Site Specific Overrides

More ways to customize your cart’s behavior without modifying core files

Setting Overrides

Starting in Zen Cart 1.5.8, a file called includes/extra_datafiles/dist-site_specific_overrides.php is provided.

Copy this file to

includes/extra_datafiles/site_specific_overrides.php

and customize to taste.

Many behaviors can be enabled or disabled by this file, such as:

  • displaying the About Us link in the Information sidebox
  • displaying the Brands page link in the Information sidebox
  • (developers) whether to enable debug on the zcDate class
  • (developers) whether to bypass loading string-matches of legacy language files (see Substring Matching for details).
  • (developers) whether to load the Font Awesome v4 shim for backwards compatibility.

See the file itself for specifics and details.

Information on the admin site-specific overrides file is also available.

Non-Database Setting Overrides

Starting in Zen Cart 1.5.8, a file called /includes/init_includes/dist-init_site_specific_non_db_settings.php is provided.

Copy this file to

/includes/init_includes/init_site_specific_non_db_settings.php

and customize to taste. The settings that may be altered in this file are listed in the file includes/init_includes/init_non_db_settings.php.



Still have questions? Use the Search box in the upper right, or try the full list of FAQs. If you can't find it there, head over to the Zen Cart support forum and ask there in the appropriate subforum. In your post, please include your Zen Cart and PHP versions, and a link to your site.

Is there an error or omission on this page? Please post to General Questions on the support forum. Or, if you'd like to open a pull request, just review the guidelines and get started. You can even PR right here.
Last modified July 23, 2023 by Scott C Wilson (8543451).