The first thing I do when I am hired by a Zen Cart website owner is get my questions answered.

I don’t bother answering a set of questions like you’ll find at the bottom of this article. Well, actually that’s because I’ve rarely been asked the most important questions in this set of ten, but the questions below are a good guide to finding a knowledgeable Zen Cart Developer.

After years of working on Zen Cart sites, I’ve come to realize the importance of knowing what’s been done before I get my hands on a site. So I get my questions answered up front (by performing a site evaluation) or I don’t work on a site.  And so should you get your questions – the right questions – answered as well.

My reason for the site evaluation is very simple: either the site owner has been doing the work himself/herself or has been hiring folks to do it. It’s rare that I find a site that has been worked on by the owner to be in proper shape.  And I usually find problems no matter who has worked on it. So I’m going to give some insight into what I look for and after that spate of knowledge, give you the questions you need.

On of the most important things one needs to know about Zen Cart are the override folders.

I find that though much of the time the templates themselves are in relatively decent shape, the language files are rarely in the proper places. This means there is work to be done before the next upgrade – depending on who does the work, then you may find a number of things have reverted back to the default language that you worked so hard to change.

Upgrading is not a simple task and one has to know exactly what mods have been added and what files have been changed before you toss the new files up on the server. Sometimes even just adding in another mod can be traumatic if the new mod overwrites previous changes. I don’t like doing minor work such a mod installations without a site evaluation for that reason.

I can hear some folks yelling now, “but these other guys have been in business for years working on Zen Cart and they charge very little for mod installation.”

Yup, there are firms out there like that. I’m even friends with some of them. It’s actually a small world for us Zen Cart folks.

But I can promise that any firm that does a lot of Zen Cart work using employees will have varied results. Some months back I had to redo an entire mod installation because someone else’s hired employee just threw those files onto the server. He never bothered to look to see if anything else was installed. The website owners had to pay me more money to straighten out the mess.

It’s extremely difficult to hire anyone to work on Zen Cart because a coder isn’t likely to know how Zen Cart works.

He or she may be a whiz at coding PHP but, without intensive work with Zen Cart, that person will be a fish out of water.

So here at WizTech, we’ve been working on a number of things for trainees. One is a database with documentation on every admin setting. Along with that is information on available mods and some tutorials. That database even helps me since it’s hard to remember where settings are sometimes.

We’ve turned that loose at AllThingsZenCart.com so anyone can access it (some for free, others at a one-time fee).

Okay now you’ve learned something about Zen Cart and what I want to know about your site…

Here’s the ten questions you need to ask someone before they work on your cart:

1. How long have you been working with Zen Cart?
   Delia: 7 years total, over 2 years full-time
2. Is it a full-time business for you? If not, what percentage of your work is Zen Cart?
   Delia: yes
3. Do you participate on the Zen Cart forums by answering questions?
   Delia: yes, I do. They sent me a gift last fall to thank me for my participation!
4. Do you subscribe to the Zen Cart Announcement threads and if you do, will you tell me when I need to upgrade or make changes?
   Delia: yes, just sign up for my newsletter to keep in the know.
5. Have you written any mods for Zen Cart?
   Delia: yes, several and have written a mobile version as well
6. Do you use any outside contract workers? If so, who and how much oversight do you provide?
   Delia: occasionally for intensive PHP coding. I direct the coders how to do it; they provide the detailed coding.
7. Do you have employees that work for you? If so, how are they trained to work on Zen Cart?
   Delia: yes, I have some in training right now. All are volunteers and are not paid to be trained. It will be a long time before I can just let one of them work without close supervision.
8. Can you look at my site right quick and tell me one thing you think should be changed and why?
   Delia: sure because I have several recommendations I consider to be a must for e-commerce and I also hate bought templates. Some Zen Cart firms refuse to work on sites with those templates at all.
9. Do you buy and use templates or do you create custom templates? (If they buy templates, they are truly not someone you want to deal with.)
   Delia:  I have bought some very inexpensive templates from zenflavor.com but I usually do a template from scratch based on the classic default template. I want anyone who comes in after me to find things looking normal for Zen Cart to make it easier for the next guy (or gal).
10. How much do you charge?
    If cost is your only worry, then the first 9 questions don’t matter to you. If the answer is $25 an hour, run. If the cost is up towards the $100 mark, ask why?
    Delia: over $100 – because I’m so fast and knowledgeable that I can do more things in an hour that most folks can do in 10. The longer I stay in business, the less I make because I’m continually getting faster and adding to my knowledge base.

There are other concerns that you might have beyond those ten questions but sometimes those things have to be experienced rather than posed as a question.  So asking about how long something takes or how quickly do you answer emails may not get the truth in response. Nobody is going to tell you that it takes over a month to answer your emails, etc.

Gads, now that I think about it, I can come up with at least another 5 questions but I would have trouble staying nice to someone who wants to ask that many questions! So pick and choose a few – you probably shouldn’t ask all 10!