to your Zen Cart store without having to implement complicated WordPress blog embedding solutions/add-ons. These sideboxes pull content links directly from the WordPress blog. All a store owner has to do is to style their WordPress blog to match their store (or vice versa).

Some may find these sideboxes are a LOT less troublesome than blog embedding solutions.

See WordPress for Zen Cart Basic (wp4zen) in action here:

• http://eyeitalia.com
• http://tablelegworld.com
• http://overthehillweb.com