Recently a client needed to re-activate a coupon in Zen Cart. She wanted to re-use the exact same coupon but had inactivated the original.

After exploring the Zen admin, I could find no way to re-activate a inactive coupon so used the SQL query below.

Copy and the code below and paste it in Tools -> Install SQL Patches. Make sure you change the coupon_id to the number that you would like to re-activate. To get the id number, click on the name in Gift Certificate/Coupons -> Coupon Admin, the id is in the right column, in square brackets before the coupon name. And, as always, BACK UP YOUR DATABASE before making any changes to your Zen Cart installation.

UPDATE `coupons` SET `coupon_active` = 'Y' WHERE `coupons`.`coupon_id` =22 LIMIT 1 ;

Sending attractive, branded emails from your store is a nice touch, not only does it reinforce your presence with your customers, it puts you on the same level as other eCommerce big wigs. Follow the directions below to send html emails from you Zen Cart store.

1. Go to Configuration -> Email Options
Set “Use MIME HTML When Sending Emails” (3rd line) to true
and
Set “Email Admin Format?” to HTML (line 10)

2. Go to Configuration -> Customer Details
Set “Customer Default Email Preference” (line 10) to 1 for html

3. Upload your store logo, saved as header.jpg to email/ folder on the server (you will be overwriting the default zen cart logo)

4. Language File Changes:
Change the define for EMAIL_FOOTER_COPYRIGHT to link back to your store in:
admin/includes/languages/english/email_extras.php
and
includes/languages/english/email_extras.php

5. The design for each email is defined in style section of the header for each of the following email template file:
email/email_template_checkout.html
email/email_template_contact_us.html
email/email_template_coupon.html
email/email_template_default.html
email/email_template_direct_email.html
email/email_template_gv_mail.html
email/email_template_gv_queue.html
email/email_template_gv_send.html
email/email_template_low_stock.html
email/email_template_newsletters.html
email/email_template_order_status.html
email/email_template_password_forgotten.html
email/email_template_product_notification.html
email/email_template_product_notification.html

Change the css in each file or create a external stylesheet and link to it from the header of each file.

6.You can check your changes in Tools -> Email Welcome of your admin. When you have finalized the design, sign up as a new customer on your web site, you should get a branded email generated from zen cart.

To create a sense of urgency and let customers know a product has only one item left in stock, a simple SQL query is needed in the tpl_product_info_display.php file.

1. First, you must be tracking stock of your products through Zen Cart.

2. Download, includes/template/Your_Templates/tpl_product_info_display.php and open the file.

Copy this code:

<!-- bof limited supply -->
<?php

$limitedSupply_query = "SELECT products_quantity, products_id
FROM " . TABLE_PRODUCTS . "
WHERE products_id = '" . (int)$_GET['products_id'] . "' ";

$limitedSupply = $db->Execute($limitedSupply_query);

if ($limitedSupply->fields['products_quantity'] == 1)  {
echo '<div id="limited">Only one left</div>';
}
?>
<!-- eof limited supply -->

3. Paste the code in the file where you would like the alert message to appear, I usually put it just above the Add to Cart button. Upload the edited file to includes/templates/Your_Template/

4. Download your stylesheet and create and define #limited. Upload the edited stylesheet to includes/templates/Your_Template/css/

5. Find a product on your web site that has only one product. Make any needed changes to the stylesheet.

If you have a web site that uses drop menus for the navigation system, you may find that the indexing of your web site has a bit to be desired. Recently, on a web site using the drop menu system, I took advantage of using a second navigation menu at the bottom of the site by moving the nav cat tabs to the tpl_footer.php file.

To make the switch, open:

includes/templates/Your_Template/common/tpl_header.php and look for:

<!–bof-optional categories tabs navigation display–>

<?php get_template_dir(’tpl_modules_categories_tabs.php’,DIR_WS_TEMPLATE, $current_page_base,’templates’). ‘/tpl_modules_categories_tabs.php’); ?>

<!–eof-optional categories tabs navigation display–>

Copy the code, delete it and open:
includes/templates/Your_Template/common/tpl_footer.php

Paste your copied code into the footer file in the appropriate postition.

Upload both of the edited files and turn on your Nav Cat Tabs in the Zen Cart admin by going to:

Configuration -> Layout Settings -> Categories-Tabs Menu ON/OFF and turn the Nav Cat Tabs on.

Go to your web site and see your category links in the footer of each page. Now search engines have easy to read text links for your categories.

In a previous post, I discussed how to add custom meta tags for your products and categories, Read Post.

Recently, when adding custom meta tags for products I noticed that the custom tags I entered at the product level were followed by the custom tags I had set in the meta_tags.php language file and this created a VERY long list of keywords. As you know, google and other search engines will penalize you for keyword spam if you have too many keywords.

To show only the keywords you set at the product or category level, download the file:
includes/languages/english/meta_tags.php

OR
includes/languages/english/YOUR_CUSTOM_TEMPLATE/meta_tags.php (if the file has already been modified)

Open the file and remove all keywords in the following define:
// Custom Keywords
define(’CUSTOM_KEYWORDS’, ”);

Upload the file to: includes/languages/english/YOUR_CUSTOM_TEMPLATE/

Now, any products or categories that have meta tags defined in the admin section of your web site will use ONLY those tag definitions and you will no longer be keyword spamming.