Post Installation - Setting Up Version 5.2.x

This Tutorial is a FAST-START tutorial and gets basic functions running and setup. You will need to explore the other managers, this wiki, and the user forums for help in configuring the other managers and needs such as: page layouts, custom headers/footers, additional sales taxes, real-time and/or custom shipping logic, setting up payment additional gateways, customizing your store design, etc.

Main Store Manager Screen - The Very First Time

Once displayed, the Main Store Manager screen will look similar to this:

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Step 1: Main/Core Settings

Click on the AgoraCart Management/Settings link under the store manager version.

OR

The "Green Tab" near the top of the screen that says: Your Store Settings/Managers ...

Now, you will now find yourself at the following screen:

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Next, click on the >>>  Primary/Core AgoraCart Settings - Setup First!  <<< button:

Now, you will now find yourself at the following screen:

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At this point, you will need to configure a few things. We will only cover the basics so that you can use the Offline Payment Processing Gateway and so that your store will be operation in a very very basic way. You may configure for your preferred payemnt gateway instead, if you already know how. If not, you may follow this tutorial for the Offline gateway, which is a manual payment processing where you can collect CC or EFT/ACH check infomation for processing later (can also be used for customers that wish to mail in their payment).

Select your Payment Gateway

In the Payment Gateway Section, select your payment gateway from the drop-down list.

Enter Store URLs

In the Store URL Section, Enter your store URL. It should already be close to what you need, but double check it anyways as it's only a guess the cart manager makes for you.

Make sure to also enter the SSL URL as well. If you do not know it, then use the same URL that the store uses. You can fill this in later once you know your secure URL for your website (if any, but most web hosting companies offer Shared SSL for general customer use, but you will need to get that URL from your webhosting company)

Select Main Store Template - Header/Footer/Buttonset

In the Store Header/Footer/Buttons Section, Select a template from the drop down list. This will select pre-made main store headers and footers that wrap around your store content. You may change this later, but for now select one that seems appropriate. Later, you may aslo add more templates or even create your own, but these are more advanced features and/or needs and are beyond the scope of this particular tutorial.

Next, select a complementary button set. Some templates have matching button sets by color.

Next, enter the Name of your Company or store.

Next, enter a tag line.

Enter Email Addresses

In the Order Logging / Confirmation Emails Section, Enter the email address where you wish to have orders sent. It's a very good idear to have the email address on the same domain name or hosting account, such as a parked domain name, that your storefront resides on. The idear is that it will help cut down on troubles with anti-spam filtering.

Next, if you wish to use a secondary email address, enable it and enter it as well. This one can probably go just about anywhere, but you should whitelist your admin email and your server, just in case, so that anti-spam filters do not block your order emails.

Next, enter email address for your store administrator. This can be a special address for only this purpose, but it is highly recommended that it be n the same domain name as the store to prevent problems with your host sending your order confirmation emails.

Submit Changes

Scroll all the way down and press the submit button.

GoTo Gateway Manager

Upon success of the changes, the screen will come back to it self, only now you will see this read notice below allthe manager links:

Click on the Here link to go to the gateway manager to setup the payment gateway you selected. Note: there is another way to enter the payment gateway manager, which is at the same screen where earlier in this tutorial you pressed the Primary/Core settings button, but instead you would press the button named "Payment Gateway Settings":

Step 2: Setting Up Your Preferred Payment Processing Gateway

You should now be at the manager screen for your payment gateway. If following the tutorial using the Offline gateway, the screen will look like:

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Enter Gateway Settings

For the Offline method, you will want to slect the Allowed Payment Methods

Next, enter the secure URL (SSL, the same one used primary/core settings above). If you do not know the SSL URL, then enter the regular URL to your store.

Next, Under Display Terms of Service and Refund Policy checkbox and set as required?, enter your company contact information, which will dsplay on the checkout order form, for your customer's reference. You may also disable this, if you wish by, by setting Display Terms of Service and Refund Policy checkbox and set as required? to no. This feature is mostly for those required by certian states or countries to display such notices and contact information at initial points in the checkout/payment process ... and those that wish to do it anyways.

Next, scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page and press the submit button to save your settings.

Step 3: Securing Store Manager Areas with .htaccess

HUGE NOTE:  DO NOT CHANGE YOUR HTACCESS BEFORE YOU SUBMIT YOUR MAIN SETTINGS

Click on the htaccess protect the /protected directory where this program is running linkunder the store manager version.

Now, you will now find yourself at the following screen:

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Look over the screen carefully. If your hosting company allows your to setup .htaccess to protect your directories, such as in cPanel, use that method instead and SKIP THE REST OF STEP 3 (htaccess).

Make sure the the Unix "whoami" and the scripts are running under your user ID for your hosting. If they are running under nobody type users (such as nobody, apache, or www), then skip the rest of this step and ask your hosting company to install SuExec or to compile the wrappers that come with the cart under your user ID (not theirs).

If all looks okay, then enter a username and a password. Only 8 characters are allowed for each one. Choose wisely, as the only way to change this later is to delete the .htaccess file in the store's protected sub-directory by FTP or an online file manager and then repeat this process. YOu shoudl not use the same username and password you use on your webhosting account and/or website control panel logins.

Click the submit button to save.

You will now be presented with a popup box asking for the credentials you just entered. Enter them and press the "Ok" button:

Once the credentials are accepted, you will now find yourself at the manager's homepage, but notice the differences:

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Now there are news & updates, and no htaccess link:

Step 4: Store Manager Password Settings

Click on the AgoraCart Management/Settings link under the store manager version.

OR

The "Green Tab" near the top of the screen that says: Your Store Settings/Managers ...

Now, you will now find yourself at the following screen:

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Next, click on the Password Settings button:

Now, you will now find yourself at the following screen:

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Enter your new username and password and click SUBMIT button.

You will now need to login again, using the credentials you just entered:

You will now be at the Main Manger Home page again :)

Step 5: Design & Layout Settings - Misc

Click on the AgoraCart Management/Settings link under the store manager version.

OR

The "Green Tab" near the top of the screen that says: Your Store Settings/Managers ...

Now, you will now find yourself at the following screen:

           (click on image to see larger image)

Next, click on the Layout & Design Settings - Misc button:

Now, you will now find yourself at the following screen:

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We will now just do minimal adjustments under each section / sub-section of this manager for the sake of this tutorial ...

Dynamic Product Viewing & Page Layout Section

Under this section, change the following setting to the appropriate number of products you wish to display on each product page the cart creates from the database (5, 10, 20 and 25 are the most common settings for most storefronts):

How many products do you wish to display on each product page?

Order Table Display Layout Section

In this section, change the "statehere" in the sales tax header box with the abbreviation of your state or province:

(statehere)

Static Pages: CartLinks Section Section

In this section, enter your domain name or the location of your homepage for your domain-name/website. You can turn this off, if you desire. Also enter the the name of the link to be used in layouts for customer to click on in order to start a shopping session over (basically the storefront's homepage, which can be disabled as well by setting it to "no").

Misc Cart Messages Section

In this section, Enter/change the year and company name for the Cart Footer Copyright Text text box. use the same style as the example already in the box.

Submit Changes

Now scroll down and submit the changes. Upon success, it will come back to this same screen but have a message in red text:

You are now finished with this manager for now.

Step 6: Update AgoraCart Modules & Files

Click on the AgoraCart Management/Settings link under the store manager version.

OR

The "Green Tab" near the top of the screen that says: Your Store Settings/Managers ...

Now, you will now find yourself at the following screen:

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Next, click on the Upgrade AgoraCart Modules button:

Now, you will now find yourself at the following screen:

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Update Files Already Installed

In this manager, we will only update files already installed, so ignore the sections and buttons for:

Add-ons or Core Files Not Installed

Template/Buttonset Installer

Payment Gateway Installer.

Under Core AgoraCart Files Already Installed, if any files show the need to be updated, click on the update button next to each file. It will refresh each time you click on a button, so this is a file by file "one-at-a-time" update manager. As each file is updated, the button will disappear and the installed version will change.

Step 7: Setting Basic Sales Taxes

Click on the AgoraCart Management/Settings link under the store manager version.

OR

The "Green Tab" near the top of the screen that says: Your Store Settings/Managers ...

Now, you will now find yourself at the following screen:

           (click on image to see larger image)

Next, click on the Upgrade AgoraCart Modules button:

Now, you will now find yourself at the following screen:

           (click on image to see larger image)

Edit State Tax Rate

In this manager, select the state (or select the option "None") and also enter the sales tax rate in decimal form. If your are in a state (such as NY), Canada, or another country or taxing district that requires multiple levels of sales taxes, you will need to use custom sales tax logic, which is covered elsewhere and/or you can get help in the user forums in some simple cases.

Once done, scroll down and press the Submit button. Upon success, it will come back to this same screen but have a message in red text:

You are now finished with this manager for now.

Step 8: Shipping & Custom Logic Settings

Click on the AgoraCart Management/Settings link under the store manager version.

OR

The "Green Tab" near the top of the screen that says: Your Store Settings/Managers ...

Now, you will now find yourself at the following screen:

           (click on image to see larger image)

Next, click on the Layout & Design Settings - Misc button:

Now, you will now find yourself at the following screen:

           (click on image to see larger image)

We will now just do minimal adjustments. For now we'll just use the defaults except one. Real-time shipping rates and custom logic will be handled in other portions of this wiki / documentation.

When to Calculate Tax on shipping

AgoraCart allow you to select when to add the shipping costs into the subtotal in regards to taxation. There are three (3) loops or rounds of processing on the taxes, shipping, sub-totals, etc. The reason for this is so that you may tax the shipping as well as coordinate with such things as additional sales taxes, discounts and other items that might need to be performed either before or after shipping is added into the subtotal for taation purposes. Default for adding shipping into the subtotal is in loop 3, which is not taxed by default. So if you need shipping taxes because your taxing districts/states/country requires shipping to be taxes (most do not), then select either 1 or 2 for the setting labeled:

In what loop of calculate_final_values do you wish to calculate the shipping?

Now scroll down to the bottom of the screen, and press the submit button, but only if you changed anything you wish to save.

Step 9: Test Store - using simple settings and default products

To see your store, click on the "Green Tab" near the top of the screen that says: View Your Store ...

OR

Type the following into your browser's address bar, except replace your domain name and path to your store:

http://www.your-domain-here.com/path-to/store52/agora.cgi

Run a test and see how the store works.

What to do Next

This tutorial has been very basic. Here are the soem of the things you can do next to complete your store, but you do not have to do all of them as they vary in complexity and according to your needs/desires:

Edit the store's homepage. This is locaed in the html sub-directory of your store. Make sure any uploading back to the server is done in ASCII mode.

Edit the invoice and packign slip templates. For now use the default layouts until you are familar with the layout tokens you can use and how to place them. The two files are located admin_files sub-directory of your storefront and begin with mgr> in the file names. Make sure any uploading back to the server is done in ASCII mode.

Edit the order form for the payment gateway you are going to use. The forms are located in the html/forms subdirectory of your storefront. If a beginner at HTML, you only need to do this if you need to change the shipping types, countries, states/provinces. If not familar with HTML nor Perl scripting, do not touch the other portions of the form as they contain what we call AgoraScript which makes it so things can be added to the form without changing/editing it directly. Make sure any uploading back to the server is done in ASCII mode.

Setup your payment gateways, if not using Offline, using the manager areas.

Finish any shipping settings and/or custom shipping logic you need. If you need help, look at the samples, look in the user forums, as well as in this wiki/documentaion for additional help.

Finish any tax settings and/or custom tax logic you need. If you need help, look in the user forums, as well as in this wiki/documentaion for additional help.

Add/edit any info pages you might need for such things as: warranty info, returns & refunds info, about us page, contact us page, etc. These pages are automatically included in default designs, if they are named with a .html extension, and these pages are located in the html sub-directory of your store. Samples are already included for you to edit and experiment with.

Setup any options files you might need for products that you will enter/add later. If your products use simple options, you can install a simple or basic options editor in the Upgrade AgoraCart Modules manager. Later you will select these options files for inclusion in your products, so best that you do them ahead of time or do a few first and try them out before going full swing into adding your products to the storefront. If you need complex options, you can use what we call variable options that requires coding in AgoraScript (basically simple Perl programming) where you can perform volume pricing, discounts only on that item, and almost anything else you need to add or subtract from the item on a conditional basis (this is an advanced feature so you may need to hire someone to help you if you are not willing to spend the time to do it yourself).

Enter your products. Use the add/edit product screens. there is an import feature for bringing in tab or pipe delimited files (saved from a spreadsheet), but check for information (wiki / usr forums /etc) on the format of the data needed for importing into the product database, as well as how to do it effectively.

Integrate your design into the store. This is easy if you know the process, but a new person to AgoraCart might want to hire someone to do it for them or learn how to do this process later when they have time to go through the process. Experienced designers with AgoraCart can usually do most design integrations within a couple of cdays or less, but complex designs and needs could take longer. So to get your store operational faster, chose a template/skin offered by default or later via the "template/skin installer", and integrate your design when time and/or budget warrants it.