If your live shops description is in a language other then English, please use a free translation service to provide a description of what you are selling in English. All too often when reviewing live shop directory submissions I run into submissions that are in a foreign language that I do not recognize. Sometimes, these entries contain products in which I have no clue as to what they actually are. This makes it hard when selecting an appropriate category for the entry. So to ensure that your store gets placed in the appropriate category, please include a description of what your store is selling in English.
Common questions on the general support/ installation and configuration forums answered:
I see threads pertaining to these common issues too frequently while surfing the forums.
1) SSL Questions
Before posting a SSL question, search the forums.
Then review this article:
Click Here
Also read the following article: SSL, A General Discription
2) Feature Questions
Example:
I need to set a minimum order quantity per product. How can this be done?
or
I want to give my customer’s a discount for orders over $30.00. How can this be done?
Before posting a question regarding the addition of extra features do a search on the contribution section of osCommerce.
Click Here
3) Password Protection of admin area
If you need to protect your admin panel consider using a .htaccess file.
Password Protect Directories
4) register_globals is disabled in your PHP configuration error
To fix this problem I recommend this solution:
a ) create a text file
b ) rename it to php.ini (when renaming be sure to rename the file utitled.txt to php.ini not php.ini.txt)
c ) include the following in this text file (now named php.ini):
register_globals = ON
d ) upload this file into your catalog folder
Feel free to add to this entry, hopefully people new to osCommerce will find this information useful.
Before posting a question.
Always remember to do a forum search. All to often your question will already be answered!
I added Order Editor 2.6.3 to my store today to deal with orders that customers make with custom ring sizes that require special pricing. When doing so I noticed that I had remnants of order editor 1.6 on my server. Fortunately all turned out well and I got everything to work.
I realized I should have been doing something from the beginning that I wanted to point out to all new osCommerce users. When installing your first contribution to your store I suggest creating a text file and recording the date, name of contribution and contribution version. Then after installing new contribution thereafter, I suggest adding them to this list. I regret not doing this when setting up my store, I now have well over 60 contributions installed on my store but do not know the version of each contribution installed and when it was installed. This information will be very useful if any of the contributions need to be reinstalled or updated/upgraded.
After reviewing several live shops directory submissions, these two stores stood out.
Didier Goubet
Didier Goubet has a very nice header and makes good use of icons on the right infoboxes.
To the left there is a very nice rotating picture.
Kaizen Health
A very nice header and layout. A very clean overall design.
Kaizen Health has a really nice rotating sub-header.
Although both sites have a unique design they both are not designed for a 800 X 600 resolution screen.
I went to the dollar store today and found shelves of missed marked back to school items containing the below price tag:
(1 FOR $0.00)
I have never seen so many products at one time incorrectly marked at $0.00! This is an excellent reminder to all osCommerce store owners to check their prices to make sure that none of their products are incorrectly priced.
To be on the safe side I suggest adding “ANY $0 PRICED ITEMS ARE NEW ITEMS AND ARE CURRENTLY BEING PRICED AND ARE TEMPORARILY NOT FOR SALE” to the conditions of use page.