AgoraCart Free User Forums

Hello, I used to be a miva user way back when I had my gaming book business. Now I am starting a new business, and I am looking for a new web hosting and shopping cart system.

I read conflicting info on some cart review sites, and I've been searching for answers for two days, but I cannot find the info I am looking for, so here are my needs in a cart:

1. To be able upload and import my tab or comma separated .txt product database file. (export and inventory tracking would be helpful too since I am selling out of production products).

WHICH is looks like Agora Cart does, so next...

2. The ability to write my own html templates (or edit, etc, for almost complete layout control), so my catagory product listings, product page, and most any other pages appear how I want.

Basically with my old host and miva cart, I would edit my file with MS excel (or even wordpad if I was away from my computer), and use my favorite ftp program and upload the file to the server. I (if I remember correctly), would then have to click import in a control panel, and done!

I had purchased a few modules (since default MIVA was UGLY (just my opinion) and lacked customability). I believe I had purchased:
1 Additional Product Fields Manager,
2 Product Page Templates (the module let me configure the product page html to your liking. It provided an interface for me to enter the specific HTML that I wanted to use to display the products in my store, and it allowed me to use tokens to represent the normal Merchant product fields. For example, I could use the token %prodname% to represent where you want the product's name to be displayed)
3 Additional Screens (a module that allowed an unlimited number of new "screens" to be created, such as new pages for contact info, policies, FAQs, etc)

Here is a line from my old product database:
FAS5104,Renegade Legion - Leviathan,FASRL,21.25,Description not yet available,1,1,graphics/5104_levi_thumbnail.jpg,graphics/5104_levi_medium-image.jpg,Leviathan,Game System (Boxed Game),Renegade Legion,FASA Corporation

I had written my catagory product listing, and the page would be dynamically (I believe that's the term) created, and my product fields would be plugged into the page, for example:
[i]Details:[/i][br]
%module|DEN_PRODFIELDS|PRODTITLE|%[BR]
%module|DEN_PRODFIELDS|PRODTYPE|%[BR]
%module|DEN_PRODFIELDS|PRODSYSTEM|%[BR]
Manufacture: %module|DEN_PRODFIELDS|PRODMANUFACTURE|%[br]
Product Code: %prodcode%[BR]
 [br]
Retail Price: $%module|DEN_PRODFIELDS|PRODRETAIL|%[br]

My new store will be a low volume sales store, so I need something cost effective to start with (free cart).

So, I need help mainly with understanding template/layout control, and try to determine if AGORA cart, Zen cart, or --hey, did i tell you I ate dirt as a kid? meets my two needs.

BTW, here is the index page from my old site:
http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20050706105719/http://stiggybaby.com/

you cannot see the catagory page, but basically if you clicked on a product line (catagory), you would get a page with all product from that catagory and it looked like:
http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20030207192606/http://www.stiggybaby.com/2checkout/doctor_who_2c.html

(this page is from WAY back before I had miva and the page was created dynamically by MIVA, but this is to show HOW it looked.)

Lastly, is there a page or post that shows what features AGORA does NOT have or do, or the common complaints. It's much easier to understand the product as a whole versus listing features (which frequently don't get into detail, and a new user learns about well after the project is underway), in my opinion.

Thank you,

Steve

Hi Steve,

Welcome to the AgoraCart free user forum!

AgoraCart does work with delimited databases,

and also has fully-customizable product pages. The product page templates are found in the html/templates directory.

Each AgoraCart page is made up of three templates:

store_header.html

productPage.inc

store_footer.html

Each template consists of html and optionally, agorascript ( basically perl-in-the-page - which, if you're into any sort of coding, is infinitely flexible for creating dynamic content).

each of the above default templates can be customized fairly easily by anyone with basic html knowledge. Additionally, you can create additional templates to be used on a category-by-category basis if you choose.

In terms of editing the html templates, you'll want to use NotePad or EditPad Lite or some other plain-text editor since WordPad or Excel can hose up some of the encoding.

In terms of templating "complaints" - this is probably the biggest one - lack of a WYSIWYG editor, and the tendency of WYSIWYG editors to hose up any included agorascript (perl) if folks disregard advice and try to use them anyway So folks who fear and loathe html can have a little harder time templating their store. However, there is plenty of help here, even more in the gold forums (which, if you decide to go with Agora, the membership is really a great buy - 39.95 is super-cheap for the benefits received), and also plenty of folks who are old pros at templating stores who offer their services affordably.

Glancing at your links, this is a layout that can definitely be mirrored by an AgoraCart store.

BTW, are you a Top Gear fan?


_________________
Rachel
AgoraCart Project Team Developer

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Rachel,

I do not have cable tv, but my co-worker is a big fan and showed me a clip of an episode.

I have never dealt with an .inc file. I am reading your reply that it can be either edited and uploaded (wordpad) or through a control pannel and has the body html that I can change. (btw, my programming is limited to html (and about 6yrs out of date), although I learned and wrote some basic and pascal programs in high school a couple of decades ago on an apple IIe if I remember correct).

I just now looked up what a WYSIWYG editor is. I've always used wordpad, and then opened it locally on different installed browsers. No WYSIWYG editor is a pretty weak complaint.

Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions. I think Agora cart is just what I'm looking for!

Steve

The .inc file is just an html file with (sometimes) some agorascript in it. In your store, you can check them out in the html/templates folder.

You won't want to use WordPad - use Notepad instead (usually under "Accessories" on a Windows machine). Play around with the html to your heart's desire and re-upload in ascii mode.

There are several product page templates there already as examples (for example, productPage-2a.inc is an example of a 2-across layout). You can try any of them out by renaming them to productPage.inc, or by passing the ppinc parameter in the url (ie tacking on &ppinc=2a to the url will show the products using the productPage-2a.inc template).


_________________
Rachel
AgoraCart Project Team Developer

Get a Membership and join me in the Members Only forums!

Steve,
You had mentioned above that you were looking for inventory control.
The free version of Agora doesn't have inventory control, however the Gold version that Rachel mentioned does.


_________________
God Bless!
Bonnie - AgoraCart Moderator

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How much is the gold version?

A v6.x license/membership is $49.95


_________________
God Bless!
Bonnie - AgoraCart Moderator

Get a Gold Membership