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Zen Cart Article Manager

Zen Cart Document and Article Manager

Document and Article Manager allows you to easily display various types of documents in your Zen Cart™ without having to manually edit a page or sidebox for each new document.

Relevance: Zen Cart™ 1.3.0-1.3.9, 1.5.x

Current Version: 1.3 (version history)

Support Thread: My commercial software is not supported on the Zen Cart forum. Please email me questions instead.

Cost: $25 (Note: this low price covers software only for self-installation.)

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Would you like to ask me questions before buying? I'm happy to help likely purchasers make the right decision. Please use my contact form.

Installed Cost: $85.00 (Professional installation by That Software Guy)

Installation Difficulty: Easy

Installation Instructions: See instructions in README file in the mod.

Buy: Buy Article Manager!
Pre-purchase questions? No problem! Just Please contact me with your question.


Overview:

If you have a bunch of documents - MS Word files, Power Point Presentations, Excel Spreadsheets, PDFs and the like - that you are adding manually, one by one, to your site, then this mod is for you. Instead of updating an EZ page or a defined page, or perhaps the More Information sidebox every time you add a file to create a link, use the Document and Article Manager, and automate this process. Document and Article Manager creates a page called "Articles" which is automatically populated with the contents of an articles directory on your site. Files are listed in alphabetical order, and each file has an icon that indicates its filetype. Most popular filetypes are supported.
Zen Cart Document and Article Manager
Here's what the whole screen looks like:

Zen Cart Document and Article Manager
New articles which are transferred to your articles directory show up automatically; articles which are removed from the directory disappear from this page next time a customer loads it. You can maintain an article repository in your cart with no HTML or PHP programming.

The most common file formats (doc, pdf, ppt, txt and xls) are supported, as well as aiff, ai, bz2, chm, conf, c, cpp, css, deb, divx, file, gif, gz, hlp, html, htm, iso, jpeg, jpg, js, mov, mp3, mpg, odc, odf, odg, odi, odp, ods, odt, ogg, php, pl, png, ps, py, ram, rar, rb, rm, rpm, rtf, swf, sxc, sxd, sxi, sxw, tar, tex, tgz, vcf, wav, wma, wmv, xml, xpi, xvid, and zip.

Here they are with their associated icons:
Zen Cart Article Manager All Icons


The "Articles" link comes preintegrated with the "Information" and "More Information" sideboxes, as well as the Site Map. Of course you are free to place the link elsewhere, such as in your header or footer if you prefer.

Naming your files: if you prefer to not have embedded spaces in your filenames, you may use underscores between words, and these will be stripped out in the anchor text (the link file name). For instance, both "Final Financial Results.xls" and "Final_Financial_Results.xls" will be displayed as "Final Financial Results" with an Excel icon.

Presentation options include:
  1. The ability to show the filetype extension (hidden by default)
  2. The ability to indicate filetype extension parenthetically (not shown by default)
  3. The ability to hide the icon (icon is shown by default)
These options are independently controllable.
Have a lot of documents? You can organize them into subfolders.
Zen Cart Document and Article Manager showing subfolders
As you descend into your subfolders, a breadcrumb trail shows the way back.
Zen Cart Document and Article Manager in a subfolder
Installation is a breeze: most of the files are new files, not modifications. The only existing files you need to modify are the template files that link in the Articles page (typically a sidebox and the Site Map). No SQL; no core file modifications.

Major Versions

  • 1.3 07/12/2014 - Pulling in a bug fix from Zen Cart 1.5.2
  • 1.2 10/01/2013 - Hide index.htm[l] files if they are used
  • 1.1 11/28/2009 - Template tweak
  • 1.0 03/30/2007 - First Release


I charge a fee of $25 for Zen Cart Article Manager. Buy Now.
The fee covers software only; installation is extra if you require help.