CubeCart Appendix Documentation Feed

Tips for a Better Store

CubeCartForums.org Documentation — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 10:25:36 +0100

Page Contents

Email addresses

If you have your own domain, ie mysite.com, DO NOT use a generic email address such as Hotmail or AOL for business correspondence. Create a mailbox in your hosting control panel, and call it something like sales@mysite.com (can be anything) and use this.

Why? because it will give your customers more confidence in your store, and as a result increase sales. Having a generic email address indicates you are likely just a hobbyist and not a serious business, meaning you may not be reliable or in business much longer.

If you have your own domain, there is no further cost in using your own domain email... if you do not have your own domain name, then for the small cost of purchasing a domain name and having it hosted, the benefits of increased customer confidence will soon pay for it.

Don't forget to encrypt your email address if you plan on adding your email address direct to your store pages. This will help stop it being harvested by spammers.

Rich Text Editor Styling

If you plan on having the text in your editor a different colour, don't add it via the editor. The store skin uses stylesheets which can style the text on a global bases. If you add your own styling on a page by page basic, it creates not only extra work for you but you will also end up with each page having slightly different styling, and potentially looking different for each customer.

One benefit of CubeCart is there are a lot of features and modifications to export the information stored to use it with third-party sites... Googlebase, ShopZilla, RSS feeds etc. If you add styling to each product description, this will also be exported through the feeds and the styling enforced on third-party sites why might make the text unreadable... losing sales.

If you change fonts make sure you use standard fonts. If you use non-standard fonts, your customers may see something completely different to what you see... ending in you losing sales if the resultant font used makes the store unreadable for any computer other than yours.

In addition, if you customise the text within the editor, if you ever decided to change your skin colour scheme, you might have to go through EVERY page to change your own personal colour scheme.

Centring Text

In a nut shell... don't do it. Humans read left to right and in most cases we speed read descriptions and other information, and centred text makes speed reading paragraphs from the middle a rather 'difficult' and uncomfortable task.

How many high street stores centre their customer information pages? you'll find none of them do it. It's a proven psychological issue with human-computer interaction and is taught in all human-computer interaction courses, humans do not like reading centred paragraphs.

Don't make your customers struggle reading your site information, they may give up and shop elsewhere. Are you finding this easy to read compared to the rest of the page?

Enable the Search Engine Friendly URLs

In CubeCart version 4 there is a feature to make the page urls more readable, and will enhance your search engine traffic dramatically.

to turn it on, browse to 'General Settings' to the bottom, and select enable the search engine friendly URLs. Don't forget to install the .htaccess file otherwise the pages will report they cannot be found.

Avoid using the skins supplied with CubeCart

First impressions are everything to customers. Try using a store skin which compliments your products and logo and projects a confidence inspiring image of your business.

Do not use the shipped skins. Although your customers may not know they are widely used throughout CubeCart stores online, they are also fairly basic and are designed to be generic. For what is quite often only a very small investment, a stock skin can easily make your store give a much better impression, resulting in increased sales.

Change the default browser address bar icon (favicon)

The default favicon that comes with CubeCart has the CubeCart logo in it. This is no good if you want the store to be about you not CubeCart.

The image can be easily changed by putting your own logo there, just upload it to a site like this one (or Google for others), and upload the generated favicon.ico to the root of your store replacing the file that is currently there.

How to CHMOD

CubeCartForums.org Documentation — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 16:14:44 +0000

CHMOD is the unix/linux command used to change permissions on a file or folder. Permissions are expressed as a three digit number with a digit each for Owner, Group and World permissions respectively. But you don't really have to know all this to change permissions.

Setting the permissions on a file or folder is very easy:

Open FileZilla and connect to your website.
Once connected, double-click on public_html to view the contents of your web space. If your store is in a subdirectory, you'll need to do double-click that directory to get to the base folder of your store. (ie. /store/, /cart/, /shop/, etc.)
Right-click on one of the directories or files in the folder and a popup menu will appear. On this menu choose "File permissions", at the bottom of the popup menu.
A new popup will appear called "Change File Attributes".
To change the permission value, you can either enter the three digit number required in the box called "Numeric Value", or select the appropriate check boxes. Above you will see that the Numeric Value is 755 which means that only your server space has access to the folder. For most directories the Numeric Value should always be 755 however on some files, such as a configuration file, the Numeric Value should be 644 which means that it cannot be changed or written to.
Once you have entered the desired Numeric Value click on "OK".

If you wish to change the permissions to all files and directories within a selected directory, for example for the cache or images files and folders, you can select to "Recurse into subdirectories", choosing the additional option required.

Web Server using EasyPHP

CubeCartForums.org Documentation — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 12:44:01 +0100

Installing a CubeCart store onto a local drive (laptop, USB thumb drive/memory stick or desktop) allows you to demo or customize the installation without the need for an Internet connection and a hosting server.

This method, compared to the other 'Web Server' options in the Appendix, is a quick 'lite' method of achieving a development environment using an open source application which manages the bulk of the requirements, called 'EasyPHP'. Other applications such as 'phpMyAdmin' can also be used with EasyPHP.

Download EasyPHP (www.easyphp.org) and install it on the device or drive you wish to use. This can also be a removable memory stick.

After you see the above screenshot, find the following folder:

Desktop > My Computer > target drive > EasyPHP > www

The 'www' folder was created in the EasyPHP directory when EasyPHP was installed. It will currently be empty.

Your next step will be to place CubeCart into the 'www' folder. In that 'www' folder, create a new folder called whatever you wish. We will name ours 'cc'.

Download and unzip a copy of CubeCart. You will note it includes a folder called, 'upload'.

Normally, to install CubeCart on your web site, you would upload the contents of the upload folder to your remote server on the Internet. But EasyPHP, on your local disk or device, is now going to take the place of that remote server.

Copy the entire contents of the Cubecart 'upload' folder (not the upload folder itself) into the new 'cc' folder we created in the 'www' folder on your local drive or device.

Open your browser. In the address field, type (or paste/click from here): http://127.0.0.1/cc/install/

You are now ready to install CubeCart locally.

If you are installing on a USB device, the way to access it would be to plug the USB device into a computer, go to the drive where you have installed EasyPHP, open EasyPHP and wait a few seconds until the system tells you that both Apache and MySQL have started.

Then open a browser and in the address field type http://127.0.0.1/cc/ and hit Enter or Go.

CubeCart will open to Step One of the installation process. Proceed in the usual way.

EasyPHP features will allow virtually any server-side script (forum, blog, guestbook, shopping cart, etc) that normally requires an Apache server, PHP and MySQL to be installed locally.

Whenever you want to revisit your installation, you can click on a bookmark for the CC installation but remember you must first open EasyPHP, then the browser. If you do not, you will get a not found error message.

Installing Administration Tools

Please note the links take you to the installation instructions for the full development environment, therefore remember to take into account the different file paths.

Both tools have their benefits, however phpMyAdmin may be more familiar to a lot of people as it is the administration tool of choice for a lot of IT professionals and hosting providers.

phpMyAdmin

The software can be downloaded from www.phpmyadmin.net/home_page/downloads.php. The best file to download for beginners wanting a UK version 'english.zip'. However the other versions are just as good, they are just packaged differently.

Click here for instructions

mySQL Tools (Optional)

The software can be downloaded from dev.mysql.com/downloads/gui-tools/5.0.html.

Click here for instructions

Installing PWS

CubeCartForums.org Documentation — Mon, 21 May 2007 21:57:38 +0100

To install the built in Personal Web Sharing component of MacOSX, click on 'System Preferences'.

And click on 'Sharing' within the 'Internet and Network' section. The following dialog will then display showing a selection of components to enable.

Click on 'Personal Web Sharing' to enable it, a tick will then show as in the screenshot. The service will then enable and start automatically.

You now have two locations for your web server files. For the files found at the root of the 'localhost' domain, http://localhost/ , can be found here:

Macintosh HD/Library/WebServer/Documents/

For files within your own user area, ie http://localhost/~your_user_name/, can be found here:

Macintosh HD/Users/your_user_name/Sites/

Or just:

your_user_name/Sites/

Installing phpMyAdmin

CubeCartForums.org Documentation — Mon, 21 May 2007 21:52:05 +0100

Installation

After downloading phpMyAdmin, the downloaded ZIP can be extracted into your hosting 'http' folder.

For example, if using the built in 'personal web sharing' web server, your profile http folder starts here...

Macintosh HD/Users/your_user_name/Sites/

Extract the ZIP contents into this folder, and then rename the created folder to 'phpmyadmin' (for example). So it looks like this...

Macintosh HD/Users/your_user_name/Sites/phpmyadmin/

Configuration

Using Finder, find the following folder:

Macintosh HD/Users/your_user_name/Sites/phpmyadmin/

Rename 'config.sample.inc.php' to 'config.inc.php'.

Edit the file using a text editor. Look for the following code, on around line 18:

$cfg['blowfish_secret'] = ''; /* YOU MUST FILL IN THIS FOR COOKIE AUTH! */

Add some text between the quotes, as shown below:

$cfg['blowfish_secret'] = 'my_blowfish_secret'; /* YOU MUST FILL IN THIS FOR COOKIE AUTH! */

Save the file.

Using your web browser, enter the following into the address bar (without the quotes): 'http://localhost/~your_user_name/phpmyadmin/'.

When asked for a username and password, you can use the authentication details as previously noted down from installing mySQL; username being 'root', and the password you have set.

You are now able to manage the database directly.

Important

The set-up shown here is NOT recommended for a live web server. Please read the installation notes for more information on securing phpMyAdmin in a live environment.

Mac OSX Web Server

CubeCartForums.org Documentation — Mon, 21 May 2007 21:31:23 +0100

Installing an Apple Mac OSX development environment is fairly easy to do, just follow each of these steps in order.

Step 1 - Installing a Web Server

Installing Personal Web Sharing

This is the built in personal web server that comes with MacOSX. It is based on Apache 1.3.

Click here for instructions

Step 2 - Installing PHP

The PHP can be downloaded here: www.entropy.ch/software/macosx/php/. This page also includes instructions on installation.

Step 3 - Installing mySQL

This can be downloaded from www.mysql.com.

Step 4 - Installing Administration Tools

Both tools have their benefits, however phpMyAdmin may be more familiar to a lot of people as it is the administration tool of choice for a lot of IT professionals and hosting providers.

phpMyAdmin

Click here for instructions

mySQL Tools (Optional)

The software can be downloaded from dev.mysql.com/downloads/gui-tools/5.0.html.

Step 5 - What can I now do?

After installing these packages, you can now emulate the same environment as a webserver hosting your website on the internet. Pages are displayed just as they would on the internet.

You can reference your website by using 'http://localhost/' (or 'http://localhost/~you_name/') in your web browser, and 'upload' files to a folder on your own hard drive. This makes editing your website files as easy as clicking on save, then refreshing your browser.

Installing phpMyAdmin

CubeCartForums.org Documentation — Sun, 20 May 2007 21:32:05 +0100

Installation

After downloading phpMyAdmin, the downloaded ZIP can be extracted into your hosting 'http' folder.

For example, if using 'apache' web server, your http folder starts here...

C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.2\htdocs\

Extract the ZIP contents into this folder, and then rename the created folder to 'phpmyadmin' (for example). So it looks like this...

C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.2\htdocs\phpmyadmin\

Configuration

Using Windows Explorer, find the following folder:

C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.2\htdocs\phpmyadmin\

Rename 'config.sample.inc.php' to 'config.inc.php'.

Edit the file using a text editor. Look for the following code, on around line 18:

$cfg['blowfish_secret'] = ''; /* YOU MUST FILL IN THIS FOR COOKIE AUTH! */

Add some text between the quotes, as shown below:

$cfg['blowfish_secret'] = 'my_blowfish_secret'; /* YOU MUST FILL IN THIS FOR COOKIE AUTH! */

Save the file.

Using your web browser, enter the following into the address bar (without the quotes): 'http://localhost/phpmyadmin/'.

When asked for a username and password, you can use the authentication details as previously noted down from installing mySQL; username being 'root', and the password you have set.

You are now able to manage the database directly.

Important

The set-up shown here is NOT recommended for a live web server. Please read the installation notes for more information on securing phpMyAdmin in a live environment.

Installing mySQL Tools

CubeCartForums.org Documentation — Fri, 18 May 2007 22:36:50 +0100

Installation

After downloading the mySQL Tools, run the installation.

Use the default installation path settings.

Choose the 'Complete' installation route.

A simple dialog to confirm the details, then click on install.

Installed! Easy.

Creating a Database

Now we need to create a database. From the newly created start menu items, select 'mySQL Administrator'. You will then be prompted for a login.

Using the details you entered during the mySQL installation, enter the server host as 'localhost', the username 'root' and the password you entered during the mySQL installation. Then click on 'ok', you will be presented with the mySQL Administrator dialog.

Scroll down to 'Catalogs', which is the name it gives to databases. In there you will see a list of database already created. All you need to do select 'Catalogs', and right click in the white space around the other databases to display a context menu.

Select to 'Create a Schema', give it a name. And that is one database created. As you can see in the screenshot, I have already created a database called 'cubecart'.

You can now follow the installation instructions to install CubeCart on your local PC rather than relying on an internet connection.

Installing mySQL

CubeCartForums.org Documentation — Fri, 18 May 2007 22:35:42 +0100

Once downloaded, run the installer.

Choose the 'Typical' installation route.

The installer will then use defaults to install mySQL, this will be shown in this pre-installation dialog.

After you have clicked on 'Install', you will be shown a mySQL Enterprise page, just click next to continue...

... and reappear at this dialog:

Click on 'Finish', leaving the tick in place to continue the configuration of mySQL.

Continue on, selecting the 'Standard Configuration' for new installations.

Install it as a Windows server, and ensure the Service name is set to launch on start up.

Click on next, and enter the password for the user 'root'. Make a note of this username and password, as you will need it later.

Once this has been done, you can start the automated configuration process.

Ending with each item ticked.

mySQL is now installed, and fully functional. In theory now, CubeCart will install on your PC, however we need to actually create the database first.

Installling PHP

CubeCartForums.org Documentation — Fri, 18 May 2007 22:34:45 +0100

Once downloaded, run the installer.

Choose the default installation location...

... and then on the next page select the web server technology you are using.

If you have just installed Apache following the instructions above, choose the 'Apache 2.2.x Module' option. If however you are using Windows Internet Information Sevices (IIS), choose 'IIS ISAPI Module'.

We are going to follow the Apache option, so the following dialog asks for the Apache Configuration page.

Using the default path, the required path is this:

C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.2\conf\

After choosing the path, clicking next you will come to the components stage.

To install the components relevant to what is being used, the following items should be selected/enabled. Note if using a different 'Web Server Setup', the relevant option should be selected. It has not been confirmed that CubeCart will not run without some of these components, however these are the technologies that CubeCart uses.

PHP > Program > Script Executable > Register *.php files to open automatically with PHP.
PHP > Extensions > MySQL
PHP > Extensions > PDO > MySQL
PHP > Extensions > SOAP
PHP > Web Server Setup > Apache 2.2.x Module
PHP > Extras > PEAR

Click on next, and PHP can now install.

Once installed, there are some configuration settings you will need to apply which are not included in the installation instructions.

Look for 'http.conf' in this location:

C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.2\conf\

Search for 'DirectoryIndex', add 'index.php' as shown below:

DirectoryIndex index.html index.php

If the following code has not already been added by the PHP installer, then it will need adding:

LoadModule php5_module "c:/Program Files/PHP/php5apache2_2.dll"
PHPIniDir "C:/Program Files/PHP"

Note: the file name 'php5apache2_2.dll' may differ depending on the version of PHP installed. Looking in that file location will confirm what the file name is called.

To activate the edited configuration file, you will need to restart the Apache services. This can be done via the Apache icon in the system tray, or by rebooting.

To test this working, just add the CubeCart files to the web server directory, and see if you can display the CubeCart installer. If you create a folder called 'cubecart', copy the files to there, and then using your browser go to http://localhost/cubecart/. You will not be able to install it as yet though.