15.1) Introduction

15.2) Setting Up Your Shopping Cart

15.3) Creating Your Catalogue Pages

15.4) Using the Store Manager

15.1) Introduction

Please note that this software is provided as is with no warranties or guarantees. You use this software at your own risk, and Virtual Web Communications is not responsible for any loss or damage that may arise by using the script. Note also that BEFORE OPENING YOUR INTERNET STOREFRONT you should fully test your site to ensure that it is working correctly.

You can see an example of the shopping cart and you can order the installation of the script by e-mailing us at support@vwcom.net

15.2) Setting Up Your Shopping Cart

# You must decide if you will be charging sales tax, and if the sales tax will be charged for only the customers in your own state. You will also be asked what directory name you want to create for your shopping cart. If you choose something like webstore, then the URL for your shopping cart will be http://yourdomain.com/webstore, and you will access your store manager at http://yourdomain.com/webstore/manager.cgi. Finally the shopping cart store manager requires a username/password combination to allow you to securely access and modify your store's products. Make sure you save this information.

All of the variables that need to be set for the Shopping Cart are in the setup file in the main shopping cart directory. You can edit these values to suit your needs.
1. Next you should separate your products into categories. The software will display each category on a single HTML page. For example, if you have a category called "printers", then all printers will be displayed on a single Web Page constructed by the software.


For each product you will need the following information.

• Product ID A unique product number or code.
• Category The product category.
• Price The (unit) price of the product.
• Shipping The (unit) cost of shipping and handling.
• Name The product's name.
• Image An image URL if you want to display a picture of the product.
• Description An HTML entry describing the product in detail.
2. The most difficult part of creating the shopping cart is creating the HTML pages of your catalogue. These pages provide a directory so that customers can navigate to the product pages where products belonging to a specific category will be displayed. The catalogue pages must be created using specific rules, and the pages must be placed in specific directories for the software to work correctly. This is explained in detail below.
3. The final step to creating your Web Store is to add the data to your database. The database is pipe (|) delimited, and resides in the data.file file in the Data_files subdirectory of the main shopping cart directory. You can upload the file in that format according to the description of the fields given above. You can also modify and add records using the Store Manager.

15.3) Creating Your Catalogue Pages

Here is quick list of the file organization :

• The Front Page of your web store must be stored in index.html in the Html subdirectory.
• The order form (which requests personal information (address, etc.) after the customer has selected items for purchase) must be orderform.html. NOTE : DO NOT CHANGE THE FORM VARIABLE NAMES for the order form or the Shopping Cart will not work! However, you may change the form's appearance and the values that may be entered by the customer.
• Images is a sub-directory containing images used by the shopping cart. There are two ways to reference an image. In the database all images must be referenced using a URL such as

< IMG SRC = "Html/Images/four.gif" ALIGN=CENTER >

Note that Html/Images/ must precede the name of the graphic file. If no image is available, you may put text indicating that there is no image available. To leave this field blank on the display, put <!-- comment -->. Since the software will create an HTML table from the database, the image field will be "commented out" using this approach.

When referencing an image in an HTML page, use an image markup like

<IMG SRC = "Html/Images/ws-front.gif">

• Products - This subdirectory contains pre-designed HTML pages which the store may be asked to display during shopping. For large catalogues, this directory will contain pages with links to other pages. Secondly, this sub-directory contains "list of product" pages which are simply HTML pages which contain hyperlinks to "product pages". For example, the front page may reference a page (sections.html) in the products directory by

< A HREF = "web_store.cgi?page=sections.html&cart_id=">

IT IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT THAT YOU REFERENCE THESE PAGES USING THE EXACT SYNTAX GIVEN HERE! ... the only thing you need to change is the file name.

15.4) Using the Store Manager

The major point that must be made about the database is that each field will be displayed in an HTML table, and therefore, each field may be modified with HTML directives. Of particular interest is the Image field which must have the following format :

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