hi everyone i think we should start a post on wheres the best place to get free ecommerce/business templates.

i am currently looking and trying out free templates and hace found some good ones but none that really catch the eye.

im sure some one out there knows where to get them and i think it would be very helpful for myself and others beginning in eccommerce with a tight budget

Glastonbury Lineup

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An extensive search on Google for free Zen Cart templates has proved to be suprisingly unfruitful.
Every response I got to my search either brought up a dead link or far from free.
I too would apreciate seeing a positive response to this request
I am new to Zen Cart and want to try out different templates without a huge expense involved

If you want something decent , and different from other sites, then I am afraid you may well have no choice but to pay.Its only a one off payment and isn't as expensive as you probably think.

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Childrens Fancy Dress Costumes and Party Dresses
Childrens Costumes and Dancewear

There are free templates around for zencart, but you risk
having your store looking like hundreds of others when
for small investment you could purchase custom design.

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and
Unusual and Special Gifts

Hi Guys, I pretty new on this forum.

I just wanted to say that I have had some luck with finding good free templates over the past few months. True, there are not too many out there to choose from, but what I normally do is when I do find a good one, I change it to suite what I need it for.

One of the things I have learned about using open source packages like these is that that are really quite simple to change. The layout are all very similar from one to the next, so the real changes are just cosmetic like changing the pictures and backgrounds, and maybe adding some links that you would like on your site.

For example.. All the sideboxes and made up of images, so all you have to do is download the images from the sites image folder and change them to suit, keeping the sizes the same of course

I find that some people get a bit nervous about changing things on an osc/zencart template incase they screw up the store, but as long as you have the original files at hand, all you have to do is upload the file to replace the one you messed up, and your site is back to normal again.

Anyway, I have probably blabbered on a bit for my first post here, but if it helps anyone, then blabbering is a good thing LOL

regards

DB

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Solid Wood Furniture, Free UK Shipping www.furnish-your-home.co.uk

i have come a long way with zen cart from knowing nothing to learning all of the basics plus installing more advanced features such as

Royal Mail Postage
Paypal Verifed Badge
Live Help
Google Base Feeder
Banner Export Feeder
and many more

but i have found lots of great templates on Zen Carts Download Page.
AND TOTALLY FREE

FREE ZEN CART TEMPLATES CLICK HERE

Zen Cart also offers a page full of free module downloads where you can install royal mail postage,worldpay payment module,sitemap module, additional sidebox's, admin tools, marketing tools, pricing tools and 100's more

CLICK HERE FOR FULL LIST OF FREE ZEN CART MODULES

i am no expert but i found some of these downloads are must have's and should be included in zen cart as standard.

please give your comments on these downloads

many regards

topebaydog

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Most of free zencart templates and mods offered in downloads
section at zencart forums are fine...HOWEVER, there are many
that are NOT suitable/have not been updated to latest
zencart release.

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and
Unusual and Special Gifts

i would personally disagree i have encountered no problems with any of the zen cart downloads.

i think you have to choose your template carefully as your "look" is very important.

i know what its like to be on a tight budget and not want to hand out for a template im sure many will argee.

are there zen cart addons external to zen cart downloads

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So you have tried/tested all the downloads/free templates available
and can confirm they work correctly with latest zencart release.

There are other zencart addons available..just matter
of knowing where to look... many are hidden in specific
forum posts.

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and
Unusual and Special Gifts

no i havnt tired and tested every single addon but i know a majority off them do work.

do they not get updated when a new version of Zen Cart comes out.

can you take a look at my site and tell me what you think about it

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Unfortunately not all are updated on new zencart releases...
depends on developer who created them

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and
Unusual and Special Gifts

Be very careful, I had to start from scratch with one site as one of their mods didn't work

At the end of the day you only get what you pay for, if its free what do you expect!
I am not knocking zencart as I use it, but I would upgrade to a custom made site in the future

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Childrens Fancy Dress Costumes and Party Dresses
Childrens Costumes and Dancewear

The ZenMagick demo store features four custom themes that are based on free templates available at places like styleshout or freecsstemplates
There are lots of other good places to find custom valid (X)HTML templates, for example oswd or open designs.

Each template (they are not perfect) took me about 2-4 hours so far which I think is not too bad.

Downside is that you have to use ZenMagick, though. So, perphaps more something for a new store to keep in mind.

mano

FREE Zencart template, suitable for Advent/Xmas/Everyday,
approved by zencart mods..now available at
http://dezinacart.com

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and
Unusual and Special Gifts

Does anyone know where to get cheap templates for VP-ASP?
http://www.vpasp.com/

Custom design? Don't you resell the same template to others as well? How would that be custom?

Custom template means 1 off...designed for one customer,
not repeated, not resold..

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and
Unusual and Special Gifts

I see your point when you mean customized design for 1 person it gives your store Value but on another hand if your just starting out I dont think it really matters if you use a free one to get your name out there.

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FREE E-Commerce Setup PM for details.

Hey

At the minute I'm using a freewebsite, and yes the are not the best however the benefitsa are its easy to change and update, I dont run into a list of technical problems that I would need to pay to fix, and I can control come of the design.

I'm using webs.com
I've taken a basic template and changed bit here and there so it doesnt look too bad when you put the work in. The template I am using it transparent, so you could look at that and look at mine to see the differences you can make. Like I say its not the best, but I would say it a great starter.
Also if I want I cn pay for other templates or for the .com of my site in the future. You can also upload your own premade pages or use CSS so you coud if you knew about html design your own site really.

Hope this helps.

Sam

Templates are good, but designing your own site would be more rewarding and easier to develop good content for Search engines.

Regards

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Mike

TopShopper Shopping Carts
http://www.topshopper.net