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#1 07-22-2005 06:42:11

sunflower
Member
Registered: 07-22-2005
Posts: 4

Hi, I Am New And Totally Lost... Help Needed!

Hi,

just bought the new version of software only.... the company has also installed it on my webserver... I am not a web designer nor is my brother who knows a bit and so far he has done me an excellent website for my online shop... the only problem is initially we went for fatscart but then changed our minds and decided to try clickcartpro... the website is built in html... I logged on for the first time last night and did not have a clue as to what to do first or in another words how do I go about creating actual baskets, with fastcart it was pretty simply, you copy the code then paste it and it's all done but here... I will need the baskets to have a choice of colours and sizes, where do I do it all? Please help us people... many thanks! Sorry to sound really dumb...

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#2 07-22-2005 07:06:36

frwjd
Member
From: Lancaster, England
Registered: 02-08-2004
Posts: 219
Website

Re: Hi, I Am New And Totally Lost... Help Needed!

Hi Sunflower

The hardest part is usually getting the installation done but as that has already been achieved you treally need to read the documentation. It isn't the best manual in the world but should get you started. As you progress do a forum search for any part that you don't understand - we've all been there.

Your current request for help is far too broadly based to get specific help.

good luck!

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#3 07-22-2005 08:44:41

sunflower
Member
Registered: 07-22-2005
Posts: 4

Re: Hi, I Am New And Totally Lost... Help Needed!

Hi there,

thanks for reply... more specific... the site has been created in Html, and is nearly ready... will it be possible to add a clickcartpro shopping basket to it? how do we go about it?

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#4 07-22-2005 10:32:02

Todd
Member
From: Kitty Hawk, NC
Registered: 04-01-2003
Posts: 553
Website

Re: Hi, I Am New And Totally Lost... Help Needed!

Hello Sunflower and welcome as a new user of CCP.

ClickCartPro has a learning curve as do most sofisticated software products.

To benefit fully from the software you will need to spend sometime learning it by perusing thru the Admin area of your CCP install.  This is the file that can be called up thru the browser that ends with cp-admin.cgi or cp-admin.pl.

Since someone else installed the software for you, perhaps you have not seen this area yet???

The admin area lets you control nearly all aspects of your store and also gives you the ability to track purchases, customers, etc...

Before you start adding products, there are a few things to think about.

Every product a person can sell will fall into some type of category.

For instance, if your site sells t-shirts but also pants, hats, socks, shorts, and dresses... you might have categories with the same names.

For example

T-Shirts
Pants
Hats
Socks
Shorts
Dresses

However, lets say your site just sold T-Shirts.  Would you create just one T-Shirt Category?  Probably not unless you just had a couple of shirts.

If you have hundreds of t-shirts you will need to break things down a bit to make your site more user friendly - meaning more orders!

So you might divide up your t-shirt products into different categories.

Sports
Surfer
Harley Davidson
Humor
Crude
Etc...

You might have a section for men and a separate section for women.

Each section would only contain items specific for that category.

Beyond the categories, you have to consider your product line and all the options that each product may have.

For example, a t-shirt will have several product options.  What are they?

Size:  XSmall - XXXLarge
Color: Red, Blue, Yellow, etc..
Sleeve: Long, Short
Neck:  V-Neck, Crew, Tank Top, etc...

So how would you go about putting together all these variables within your store.

I first create my categories by considering all the possible sections I will need in my site. 

In the Admin area go to



Press 'Click here to insert an item into the database.'

Create your categories here.  You can also relate one category to another in this section.

Some forethought needs to have occured in order to best decide which categories get related to other categories.

So Bikinis end up in the Womens section and not with Mens underwear! smile 

So for my t-shirt site I might make a Mens, Womens, and Childrens section.

I then make categories for my products under Mens...

T-Shirts
Pants
Socks
etc...

Now that I have some categories to add products to, I need to create those product options.



Press 'Click here to insert an item into the database.'

Enter your product options here (one at a time)

If your confused about what the fields mean, click the circular question mark near the top of the page.

So you might create several options for your t-shirts

Size would be one option
Color would be one option
Neck would be one option
etc...

Once all your options are created, you are ready to add a product to the store.

Most products should have an image to show people what they are buying.  CCP has 3 image sizes you can use for each product.

Thumbnail 
Large (Product Detail Page)
Extra Large (Popup window when a person clicks to see a larger image) - optional

So you need to size your product images to the size that your store is set to. This would require some sort of image editing software.  The default is

Thumbnail = 100 pixels wide
Large = 200 pixels wide
X-Large = 300 pixels wide

While it is not technically absolutely necessary to size your images accordingly since the HTML can constrain the image to a set dimension... it is much better if the size of your images match the HTML code that displays them... otherwise you get ugly image distortion and slower download times for people visiting your page.

You can change the default image size settings by going to



Once you have your images sized correctly, you need to upload them.  Some people prefer to upload via FTP if they have several images to upload... however you can upload via CCP by going to



Choose from the drop down menu which image you want to upload.

Perhaps start with the 'Image - Category Product' selection for your thumbnail.

Browse your local machine to the thumbnail image and then 'Submit'.

Do the same for 'Image - Product Detail' and 'Image - Product Extra Large'

Remember the names of your image files so you can enter it into the product page.

I usually keep the names all the same since the images are uploaded into different folders and will not overwrite eachother. This makes it easier to remember when adding the image name into your product page.

Now your ready to add a product to the store.

You have everything in place.  Categories that products can be added to, product options that are ready to be related to your product, and images uploaded for display on the category and detail page and perhaps for the popup window too.

Go to...



This is the area with a number of different fields that may seem confusing.

Keep in mind that most of these fields are usually optional and do not require you to enter anything.

The fields you are most concerned about are

1. Product Reference String
2. Product Name
3. Product Number
4. Pricing Type ( Leave this at regular price unless you plan to offer a sale price)
5. Regular Price
6. All the product image fields (The name of the images you uploaded)
7. Short Description
8. Long Description
9. Deliver Method
10. Related Product Options (relate the options that apply to this product)
11. Related Categories (relate the categories that you want this product to show in)

Click Submit

You just added your first product to the store.

------------------------

I'm going to add something to this post.

The above description provided was the way a product can be added thru the CCP Admin area.  However, you might also look into the Remote API method if you want to just plug-in your product data.

To get more information on this method - see .


there's more than one way to...



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#5 07-22-2005 11:29:49

sunflower
Member
Registered: 07-22-2005
Posts: 4

Re: Hi, I Am New And Totally Lost... Help Needed!

Hi Todd,

Thanks for your reply, I've tried to look at the page you mentioned but I can't work out where do I find the following file???!!! - ./data/examples/productform.htm
I have a website built in html, I need to add a shopping basket without changing the actual site, people I know I am sounding daft but please help...

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#6 07-22-2005 11:32:17

altmedic
Member
Registered: 11-07-2002
Posts: 346

Re: Hi, I Am New And Totally Lost... Help Needed!

Perhaps before you get too far along, you will want to decide whether you want your shopping cart to look like the default loaded with the software, or whether you want your site to look like the rest of your pages. 

If you want it to look like the rest of your pages, take one of your pages, delete the content area, so that you can have a blank table 600 pixels wide, where the products will show up when the cart is used.  Copy this page to the clipboard, then go to the admin area and go to the menu system ( the URL will be something like


HTML Pages & Elements|Manage Site Elements|Site HTML Layout  and open Site HTML Layout.  Delete what is in there (probably should save it to Notepad or somewhere, in case you change your mind), and Paste in the HTML from the page you created and copied.

Now all pages in the shopping cart will look like the rest of your site.  For an example, you can go to our site,  wwwaltmedicineshop.com.  Click on View Shopping Cart.  Select Acidophilus from the list of categories to get a better view of what the layout is.  This is how we did it using the above instructions.

I have some stuff written up that may help you, if you like.  e-mail me at quintj@velocitus.net.  :-)

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#7 07-22-2005 11:46:57

Todd
Member
From: Kitty Hawk, NC
Registered: 04-01-2003
Posts: 553
Website

Re: Hi, I Am New And Totally Lost... Help Needed!

Hello again Sunflower,

Unless you know how to copy the variables in your html layout element to your current layout... I would recommend you not deleting the content inside your site html layout element.  That is a bit more advanced than just a simple copy and paste.

You also need to be willing to spend sometime learning the CCP system.  Its not something your going to have up and running in a day or two with any success.

Invest some time in testing.  Add some products.  Add some options.  Add some categories.  Learn how the changes you make in the Admin area affect the content and layout of your store.

This is a more advanced system than just a simple copy and paste and your up and running. 

To find more information regarding the API methods, see the file in your

store data folder.

/data/examples/productform.htm

So this means in your data folder there is a folder called examples.  In that folder is a file called productform.htm.

View the source comments of that file to understand how to use the API functionality.

If that file does not seem clear... you might ask your brother about looking into it.  You are going to need some understanding how html works and how to set the proper paths to your script.


there's more than one way to...



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#8 07-22-2005 11:56:47

sunflower
Member
Registered: 07-22-2005
Posts: 4

Re: Hi, I Am New And Totally Lost... Help Needed!

Todd,

I can't find this folder called examples... I logged on and all I see is main menu and nothing else. Where I am going wrong? 

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#9 07-22-2005 22:21:06

Todd
Member
From: Kitty Hawk, NC
Registered: 04-01-2003
Posts: 553
Website

Re: Hi, I Am New And Totally Lost... Help Needed!

Did you hover over the main menu button?  You should see a drop down list of options.


there's more than one way to...



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#10 07-25-2005 07:50:34

TerryA
Member
From: Sanford, Fl
Registered: 07-14-2003
Posts: 1322
Website

Re: Hi, I Am New And Totally Lost... Help Needed!

sunflower,07/22/2005 11:56:47 AM wrote:

Todd,

I can't find this folder called examples... I logged on and all I see is main menu and nothing else. Where I am going wrong?

You will need to log in via FTP and then you will find it in your html directory.  I am assuming that the cart was installed in a ccp51 directory.  If so, you will find it in ccp51/data/examples/

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#11 07-26-2005 08:51:26

altmedic
Member
Registered: 11-07-2002
Posts: 346

Re: Hi, I Am New And Totally Lost... Help Needed!

I have to disagree with Todd on the issue of the default look versus having the cart look like your site.  The way CCP51  software is presented, it appears that it is designed as a website, whereas most users want to use it just as a shopping cart.  I think this is the cause of a lot of confusion.

I have tried taking an entire web page, with every single tag, providing the 600 pixel content space, and the two variables needed to call the content and pasting it into site_layout.  It works fine.  That's the way I did our site, and it works great.  Now if we could just get more sales.   smile 

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#12 08-25-2005 13:47:56

lacolina
Member
Registered: 04-25-2005
Posts: 19

Re: Hi, I Am New And Totally Lost... Help Needed!

Click Cart is confusing as hell if you haven't worked with html much or cgi. It took me about 8 hours of staring at it, trying things and going back and forth before it started to make sense how it was put together. Todd's post was very good, should be included as an email to everyone who purchases the product.

You have to realize that what was installed on your site was a computer store. The time consuming aspect for me what building all new graphics which has to be done if you want it to look like your site. The most important graphic being the background image. You probably have a background image for the rest of your site. What you need to do is upload that using the file utilities under the main menu. Put it in the image-site and then go to the global settings/site settings and put the name of your image you uploaded. You should then see it refleted when you refresh your online store page.   

Well I could go on...it takes some time to figure out how to get rid of the things you don't want and replace them with what you do. I spent a lot of time right clicking on images and then building new ones with the same pixels and replacing them and uploading them. Images have three different size settings..something to keep in mind. When you upload them the small ones go in the category product displays, the regular size in product display and then the large ones in large product display.

Good luck, it will all make sense to you if you keep trying things. You can always go to the demo store and open the admin cart and get the original source if you screw something up.

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