What you need.
Setting the database connection.
Getting Started.
Shipping Calculations.
Setting up Payment Providers.
Security Considerations.
Email Setup.
Advanced tweaks and options.
Affiliate program.
What you need.
For the ASP ecommerce plus templates, you need a
windows server that is capable of using a Microsoft
Access database. For this reason Linux servers running
Chillisoft ASP are not suitable, as they do not have the
capability to use a Microsoft Access database so you
will probably need the
PHP version.
Setting the database connection.
Access Database (Most Users)
The Microsoft Access database is contained in /fpdb/vsproducts.mdb.
The default connection to this location should be
correct for the majority of installations, however if
you should need to change it, the file to edit is in /vsadmin/db_conn_open.asp.
Examples are provided in this file of different types of
connection, which can be edited with notepad or other
text editor. (Do not use a word processor to edit this
file).
The directory that contains your database must be
writeable, but not browseable. If the
database is not writeable, then customers cannot add
products to their shopping cart. If the directory is
browseable, then potentially people could download your
database and gain access to your login details and sales
records.
Once you have the database connection set up,
check that it is not possible to download it by typing
in the URL of the database location in your browser.
This will be something like www.yoursite.com/fpdb/vsproducts.mdb
A lot of hosts provide a directory below the web root
specially for databases, and it is imperative that you
use this if this is the case. If not, then your host can
set the permissions described above for you. For more
detailed instructions please look at our
database set up page.
SQL Server database setup. (Advanced users
only)
You can use an SQL Server database with your
Ecommerce Plus template and here are the steps to
getting your connection setup.
Firstly, you need to contract some space on an SQL
Server database with your host. They will provide you
with 4 pieces of information, and using those you need
to fill in the blanks in the database connection below
in your vsadmin/db_conn_open.asp file.
sDSN = "driver={SQL
Server};server=SERVERNAME;uid=USERNAME;pwd=PASSWORD;database=DATABASENAME"
Next, you need to open the file vsadmin/includes.asp
in notepad and look for . . .
sqlserver=false
. . . and change that to . . .
sqlserver=true
Now you need to create the actual SQL Server tables.
There are 2 ways to do this. One is to use our SQL
Server creation script which is available for a small extra charge.
The other way is to use the Access database and "upsize"
it to SQL Server.
Please note that if you want to preserve information in
your existing Access database then this is the method
you should choose.
For this you can use Access, and go to Tools ->
Database Utilities -> Upsizing Wizard.
However the transformation process never seems to
properly create the autonumeric fields or keyfields and
without these the SQL Server database won't work
properly. What you need to do to patch this up is use
the SQL Server Enterprise Manager, go through each table
of the Access database and find what the keyfield is and
give the relevant column in the SQL Server table the
keyfield property. Then check in the Access database to
see if one of the columns (normally the keyfield) has
the AUTONUMBER property and if so give the same column
in the SQL Server database the IDENTITY(1, 1) property.
Getting Started.
Please note, in versions prior to v1.3.3, admin files
were contained in the directory /admin.
Once the database connection is correctly set, you
can access the admin area by opening the page /vsadmin/admin.asp
in your browser. The default username and password are
mystore / changeme. Take time to go through the admin
pages and configure the settings for your requirements
as detailed below.
Shipping Calculations.
7 kinds of shipping calculations are provided.
No shipping -> Shipping costs are not added.
-> (more
information)
Flat rate shipping -> Shipping costs can be set
individually per product. -> (more
information)
Weight based shipping -> Here, shipping is
calculated by product weight according to the shipping
zone to easily facilitate international shipping. If
Weight based shipping is selected, then the country zone
can be set in the countries admin panel, and new zones
can be edited by following the Edit Postal Zones link in
the main admin panel. -> (more
information)
Price based shipping -> Same as above but based
on price rather than weight changes. -> (more
information)
UPS shipping -> (more
information)
USPS shipping -> (more
information)
Canada Post -> (more
information)
Handling - this charge can be set
for all your products in the main admin page.
Setting up Payment Providers.
To set up the details for Payment Providers, chose
the link Edit Payment Providers on the admin home page.
The available payment providers will be show on this
page, with the active ones in bold. Please note it is
possible to have more than one payment provider active
at a time, so, for instance giving you the opportunity
to use both a Credit Card based system like 2Checkout
together with a system like PayPal. If more than one is
chosen then your customers are given the choice of
payment service in the checkout phase.
For all payment providers you need to ensure that on
the store admin settings the URL to your web site is
correct. To set this go to the main admin page,
admin.asp, and chose the Edit Admin Settings link.
Choose from the list below for detailed instructions
on setting up for the individual payment providers.
Email Notification.
If you chose this option, then your customers can make
an order without actually having to go through a payment
routine. You can use this option if you wish to take
orders that are then paid by bank transfer, check etc at
a later date. It's not possible to send credit card
information via email.
Capture card system.
The Capture Card system is available so that you can
safely capture and store credit card numbers from your
customers to process on your own credit card processing
terminal. Requires ASPEncrypt component on your server
and an SSL certificate...more
information
Security Considerations.
Firstly, check to make sure that no-one can download
your database. To do this, enter the URL to the database
in your browser. For instance
http://www.yourstore.com/fpdb/vsproducts.mdb
If your browser asks if you would like to download the
file, that means that the security settings for your
database folder are set to allow browsing. You need to
ask your host to correct this.
The default login and password for the admin area is
mystore / changeme. You are encouraged to change this
immediately.
Fraud is always a factor in online sales unfortunately.
Always double check with your payment providers admin
area to ensure that a sale has been properly processed
before shipping products.
Email Setup.
If in testing you receive emails with no problem,
then you need do no more here.
If however you do not receive emails, please visit our
email help page.
IMPORTANT NOTE IF YOU ARE UPGRADING FROM VERSIONS
PRIOR TO v1.2.9. Those upgrading from versions prior
to v1.2.9 will not see these lines in the vsadmin/includes.asp
file. In this case please do upgrade to v1.2.9 or higher,
then add the 2 lines shown in bold near the top of the
file like...
Dim maintablebg, innertablebg, headeralign, maintabl......
Dim mailhost
mailhost = "your.mailserver.com"
maintablebg=""
innertablebg=""
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