Zen Cart: Add a Store in ShipWorks

Background

Zen Cart is a free, self-hosted, shopping-cart platform, fully customizable and ideal for both new businesses or large corporations

ShipWorks connects directly to your Zen Cart account. With one click, or on an automated schedule, your orders are downloaded from Zen Cart. As soon as you process a shipment, ShipWorks communicates the updated order status, shipping method and tracking information back to Zen Cart.

This article will walk you through how to connect your Zen Cart store to the ShipWorks software.

First Things First

Before you begin you will need to have a few things available:

So that you can be sure that you have access to all of the latest tools and features that ShipWorks has to offer and so that you can ensure the steps in this article will work for you, we recommend making sure that you are running the latest version of the ShipWorks software. For assistance with checking your version of ShipWorks or with upgrading to the latest version, please see this help article.
Your Zen Cart store's FTP (File Transfer Protocol) host address, username and password. If you do not have this information, please reach out to your resident IT person, host provider, or Zen Cart.

ShipWorks connects to Zen Cart using 2 .php files. The .zip file containing both are attached to the end of this article and will need to be uploaded to your Zen Cart store using your favorite FTP client. If you are not familiar with the process of transferring files using FTP, that's OK. You have a few options.

Review this article. It will introduce you to and guide you through the process.
Reach out to your IT person. He or she should be able to upload the file for you.

The Process

Uploading the PHP Files to Zen Cart

1. Download the ShipWorks3_Module_ZenCart_v3_15_0_0.zip file located at the bottom of this article. Once downloaded, you will need to unzip the file.

Note: Typically you can unzip a compressed (.zip) file by right clicking on it and selecting Extract All....

After unzipping the file you will have 2 files that need to be uploaded to your Zen Cart store.

shipworks3.php
nit_adminb_auth.php

2. Using the FTP client of your choice, upload the unzipped files to the directory of your Zen Cart store.

Upload shipworks3.php to your store's admin directory. The admin directory may have been renamed when the Zen Cart store was created.
Upload init_adminb_auth.php into the store'sadmin/includes/init_includes/overrides directory.

NOTE: Please see this article if you need assistance with this process.

Adding Zen Cart to ShipWorks

5. Enter your username and password to log into your store. Then, enter the Module URL. Click Next.

Note

Your module URL is typically the address to your website with /admin/shipworks3.php appended to it. So, if your website is https://www.widgetmethis.com, your module URL might look like https://www.widgetmethis.com/admin/shipworks3.php.

Also note that the admin directory may have been renamed when the Zen Cart store was created.

Complete the Setup Wizard

Great! You are connected. Now, you will need to fill out a few more screens.

1. On the Store Information screen, enter your Store Name: and Address:. Then, click Next.

Generic store information screen in Add store wizard

2. Enter the additional Contact Information: for your store. Then, click Next.

Note: This information is optional.

generic contact info screen in add store wizard

3. Select how much order history you would like to download into ShipWorks during your initial download. The default is to download 30 Days of order history into ShipWorks. You can modify this by clicking on the Edit link.

The store setup screen in ShipWorks is displayed and the Edit link is highlighted.

4. Verify that the settings for When the shipment is processed: are correct. Typically, you would leave the checkbox for Update my online orders with the shipment details checked.