Beyond the Sidewalks
About the 4.4 Shop Cart
Congratulations on your new shop cart. This version of the BTS Shop Cart is very powerful and its features will allow you to manage many aspects of your website.
There are two parts to your cart:
The Store
Cart Manager
1. THE STORE
General Structure of the Store
From the store, visitors will be able to purchase your items and check out to make payments. The Products and Informational Pages are listed in the index to the left. You manage and create these from the Shop Cart Manager. Proof your pages in the store by clicking on the link to "The Store" on the top bar.
The center section of the Store begins with your "Home" page. You can keep this updated from your "Page" section of the Manager.
A list of your shop cart pages (by category) is in the left index for easy shopping.
In the upper right is a running total of all purchases and the "Check Out" button.
In the lower right is small table for news items. It is easily updated from the "News Update" section of the Manager.
The Search box allows visitors to search for any item in your store. Try this out so you see how it works.
2. SHOP CART MANAGER
From the Cart Manager you will be able to set your parameters, add items and keep your material up to date. Here is an outline of what your site is all about. At the top of your Shop Cart manager is a navigation bar with links to "The Store", "Cart Manager", "About Images", "About the Cart (this page)".
General Structure of the Cart Manager
In the index to the left are all the sections that you will need to load your items and manage your shop cart. The Products section is where you manager the items offered for sale. The Features section is where you manage the overall cart parameters. If something is preset, change it carefully making a note on how to change it back. Explore everything at this point.
The items in the cart are arranged in
general Categories and then within each category you list the individual
products that you are offering for sale.
Features and Tools
The following are the sections is the Features of your Shop Cart. There are detailed instructions inside each feature.
Access Log - describes your visitors
Error Log - helps troubleshoot problems
Pages - manages informational pages and your home page
Gateway Settings - Set your phone, address, and other gateway info
Sales Tax - set your state sales tax
Program Settings - server configuration. Be very careful what you change in this section
Shipping - manage your shipping charges (there may be more options available so if you need more flexibility, contact us.
Clean Up - clean up old files
Page_Subheader - make a Heading and Description for each Category at the top of the page
Image Manager - load images
News Update - the News Clip on front page and on every page of your cart
Manage Orders - From this screen you can view current and past orders easily.
Service Fee - Allows you to set a service fee to each transaction
Set Password - Allows you to change your password.
Products Section
Add Product - add new items to your cart
Delete Product - remove items from your cart
Edit Category - manage your categories
Edit Product - edit existing products in your cart
Option Files - make a drop down list for the cart
Export Products - Allows you to save your entire store on your computer in one file
Import Products - Reload the product file to the server.
Low Inventory
- Allows you to monitor items that are low in your inventory
3. MORE DETAILS
Getting started
Begin by setting up your categories in the "Edit Category" page. Be sure you make your categories single words or connect words with an underscore. Then add your products ("Add Product") to each category. Proof them by looking in the Store. You can always edit and update them from your "Edit Product" section.
Load your images from the "Image Manager". Be sure your images are optimized to about 75KB or less. 40KB or less would be even better. The actual physical size should be greater than 200 pixels in width up to 400 to 500 pixels in width. This is the size of the enlarged image. The image manager will take care of the rest and make your thumbnails automatically. Name the images carefully using all lower case, no spaces, and be sure they are jpgs. For more information, consult the "About Images" section on the top navigation bar.
Pages
Pages is your "Page Editor". The Home Page is the first page of your shop cart. Modify it to say what you want. Then manage other informational pages. You will be able to add or remove or manage a variety of informational pages from inside your cart. Just click on the "Pages" link, then follow the steps outlined. Use the ICON BAR to change layout, modify the look of your page, add a hyperlink, and add an image .
To add an image to these informational pages, first upload the images to the
/images/pages/ folder, and they will appear in a pop up box when you have the
PAGE EDITOR open and click on the " I
" icon (last icon in the row at the top of the page editor). You can then
drag and drop the image to the desired location on the page. You will need to
use an updated version of Internet Explorer for this feature to work correctly.
Page Subheader
Make a Heading to go on different category pages. You can make a page title and then a short bit of text to introduce the products on the page. Manage these via the "Page Subheader" section of the Manager
When you make a new SubHeader, name the file the same EXACT name as the
category. For example, if you have a category named Teddy_Bears, then name the
category SubHeader Teddy_Bears. ...No spaces allowed -- use the underscore to
separate words....
After the SubHeader is named, a box will open for you to write the actual
Header. In the box, you can write a short description and use colors, different
fonts, etc. Save this and it should appear automatically on the category page in
your shop cart.
Options
The option section controls the drop down list of selections that you can offer for each item. Open the Option page and the number of options in your file is the number of drop down boxes that will appear. In most cases this will be 1. The number of choices is the number of choices.... for example, if you are offer in item in "red", "blue", and "green", the number of choices would be 3. Click Continue.
Under File Name, name your option like any other file. For example, you might
call it "colors.html" . Be sure to include the .html and be sure it is only one
word.
Option Name is what will appear on the page to your visitors above their drop
down list. You may put "Select Your Color" or "Make Selection", etc. in this
space.
In the numbered spaces, write the choices as you want them to appear in the drop down list. If the choices are all the same price, do not enter an amount in the $ box. If each one is a different price, enter the amount for each one and DO NOT enter a price when you add your main product. The amount in the option box will add to any number you enter on your main product page.