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AmazaCart ::
QuickStart |
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 This
QuickStart is more of a reference for some common things you
should be sure to know before you start reading the
Main UserGuide. But you
really do need to read that UserGuide to configure your shop.
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Shop Setup
- Basic Look & Feel of Your Site
- Download UserGuides
- Help In Building Your Shop
- Image File Names
- Custom Look & Feel of
Your Site (3 options)
- Trouble Logging in?
- How to Link to Your Shop
- Backup Frequently
- Get Ranked High on Search Engines
- Should I order the
'Advanced Security' Module
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- The first time you go to your shop admin, it will
automatically take you to your 'modify user' page. Fill in all
required fields to complete your admin account. Thereafter, you
will be take to the main admin home page when you login.
- On the admin home page, you will see all the admin functions
in the left column. For detailed instructions on how to use each
feature, read the Main UserGuide.
- In Admin go to 'Modules' to choose which modules you want
to activate. Click on any module with an arrow next to it to
modify settings for that module.
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- There are multiple ways to customize the
look and feel of your site, as well as customize the content on specific
pages.
- Change Current Skin
- ONLY do this if you haven't already made changes in other ways. Otherwise you will lose all the customizations you've already made.
- Edit colors, backgrounds & fonts with
'CSS Editor'
- You should make all style changes to your shop (font
size/color/style, backgrounds, etc.) using the 'CSS
Editor' in the 'Look & Feel' section of admin.
- Don't edit
individual pages, as this is much more time-consuming, and harder to
do. Don't try to edit the style.css file, as the changes won't take
effect on their own.
- Add your logo/banner & default icons
with 'Image Editor'
- Use 'Image Editor' in the 'Look & Feel' section of admin to edit your
logo/banner, logo background, and default shop images & icons.
- IF you do not upload a logo/banner image that is already the exact size
recommended (275 x 60) you will need to edit the code on the main.tpl to change the size of the logo image size
you are uploading. Otherwise the logo will look distorted.
- Create your home page
- Go to 'Template Editor' in the 'Look & Feel' section of
admin.
- Replace the code in the welcome page with the code for your
home page.
- For more detailed instructions and other methods of
customizing pages, see #6 below.
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- Some merchants want us to train them for a few hours on the phone
on how to use the software. This can be done for a charge.
- Some merchants want us to build their whole cart, and then they
will take over with adding products. Contact us for a quote on
building the website for you.
- You have 30 days of free tech support on use of the standard
features, but if you have questions, take the following steps
before contacting us
- Be sure you have read this page and the other AmazaCart
Support Pages
- Be sure you have looked for your answer in the
UserGuides. There are separate UserGuides for
most of the modules, so be
sure to check those too.
- If you have completed the previous 2 steps, then you can
contact us for
assistance on specific questions.
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- Image file names can not include spaces, commas, or other
non-standard characters, like:
$ % ( ) + , . ! = @ [ ] ^ ` { } ~ " * / : < > ? \ | ' & ; #
It's best to stick to letters and numbers only.
- If you duplicate images for different products, be SURE to
give them each a different name. If you don't, and you later
remove a product with that image, it will remove all images on
the site with the same image name.
- Ideally, you will want to create a separate thumbnail image for each product, which should have it's own unique file name. Many programs can do a batch of hundreds all at one time, like Fireworks. Be sure you batch each with an added suffix or prefix. For example if the main image name is 'main_image.jpg', the batch can name the thumbnail 'main_image_th.jpg'
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- NOTE: the less custom code changes you make to tpl pages,
the better. There is a good change that when a module is updated
it will overwrite your custom code. So if you do decide to
customize your code, be SURE to make a backup of your custom
code so you can insert it after a module update.
You can safely modify such pages that are meant for you to
change, like the home page (welcome.tpl), privacy statement
page, and other tpl pages that show up on the main screen when
you click 'Template Editor'.
- If you decide to make changes, Option #1 or #2 is probably
your best option. Option #1 is a fast way to make changes if you
know html and don't need to see what the page will look like, or
you can copy and paste the html from #1 into your web editor and
it will be really the same as Option #2. Option #3 can cause
problems if you are not really careful, as you can overwrite
what you have already done.
- Option 1: Edit templates/pages with 'Template Editor'
This is the best option for most people. You must use caution,
though, if you choose this option. These are the actual tpl pages with code in
them.
- Option 2: Edit templates by downloading the tpl
file itself (*.tpl)
This is similar to option 1, except instead of just viewing the
code of the tpl file in your AmazaCart admin 'Template Editor' (or
copying and pasting the code to a web editor), you
actually download the .tpl file to your PC and work on it with a web
editor such as Dreamweaver or
FrontPage.
- Option 3: Edit templates with 'Design Import/Export' & a web editor
This can get confusing
and you may overwrite files you didn't intend to, but it allows you to
see the look of the final html page without the php scripting.
This will not work if you use FrontPage
or Expression Web.
- Use 'Design Import/Export'' in the 'Look & Feel' section of admin to
create a set of html pages of all templates that will reside in your
domain.com/shop/var/html directory of your website. Use an editor like Dreamweaver to open pages remotely. First, you will 'Prepare set of HTML pages for editing'
in your admin. Then,
remotely open an html page through your web editor, work on it, and
'Save' it. Once you are done editing your pages, click 'Publish new design'. (Detailed help in the Reference
UserGuide).
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IMPORTANT
- Make a BACKUP of your skins folder - easiest via ftp.
- DO NOT change style attributes here. Do that in the 'CSS
Editor'.
- DO NOT
rename any ftp files or your site will stop working.
- If you make changes to the look by editing the tpl
file directly, or through the 'CSS Editor'
the 'Image Editor' or the 'Template Editor' you must then re-click 'Create HTML design templates'
to make these changes transfer to the html files you edit
with your web editor. Otherwise if you don't, when you 'Publish new design' it will overwrite and you will lose any changes you made through the admin 'Look
& Feel' editors.
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- You must open your AmazaCart shop in a different browser
window than your admin. If you try to login to both admin and
your shop from the same browser window, your cookies get
confused and won't allow you to stay logged into your shop.
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- If you have a website or pages built outside of AmazaCart,
just place links from your existing pages to your shop URL. You
can even place links to products from outside pages.
- If you are building your whole website in AmazaCart (and
you've asked us to put your shop in a subdirectory), you should
place a re-direct from your home page
(yourdomain.com/index.html) to yourdoman.com/shop. You can do
this through your hosting cPanel 'Redirects' section. If your
shop is installed in the main account directory, this won't be a
problem.
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- Be sure to backup your files frequently. We do make backups
weekly, but if that backup was corrupt or you had made a lot of
changes during the week, you would be out of luck.
- Databases: You can backup your databases directly
from your AmazaCart admin.
- Shop Files: Download your 'Shop' directory thru ftp.
Be sure to include all sub-folders and files.
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- Be sure your product detailed description includes good
key phrases
AmazaCart will automatically add your product description as
a meta 'description' in your html, so be sure you include the
main key phrases that people would use to find your site.
- Add Key Phrases when you add a product
When you
add or modify a product, be sure to add key phrases that
accurately represent that product in the 'Meta tags' field. Put
a comma between each phrase - for example: web hosting, web
design, shopping cart, best prices.
- Subscribe to our cost effective Search Submission &
Ranking service
Get your site
ranked higher -
Order Search
Submission service and we will submit your website to
hundreds of the top search engines. We even send you ongoing
reports of how your site ranks relative to your keyword phrases.
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- If you UserGuidely process credit card orders instead of using a payment
gateway, you need to order this 'Advanced Security' module, so that all orders will be encrypted,
including credit card information. If you use a payment gateway,
like Plug'n Pay, this 'Advanced Security' is not necessary.
- Options for configuring Advanced Security:
- We can create the keys and install them for you for $35 if
you want to avoid the hassle of configuring it yourself;
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OR -
You can do it yourself by following the instructions in the
Advanced
Security UserGuide
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