AgoraCart Free User Forums

AgoraCart installed as advertised, no problem. Now . . .

I have spent two weeks reading all of your online manuals, looking at exisitng sites, and I am totally lost. It appears I have to move or completely rebuild all 200 webpages, plus all my images, from their current location in public_html into public_html/store/html -- but there's already an index.html there (the AgoraCart main page). This can't be right. What is it that I'm misinterpreting? It also looks like I have to learn Perl in order to get anything to work.

I also looked at the example site using static pages, but again it looks like I have to learn CGI and Perl. This is not exactly what I expected. Again, was I expecting too much?

Is there a simple, step-by-step set of instructions for setting up my webpages? :(

hell-o
well, without a link to your current site it's impossible to advise on how to approach the development of your store.

you don't need to learn perl, cgi or know much of anything other than html and how to identify some dos and don'ts concerning perl. this is not difficult and is actually very elementary.

most of the stuff that is already available is modular in concept. with the information available to anyone on the free forum you can develope a quite advanced store. the most difficult part is where you are right now. once over the proverbial hump you'll see how limitless the agoracart can be.

you don't need to move your images and depending on the complexity of your product offerings you can simply add a form to each existing page similar to a "buy now" button. if you want to run a dB store then your 200 plus pages wont go to waste. you can use these pages as a "catalog" for the search engines to index your products.

you need to decide whether or not to run a dB store or a non-dB store. there are pros and cons for each. most secure and easily maintained is the dB store. more complex functions can be readily addressed through a dB store and i highly recommend this approach.

as for the store/html/index.html you need to customize this. the first thing to customize would be the store_header.inc and the store_footer.inc. if you want to use the header and footer tokens for the storefront and other html pages within the html folder you will need to customize the content of the files or just use plain html files and insert any agorascript where needed. you don't have to use the header and footer tokens.

so, decide whether or not you want a dB store then go from there. if using a dB store add a few products, customize the store header and footer inc files, create a few options if needed, customize the storefront and don't worry! you're not going to crash the internet or fry your server. just take simple precautions such as back up files before editing, upload and download in the proper mode (all store files except images xfer in ascii), after making a change quickly view the portion of the store where you did the edit to be sure you didn't break the script and there are other things that will become obvious as time goes by.

probably the most important thing is to see how the default cart works. navigation, viewcart, editing your puchase and checkout. the default is very basic but is the framework of all shoppingcarts. see how options work with the products. too, explore your manager. the manager is the backbone of the store and is a very powerful tool.

waiting for your reply.
regards,
dan