Newbie needing help on the Contributions

[tpatterson]

Our osCommerce is hosted on our hosting servers. Can someone please tell me, in plain english :( how I use the contributions? I am very interested in the ability to use the one where I can upload/download the CSV files for the product inventory changes, but as I know absolutely nothing about osCommerce (but am trying) and even less about MYSql (trying as well) I have no idea where to begin or what to do.

 

I know that this sounds ridiculous but I really need some help here ladies and gentleman, from step 1 to step ???

 

Thank you so much! :blink:

[soccercheese]

Contributions are changes/additions to the code that provide functionality not included in the core code.

 

My suggestion is to set up a local webserver on your machine using Apache, PHP, and MySQL. There are some installers out there that install all three. A Google search should come up with some. I think I've heard of phpdev as one, but not sure.

 

Then download the files you have from your webserver to your machine through ftp. Find out if your hosting provider made any changes to the core code, and what version of osCommerce they are running. You will have to change the config files (two of them I think) to match your local settings. Or you could install osCommerce, then download the files and replace everything except the config files.

 

You then download the contributions that are relevant to what functionality you want / need, and follow the instructions included. Most contributions are pretty well documented IMO.

 

To edit the php files, you'll need an editor. I've been using Crimson Editor, it's free and works pretty well. I've also used WinMerge to compare files to see what differences there are between two versions of the same file.

To edit your MySQL databases, I suggest using phpMyAdmin, but there are others out there. You'll need one to setup your database if you're not going to install osCommerce from scratch.

 

Don't know if this answers your question, but hopefully it does. I don't mess with CSV, just stick with latest stable version.

Edited August 2, 2004 by soccercheese