Search
1. How do I exclude certain
directories from being indexed?
2. How do I exclude certain files from being
indexed?
3. When I index my store certain words are not
indexed. How can I specify which words I want indexed?
4. When I index my site common words like "a" and "the" are indexed. How do I remove common words?
5. If I choose dynamic pages, how do I control
which columns in my product database are indexed?
6. When I do a search in my store the graphics and links on my
search results page are broken. How do I fix this?
7. Can I change the number of search results that are returned?
8. How can I change the text of the search results?
9. Do I have to use the icons on my search results?
Page Generation
1. How can I upsell my products?
2. I would like to change
the number of products that are listed per page. How do I do this?
3. I am in the process of adding new products to my website, but I do not want to make them available yet. How do I do this?
4. How do I access additional data from my
product database in a template set?
5. In my template set I want to add a link to an external website (e.g. http://www.mercantec.com).
However, when I generate my store and follow the link I get an error. How do I fix this?
6. Bookmarks in my pages are not working. I
am linked back to the index.html file. How do I fix this?
Templates
1. I would like to collect additional information on my online order page. How do I
make this available in my templates?
2. How do I access additional data from my
product database in my order delivery templates?
3. How do I call the credit card authorization and transaction
numbers in my templates?
4. What are the possible tags available to use in my templates?
5. I am not using a template to format my orders. When I download my orders the credit card number is not included. Why is this and how can I
fix it?
6. I am using a
template to format my order delivery and when I download my order I
receive the message "Credit Card Was Approved" where the credit card number
should be. How do I do this?
7. I would like to offer gift services to the shoppers who come
to my store. How can this easily be done?
Email
1. When
I try to place an order offline I receive a message saying that the mail
server refused the message. What do I do?Sales Tax & Shipping
1. I use
both FedEx next day and Standard Mail to deliver my products to
my state. How do I set up my shipping zones to accommodate this?
2. I have my shipping charges set up, and when I add an item to my
cart the shipping charge is displayed. However, after I add more to
my cart I loose my shipping charges. Why?
Java / Java Script
1. I have published my sites to various search engines and people are going directly
to my product pages without first entering the front door. When they try to buy an item they receive a file not found error message. What can I do to resolve
this?
2. My Java applets will not work inside of SoftCart.
When I go to my site without using SoftCart the Java works fine but when you are on the
system with SoftCart I get the following errors. Why?
Databases
1. What is the database capacity of SoftCart?
2. I have a site with over 5,000 products and I do not want to use
the user interface to enter in my products. Is there a way that I can simply upload my database to my website
Payment Systems / Third Party
Integration
1. Can I use Clear Commerce with any merchant account or bank?
2. What types of modules does SoftCart support ?
3. Can WebXess and Mercantec support a third
party Payment System?
Other Technical Questions
1. How do I install
SoftCart Encryption program on a Mac?
Search
Q. How do I exclude certain
directories from being indexed?
A. In the swish.cfg file, add the following line:
FileRules pathname contains directory_name
For example to exclude the _vti directories in FrontPage the correct line would be:
FileRules pathname contains _vti
Q. How do I exclude
certain files from being indexed?
A. In the swish.cfg any of the following options could be used:
FileRules pathname contains admin
FileRules filename is index.html
FileRules filename contains # % ~ .bak .orig .old old.
FileRules title contains construction example pointers
FileRules directory contains .htaccess IndexPrefixOnly p- c-
Q. When I index my store
certain words are not indexed. How can I specify which words I want indexed?
A. In the swish.cfg file, specify any of the following rules:
MinWordLength 3 #
Specifies the minimum length of words to index. Anything shorter than # will not be
indexed. Default is 3.
MaxWordLength 30 #
Specifies the maximum length of words to index. Anything longer than # will not be
indexed. Default is 30.
BeginCharDigit yes #
Allows a digit to be the first character of a word. Default is "no."
EndCharDigit yes #
Allows a digit to be the last character of a word. Default is "no."
IgnoreAllNumbers no #
Ignores words that are all digits. Default is "yes."
IgnoreAllVowels yes #
Ignores words that are all vowels. Default is "yes."
IgnoreAllConsonants yes #
Ignores words that are all consonants. Default is "yes."
MaxRepeatNumbers 4 #
Ignores words that have more than this many consecutive digits. Default is "4."
Set to -1 for no limit. Set to 0 to allow no numbers in words. For example, with the
default setting of 4 #, the word "test12345" would be ignored.
MaxRepeatVowels 4 #
Ignores words that have more than this many consecutive vowels. Default is "4."
Set to -1 for no limit. Set to 0 to allow no vowels in words. For example, with the
default setting of 4 #, the word "testaeiou" would be ignored.
MaxRepeatConsonants 5 #
Ignores words that have more than this many consecutive consonants. Default is
"5." Set to -1 for no limit. Set to 0 to allow no consonants in words. For
example, with the default setting of 5 #, the word "testqwrx" would be ignored.
MaxRepeatChar 3 #
Ignores words that have a character repeated more than this many times. Default is
"3." This number represents the maximum number of times a single character can
appear consecutively in a word. If a word was "testaaaa" it would be ignored,
but "testedtxt" would not be ignored since the "t" characters are not
consecutive. Set to -1 for no limit. Set to 0 or 1 to disallow any repeated characters in
words. If -1, the limit of MaxRepeatConsonants, MaxRepeatVowels or MaxRepeatNumbers will
apply, unless those are also -1.
Q. When I index my site
common words like "a" and "the" are indexed. How do I remove common
words?
A. To remove common words, add the following line to the swish.cfg file:
IgnoreLimit 50 100 #
This automatically omits words that appear too often in the files (these words are called
stopwords). Specify a whole percentage and a number, such as "80 256". This
omits words that occur in over 80 percent of the files and appear in over 256 files.
Comment out to turn off auto-stopwording.
Q. If I choose dynamic
pages, how do I control which columns in my product database are indexed?
A. By default SoftCart will index the following columns:
SKU
Description
Marketing Description
If you would like to add or remove any columns to be indexed you will need to add the
following line to your store config file:
DBIndexFields Column_Name1: Column_Name1: Column_Name1
Q. When I do a search in my store the graphics and links on my
search results page are broken. How do I fix this?
A. On the search page/template you will need to specify full URL's for both the image
sources and the links on the page.
(e.g. <IMG SRC=http://www.domain.com/images/graphic.gif>)
Q. Can I change the
number of search results that are returned?
A. Yes. In the wwwwais.cfg file please add the following line:
MaxHits 40 #
Where 40 is the maximum number of results to return
Q. How can I change the
text of the search results?
A. In the wwwwais.cfg file add the following line:
SortType score #
This determines how results are sorted. This can be:
score
lines
bytes
title
type
Q. Do I have to use the
icons on my search results?
A. No. In the wwwais.cfg file you can modify the following line:
UseIcons yes #
Define as "yes" or "no" if you do or do not want to use icons.
Page Generation
Q. How can I upsell my products?
A. Upsell currently is only supported for creating static pages. The upsell
feature as described below will not work with dynamic product pages. The
upsell feature requires some modification of our standard template sets. The steps you
need to follow are below.
- Select the template set that you will use.
- Go into the template set directory.
(usually data/SmPageGen/contbasic) This will take you into a specific template set. From here,
make a copy of one of the product page templates. These include pages such as normalleft.html,
onsaletop.html (any page with the words top, left, right, or bottom are product page
templates). Name this copy upsell.html.
- Go up one directory to the directory where the page generation executable and template set
configuration files are located. You will need to modify the template set configuration file
that corresponds to the template set that you chose.
- Open the template set configuration file and look for the following line:
ProductPage1.
This lists all of the possible product page templates that are available. There should be
about 24 listed here. Go to the end of this section and add a line similar to:
ProductPage25 Upsell Template;contbasic/upsell.html
This will make the upsell template available in the pull down list when you select the
product page style for each SKU.
Now that you have done this, you need to make a change to the upsell.html page that was
created. Currently it will add an item to the cart and then link to the display cart page.
The syntax for this can be found on the upsell.html page as:
<form ACTION="ADDPRODUCT#scpages/showcart.html"
METHOD="POST">
To be able to use the upsell feature this should read as:
<form ACTION="ADDPRODUCT#p-%%product.upsell%%.html"
METHOD="POST">
Once this is done you will need to select the upsell template for a given product and
enter the SKU of the product that you want to link to for the upsell item.
Q. I would like to change the number of products that are listed
per page. How do I do this?
A. You will need to open the template set configuration file for the template that you
are using. In this file there is a line that reads:
MaxProdPerPage x
To change this value, simply replace current value (x) with the maximum number of products
that you would like to be displayed per page
Q. I am in the process of adding new products to my website, but
I do not want to make them available yet. How do I do this?
A. In the template set configuration file, add a new ProductPage line. For this new
line, specify a name of the template set, but do not include a path for the input file. An
example would be:
ProductPage25 No Page:
When your store is generated, the product page for this product will not be created.
Q. How do I access
additional data from my product database in a template set?
A. Open the html page in the template set that you want to add the data to. Insert the
following tag:
%%product.column_name%%
where column_name is the field in the database that you want to call.
Q. In my template set I want to add a link to an external
website (e.g. http://www.mercantec.com). However, when I generate my store and follow the
link I get an error. How do I fix this?
A. To use links to external websites you will need to use the SoftCart tag, NOPARSE#.
Sample of html to link to an external website would be:
<A HREF="http://www.mercantec.com">Link</A> To be able to link to
this website inside of your store you will need to change this link to read as:
< A HREF="NOPARSE#http://www.mercantec.com">Link</A>
Q. Bookmarks in my pages are not working. I am linked back to
the index.html file. How do I fix this?
A. A standard bookmark in an html page is <A HREF="#HERE">. To be able
to use bookmarks within your store environment the link needs to be either:
<A HREF=#HERE> (without the quotes) or
<A HREF="page.html#HERE">
Templates
Q. I would like to collect additional information on my online
order page. How do I make this available in my templates?
A. By default SoftCart will pass all information that it collects on the online order
page. If you add a new field to your online order page called Address3:
<INPUT TYPE="TEXT" NAME="Address3" Value=""
Size=30>
You will need to make a change to your order delivery templates to capture this
information. The tag that you will need to add is <Field_Name>. In the
example that we used above the tag would be <Address3>. These tags are case
sensitive so you will need to verify the spelling of the field names.
Q. How do I access additional data from my product database in
my order delivery templates?
A. To access additional data from your product database you will need to add the
following tag to your order delivery templates:
<Product.Column_Name> Replace Column_Name by whatever column you need to
access.
This tag needs to be places between the <Product> and tag in the existing
template. For example, the following tags will access a column called Password from the
product database:
<Products>
<Product.Password>
</Products>
These tags are case sensitive so you will need to verify the spelling of the field names.
Q. How do I call the credit card authorization and transaction
numbers in my templates?
A. The tags to use to be able to call these fields are:
<CCAuthNumber> Credit Card Authorization Number
<CCTransNumber> Credit Card Transaction Number
Q. What are the possible tags available to use in my
templates?
A. Product Tags
| <Date> |
Prints the date in mm/dd/yyyy format |
| <time> |
Prints date and time the order it was taken |
| <cartID> |
Shopping Cart ID |
| <Geography> |
The geography selected by the user |
| <ShopName> |
The name of the shop specified in the configuration file |
| <Products> |
Signals the beginning of the section that will
be repeated for each item in the |
| <ProductSKU> |
SKU (or item number) for the current product |
| <ProductQuantity> |
Quantity purchased of the current product |
| <ProductVariation> |
Variation data for the current product |
| <ProductDescription> |
Description of the current product |
| <ProductPrice> |
Price per unit of the current product |
| <ProductTotal> |
Subtotal price before shipping and sales tax |
| <ProductShipping> |
Shipping per unit of the current product (Line
Item shipping model only, otherwise 0.00) |
| <Product Weight> |
Weight per unit of the current product
(WeightTables shipping model only, otherwise 0.00) |
| <Product#> |
Position in cart for the current product |
| </Products> |
Signals the end of the section that will be
repeated for each item in the cart |
Total Tags
| <TotalLineItems> |
The total number of product line items (not
including shipping and sales tax) |
| <TotalTax> |
Total sales tax for the order |
| <TotalShipping> |
Total shipping amount for the order
(WeightTables, PriceThreshold, and QuantityThreshold shipping models only, otherwise 0.00) |
| <GrandTotal> |
Grand Total for the order, including taxes and
shipping |
EDI Tags
| <EDIDate> |
Prints the date in YYMMDD format |
| <EDITime> |
Prints the time in HHMMSS format |
| <TotalLineItems> |
The total number of product line items (not
including shipping and sales tax) |
Q. I am not using a template
to format my orders. When I download my orders the credit card number is not included.
Why is this and how can I fix it?
A. By default you are doing a credit card check in SoftCart using the "ccnum"
parameter, which does not pass the credit card number field. To include the credit card
number you will need to use a template to format the order delivery.
Q. I am using a template to format my order delivery and when
I download my order I receive the message "Credit Card Was Approved" where the
credit card number should be. How do I do this?
A. If you are using a credit card authorization program (e.g. CyberCash) then SoftCart
will not pass the credit card number to any back end application. You will need to add the
settlement program to receive your credit card information (if necessary).
Q. I would like to offer gift services to the shoppers who
come to my store. How can this easily be done?
A. You simply access the online.html page inside your template set. You will see code
that looks something like this:
<font face="ARIAL"> Please place any special shipping instructions in
the box below. <br>
<textarea name="ShippingInstructions" rows="4" cols="50"
wrap="VIRTUAL"> </textarea></font>
Change the text that says: "Please place any special shipping instructions in the
box below", to meet your needs.
It is advised to make sure that you leave the name of the tag, which is: <textarea
NAME="ShippingInstructions" as this tag is used in the back end templates. It
would would require more coding to change the back end templates that the online form
writes to. It is not necessarily involved, but is a lot easier to leave it since it
doesn't appear anywhere the customer could see.
For the changes to be made, generate your store with the new template file.
Email
Q. When I try to place an order offline
I receive a message saying that the mail server refused the message. What do I do?
A. Some SP's limit access to their mail servers. Please contact your SP to see if they
have set up any filtering rules on the mail server that you are trying to use.
Sales Tax & Shipping
Q. I use both FedEx next day
and Standard Mail to deliver my products to my state. How do I set up my shipping zones to
accommodate this?
A. A shipping zone is a very general term. You can use whatever you want for each zone.
To set up your store use the example above you could create two zones, one called
"Illinois - FedEx next day" and a second zone called "Illinois - standard
mail". You will then be able to enter in the shipping charges for both of these zones
to meet your shipping requirements
Q. I have my shipping charges set up, and when I add an item to
my cart the shipping charge is displayed. However, after I add more to my cart I loose my
shipping charges. Why?
A. For each shipping zone you will need to enter a maximum value. The shipping amount
that you will need to enter is the word "max" and the shipping charge for this
amount will be whatever you want to charge for shipping. An example would be:
10 1
Max 2
This will charge $1 shipping between 0 and 10 and $2 for anything over 10. This applies
to the following shipping models:
Price Threshold
Weight Threshold
Quantity Threshold
Java / JavaScript
Q. I have published my sites to
various search engines and people are going directly to my product pages without first
entering the front door. When they try to buy an item they receive a file not found error
message. What can I do to resolve this?
A. Attached is a brief JavaScript that will check to see if the shopper has been
assigned a session ID and if not, automatically reload the page so that the shopper can
buy the product with a cart ID. This script works in Netscape browsers 3.0 and above and
IE browsers 3.0 and above as well. Please place this script in between the <head>
tags in your documents.
<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript">
<!--
if (location.pathname != "/cgi-bin/SoftCart.exe/store2/product2a.html")
window.location="/cgi-bin/SoftCart.exe/store2/product2a.html?E+mystore2";
while (location.pathname !=
"cgi-bin/Softcart.exe/store2/products2a.html")break// -->
</SCRIPT>
You will need to modify each of these lines to reflect the following on your site:
the CGIBinDirectory:
the example is cgi-bin
the name of the executable:
the example is SoftCart.exe
the path and name of the page that you are using this script on
(this will change from page to page):
the example is for product2a.html in the store 2 directory store2/product2a.html
the configuration file that you want to invoke
the example is mystore2
This will check to see if SoftCart is in the URL (i.e. that the shopper has a session
ID). If not it will automatically reload the page but invoke SoftCart and assign them a
new session ID (in effect every page will have a front door link built into it).
If the shopper does have a session ID then nothing happens and the shopper continues
shopping. The page does not reload and everything is fine.
Q. My Java applets will not work inside of SoftCart. When I go to
my site without using SoftCart the Java works fine but when you are on the system with
SoftCart I get the following errors. Why?
When using Netscape Navigator:
"applet can't start erro.java.lang.class.error"
When using Internet Explorer
"load:class tickertape not found"
A. It is possible to run applets within a storefront, however, it is necessary to use
the "CODEBASE" parameter as part of the Applet tag.
Following is a sample applet code:
<applet code="NervousText.class" codebase="/uwest" width=200
height=50>
<param name=text value="Your Logo Here">
</applet>
A brief summary of the Applet tag:
<applet> specifies a Java applet. Everything until the </applet> tag is
part of this. If you wish to have some text displayed by browsers that do not support
Java, or have Java "turned off" specify it between the <applet> and
</applet> not enclosed by <>.
code= specifies the file which contains the Java "bytecodes." You can think
of this files as the complied Java program (but it's the same on all platforms that
support Java).
You can't specify a URL here; you just specify the name of the file (usually
SomeClassName.class).
codebase= Here you can specify a URL to a directory that contains the class file
specified in the "code" parameter. THIS IS REQUIRED FOR CORRECT OPERATION WITHIN
A SOFTCART STOREFRONT. Since the "current directory" is lost because SoftCart
parses every page, it causes the "can't start" errors described above.
You can specify it as mentioned above - with an initial '/' - as in:
codebase="/store1"
codebase="/store2/applets"
etc.
codebase = "<http://www.mystore1.com/store1>"
codebase = "http://www.mystore2.com.store2/applets"
The width and height parameters simply tell the browser how much of the page to reserve
for the applet.
The rest is the parameters to the Applet. These should not cause any problems, unless
they specify URL's. If they do, they should be absolute, not relative. There is not away
currently to get SoftCart to parse these.
Database
Q. What is the database capacity
of SoftCart?
A. Using the ASCII tab delimited data file that comes with SoftCart, stores can support
up to about 7,500 products in a database. For more than 7,500 products we recommend using
a relational database. On Windows NT SoftCart provides an ODBC interface allowing
connections to any ODBC compliant database such as Oracle, Sybase, or Informix. In
addition for the UNIX environment, we would suggest using the Mercantec Product API to
develop a direct connection between SoftCart and the existing relational database. This
has been done for Oracle, MySQL, and Sybase by third parties
Q. I have a site with over 5,000 products and I do not want to use
the user interface to enter in my products. Is there a way that I can simply upload my
database to my website?
A. Yes. By default SoftCart reads from a tab delimited text file. Save your current
database as a tab delimited text file. This is easily accomplished through most third
party spreadsheet/database applications by doing a "Save As" and then specifying
a tab delimited format. When you save this file, save it as product4.pdb. You can
choose any name you want, but there will be additional configuring if you save the file
under a different name. Once you have saved the file you will need to upload it to your
server. You can do this through many applications like an FTP program or through your html
editor if it supports a Publish/Upload option. You will need to upload this file to the
data/shopdata/products directory on your server. The location of this directory will
depend upon where the software was installed at installation time. Once you have located
this directory you will then need to upload the file "product4.pdb" to this
directory. If you are given an option of either uploading the file as "ASCII" or
"binary," select "ASCII" as the file format.
Payment Systems/ Third Party Integration
Q. Can I use Clear Commerce
with any merchant account or bank?
A. No. Clear Commerce can only be utilized by opening a new
Bank One merchant account directly through the store manager. This option is most
convenient for those who do not already have a merchant account, because it offers the
account with Bank One at no set up fee and a special low percentage rate.
Customers who already have a merchant account may use the CyberCash module with
CyberCash services, or they may develop a customized module to connect with an alternative
payment system. Note that these options are only important if you wish to use an online,
real-time processing method.
Q. What types of modules does SoftCart support?
A. The two ready-made modules that are provided for the SoftCart
online transaction option are CyberCash and Clear Commerce. Each of these modules is sold
as a connector to the corresponding payment service, and we are able to provide support
for those two types of payment gateways. The third module offered is the QuickBooks (QB)
module, which links your online store directly with your Quick Books accounting system for
download. The QB module is only compatible with QuickBooks ’99, but Mercantec is
currently working to provide one that will support more recent versions.
Q. Can WebXess and Mercantec provide support for a third-party
payment system?
A. The flexibility of SoftCart’s API allows you to develop your own customized
module (also known as a payment gateway) to connect to another outside payment system for
real-time transactions. Some payment systems may even offer you a ready-made module which
they will support. (You should contact that third-party service for more information.)
WebXess is only able to provide debugging support for CyberCash and ClearCommerce modules
provided by Mercantec |
