So now you are the proud owner of a new online shop, you will be eager to get on and stock it. But before rushing ahead please read these instructions as they will save you hours of having to redo things when you go wrong.

You will have been given the URL to your Admin Control Panel for osCommerce, along with an Admin Username and Password. Please note that these are BOTH case sensitive. These are the keys to your shop, don’t let them get into the wrong hands.

Before continuing please make note of the following warnings.
WARNING: DO NOT use spaces in the image name titles (testone.jpg is ok test one.jpg is wrong)
WARNING: Use the manufacturers part number for the image name. (e.g. “abc123.jpg”)
WARNING: Make sure you enter a manufacturers part number in 'Products Model' or you will not find anything. 
WARNING: Make sure that any image that you upload is between 150 and 500 pixels high.

Once logged in you will be presented with a screen similar to the one below.

The FIRST thing we have to do is to add some manufacturers. Click on the link highlighted in thered circle.

This will take us to the MANUFACTURERS page.


Add Manufacturers
Click on the "Manufacturers" link under the Catalog section. To the right there is an "insert" button. Click to insert and there are listings for a manufacturer name, manufacturer’s image, and manufacturers URL which can link to the manufacturer's website.

Manufacturer’s images are optional but if you use them they need to be small. They are displayed in the shop above the product lists. We recommend a size of approximately 200 x 60 pixels as a maximum size. All images should be JPG format. Do not use spaces in any image names uploaded to your store.

e.g. “my manufacturer.jpg” is wrong where “mymanufacturer.jpg” is correct.

Once you have made a nice list of Manufacturers you can proceed to adding PRODUCTS.

Adding CATEGORIES
Before we can add your products we need to setup Categories for them to go in. This will make it easier for your customers to find things.

Now’s the time to take out a pen and paper and really think about how you will set up this section. It is the difference between making your customers life easy or simply driving them insane because they cant find anything.

Try not to have Categories with more than 2 level depths. People do not like clicking and clicking and clicking to get to a product. Also you do not need to over complicate these Categories by adding a Manufacturers name in. If you are selling CARDSTOCK then you can have a Cardstock category and 2 sub categories say 12x12 and 10x8.

>Cardstock
>12x12
>10x8

What you don’t want to do is to have a manufacturers name in there as well. Like…..

>Cardstock
>Bazzill
>12x12
>10x8

Customers clicking on the 12x12 can drill down the manufacturers and show only the Bazzill cardstock by using the menu above the products shown.

The products for your store will be listed inside folders in the Catalog/Categories/Products section. Category Folders are setup in this section of the admin to hold your products. You can have as many Category Folders as you need listing them in the main "Top" section or listing under other Category Folders.

Add Categories

To setup a new category folder for your products you click on the "new category" button in the center section which will make a new category folder.

You have these options for the Category Folder:

Category Name
Category Image
Sort Order

Type in a Category Name. The Category Name is limited to 32 characters which needs to be adhered to as the number of characters will effect the width of the left column if increased too high.

Next is the Category Image which allows an image to be uploaded for that Category. Again make sure the image isn’t too big. We recommend 150x50 pixels for this.

A sort order can be set by typing a number in the "Sort Order" box. If a sort order is left blank, the category folders will line up alphabetically.

To edit a category folder, click on the "i" with the circle around it to the right of each Category Listing.

To put products inside of the Category Folder click on the yellow folder graphic to the left of each Category which will get you inside that Category. This is where products are entered and listed.

Clicking on the "new product" button will make a new product.

In the "new product" section you have the ability to:

Show the product in or out of stock – Out of stock will stop the product appearing in the shop.

Date the product will be available to purchase which corresponds with the "Products Expected" module. (optional)

Product's Manufacturer – Selected from the Manufacturers we have already entered. Always enter a manufacturer, do not leave blank.

Product's Name – What the product is called.

Tax Class which is used to charge VAT on each product. Basically 17.5% for most items and Zero Rated for books etc.

Product's Price (net)

Product's Price (gross) - The gross is automatically set after you set the net price according to your tax schedule to show cost plus tax to those customers who would pay tax. If you just enter your Including VAT price here and have set the Tax Class already then the Net price is automatically filled in for you.

Product's Description. Be as descriptive as possible in this box as the customer will want as much information as possible.

Product's Quantity in stock which corresponds with the "Configuration" "Stock" section settings.

Product's Model Number - Number of characters for a model number is 12. We recommend using the Actual Manufacturers part number that you order it from your suppliers with.

Product's Image to Upload - click browse and upload your image for that product.

WARNING: DO NOT use spaces in the image name titles or this will cause problems with the resizing of images for the automatic thumbnails.

e.g. “product test.jpg” is wrong where “producttest.jpg” is correct.

WARNING: Use the manufacturers part number for the image name.

e.g. “abc123.jpg”

No two images can have the same name. If you uploaded a stock item with an image called “paper.jpg” then uploaded a different product with an image called “paper.jpg” it will overwrite the first image and both items will have the same image displayed in the shop. Obviously one will be wrong. Using the Manufacturers part number in the image title wil stop this happening,

WARNING: There is a minimum size for images. Your images must be at least 150 pixels highin order for them to display properly. Any images smaller than this will be enlarged by the software making them look jaggy. Please make sure that you upload image of between 150 and 500 pixels high. The bigger the image then the better the customer will be able to view it in the “Click here to enlarge” popup. Do Not exceed a image size of 500 pixels high

Product's url if you need to link the product to another site.

Products weight - which, if you are using "weight" for your shipping schedule, each product will need to have a weight listed. This is in KILOS so if you have measured the weight in GRAMMES then you need to divide this by 1000. 10 Grammes equals 0.01 in this box.

Move a Product

To move a product, click to highlight the product that will be moved by clicking on the "i" with a circle around it to the right of the product and click the "move" button on the right. When the move button is clicked you will see this message:

"Move (name of product) to:".

Choose another Category Folder to move the product to and click the "move" button. The product is moved.

Copy a Product
To copy a product, click to highlight the product that will be copied by clicking on the "i" with a circle around it to the right of the product and click the "copy to" button on the right. When the "copy to" button is clicked you will see this message:

Copy Method:

Link product – Recommended as your item will exist in your shop only once. This is better for management and if you want to place the items on Special.

Duplicate product - If the products will be added as an additional product.

If there are several Category Folders that a product can be placed in then copy that product as linked to the other folder and all of the information will be intact without retyping it again.

Edit a Product
The "edit" button edits the product itself. Products that are "linked" duplicates will all be edited when only one is edited.

Delete a Product
The "delete" button will delete the product from the database. A product can be "turned off" without deleting it from the database by clicking the "pink" circle button to the right of the product which will turn the product off but leave it in the database. Clicking the "green" circle button will turn the product on again.

Specials

The specials section allows a product to be put on "special" in the store. Either a fixed price or a percentage can be used for the special price.

Add Specials

After clicking on "New Product" the next page screen shows a dropdown box of all the products listed in the store, a special price box, and an expiry date for that product.

Choose the product from the drop-down box to put a special price on. A special price can be 20% which will deduct 20% from the original price or a fixed value such as 10.00 which will set the product price at £10.00. This price is EXCLUDING VAT so you will have to calculate that yourself. If you enter 10 here then it will show in your shop as £11:75

An expiration date can be set if needed.

This allows you to add options to each product.
For example you may be selling a T-Shirt that comes in several colours and each colour is a different price. 
You can use the product attributes to present the customer with a drop down options box when they view the product.

In this example we will add colour options each with a different price

Login to your shop admin and under 'Catalog' click 'Product Attributes'
you will see the following screen 

Enter the option name and click insert.

now enter the option values for this option in this case 'Blue'


Enter all the option values you want. When finished you should see a screen like this

We now have the Option 'Colour' with values of 'Blue, Red and Yellow'

We now need to add price differences for each colour.
At the bottom you can enter attributes for each colour, these can alter the main price
of the product if required.
In this example I have set Blue to be the main price, Red to be plus £1 and Yellow to be minus £2

 
From the drop down menus, select the 'Product Name' 'Option Name' and 'Option Value'
then enter the price difference for that 'option value' if you don't want a price difference then 
enter 0.0 in the 'Value Price' and click insert.
If you want value Red to be £1 extra then enter 1.0 in 'Value Price' and '+' in the 'Prefix'
If you want value Yellow to be £2 less then enter 2.0 in 'Value Price' and '-' in the 'Prefix'

when you are finished, view your product, in this case 'Test 1'
you will see a drop down box with the options you have just created.


You can apply these options to as many products as you like and you can also have
multiple options for each product, so you could have Colour and Size for example.

Creating and Enabling the Gift Vouchers and Discount Coupons.

If you will follow these first few instructions I think you will have a fairly easy time.

Creating a Gift Voucher.

Creating a gift voucher for a customer to buy is the same as creating a new product with the exception that the gift vouchers model number must start with the word GIFT in upper case. It can be GIFT_25 or GIFT25 or whatever you would like to use. as the suffix to the word. But MUST START with the word GIFT You can create gift vouchers in any denomination.

You can also create gift vouchers by sending them to your customers via the admin->Vouchers/Coupons->Mail Gift Voucher selection within the admin. To use this to send a voucher to a customer use the drop down customer list. To send to a single customer or future customer you can put their email in the Email To: text box. Do not use both the customer drop down list and the Email To: text box or the customer will get 2 gift vouchers.

Gift vouchers are a virtual product. In this regard, in many shops, they do not require shipping charges to be added to them. To avert the shipping charge on gift vouchers set the weight of the gift voucher to 0 when creating the product.

Creating Discount Coupons:

Creating a discount coupon is done through the admin->Vouchers/Coupons->Coupon Admin This selection allows you to create/insert, edit, email and delete a coupon. Coupons can be created in fixed or percentage amounts, for a single product, multiple products, a single category, multiple categories or the complete inventory.

Welcome Message Gift Voucher and Discount Coupon

The default value of the customer gift voucher and discount coupon are set so that no value or notification is sent in the welcome email.
The value in the admin->configuration->Welcome Gift Voucher Amount tells the system how much of a gift voucher you would like to send your customer that has just created an account. If you do not want to use this option set the text box to 0. Do not leave blank.

To change the discount coupon that you send to your customer when creating a new account edit the admin->configuration->Welcome Discount Coupon Code: and place the coupon code that you would like to use in this text box.

Queue Purchases:

When the customer purchases a Gift Voucher it will be logged in a queue. The customer will not be able to use the Gift Voucher until you use the admin option to release it from the queue.

When you process their payment you go to the Gift Voucher Queue, and find their voucher. Click on redeem and it will send them an email containing the link to redeem the amount. Once they have clicked on that it will show a credit balance in their Shopping cart. They can then email all or part of this amount to a friend. If the friend already has an account with you then once they click on the link in their email they will be credited that amount to use in your shop. If the person doesn't have an account, they will be prompted to create one and they will then receive this credit balance to use at checkout.

In admin you have "Gift Vouchers Sent" this logs all emails sent either manually by you in admin or by the customers emailing their Gift voucher balances to each other. You can tell from this list who has redeemed them and when and what email addresses they were sent to.