Three questions If I may

[Guest]

I'm not certain if I should post 3 different threads for these.

If that would be preferable in future, please let me know.

 

Question 1:

I consider myself reasonably proficient at HTML, but have zip experience with PHP.

When editing the text on the home page of my shop I discovered one glaring difference between the two.

The use of the apostrophe had me well and truly stumped until I looked closely at the default coding and found a back slash just in front of it.

Found it quite by accident actually.

It seems at this early stage all other tags such as <img> <br> and <p> are all identical.

Therefore my question is, are there any others I should watch for?

Either html tags that won't work in PHP or PHP syntax that I wouldn't be aware of?

 

Question two:

My shop can be seen HERE

I've changed the colour scheme as you will see.

My problem in in the tiny graphics used to round out the corners of the boxes.

From memory they are corner_left.gif, corner_right.gif and corner_right_left.gif

I downloaded them, changed the colour and uploaded them again with the same name.

As you can see, the left_corner.gif is fine, but the other two are either displaying incorrectly or not at all.

I have tried every combination I can think of.

Have gotten new versions of them and tried again...you name it.

It's official....I can't figure it out.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

 

Question3:

I am so impressed with osCommerce that I am seriously considering using it for another project.

This one would involved selling memberships.

I would have two needs to make it work.

1) The ability to have anyone signing up for an account to be approved prior to being able to shop.

and 2) the ability to basically have two separate check out areas.

One to be used as it was intended, but the other to have general info pages in it.

The object of the exercise being that only people whose accounts have been approved would have access.

A "Members Only" area if you like.

I can do this with normal password scripts, but I wanted to use the existing password and user name from the SQL database.

(I've just re-read this last question, and I'm not real certain I've made myself clear.

Please sing out if I've not explained it properly.

[Guest]

BUMP..... :)

[Guest]

It would appear that I have stumbled across the answer to Question 2 myself.

For the interest of any other Newbie that may be faced with this situation, the problem was caused by my graphics programs have Interlaced as the default in the "Save As" command.

 

By unticking this option...graphic was saved as it should be.

 

I have no idea why the left_corner.gif one worked previously.

There will be a simple explanation, I just don't know what it is, and I guess it really doesn't matter now.

 

Since no-one seems to be able to answer my other 2 questions....or don't wish to.....perhaps I can ask in another way.

 

Has anybody published a "Road Map" of osCommerce so that one might look at any individual part of any page and know it is controlled by such_n_such.php???

 

It would help greatly if I could look at a page and know which other pages have to be edited to change things

[Wendy James]

#1 Nope, the \ is really the biggest thing to watch for, along with not using the file manager that comes with osCommerce, there are bugs in it and will cause you headaches.

 

#3 There are contributions that allow you to run two shops on one database so you could set one up that has to be signed up for and have a log in to get in there.

I would think though, that this may cause a problem if you use their existing log in and password for the area because then anyone could get in there that has signed up with you. So not sure how to solve that.

 

There are contributions that have seperate prices per customer which allows you to put people in groups and there are hide prices from groups of people, and I believe a hide category from groups of people but that says it is beta so I haven't tried it. There are many choices, your best bet would be to think about how you want to do things then take a trip through the tons of contributions to see if you can find what fits your needs. You may even find things you hadn't thought of but you want. :)

[Guest]

First Wendy...Thank you so very much for responding to my questions.

I sincerely appreciate the time taken.

 

Re #1 Thank you. I did make an interesting discovery over this actually. I never before realised that Dreamweaver changes the colour of the coding after an error. That was what helped me track it down. Clever little buggers at Macromedia.

I will admit though that I wasted much time putting a double apostrophe in.

Satisfied Dreamweaver, but not osCommerce.

I WILL learn this PHP stuff properly one day

 

Re Filemanager.

Thankfully I haven't used it. I upload direct from Dreamweaver.

Thanks for the heads up though.

 

Re #3 This might work. The concept will be that only members can purchase from the shop, so there wouldn't be a problem with being able to access both areas.

I have tried a search of the contributions but obviously wasn't using the correct search criteria.

Do you have any idea of the name of the one you're referring to?

 

Would you, or anyone else happen to also know if there is a means by which accounts can be approved before purchasing takes place?

[♥Vger]

It would be worth your while going to the Contributions section (link under Community at the top of this page) and running a search there for what you want.

 

Vger

[Guest]

I've been all over the contributions pages for 2 weeks now.

Wendy was quite right when she said I'd find things I wasn't looking for but can use.

But I don't ever seem to be able to find exactly what I want.

 

On the business of approving accounts before activication I think I have tried literally dozens of possible search phrases and/or keywords and come up with zip.

 

I've also discovered that if I search these forums with the criteria to select the posts with the most replies first I tend to get more info.

Searches on topics only often reveal numerous threads relating to my question but with nil responses.

 

Let's face it....the existing documentation for osCommerce is sadly lacking.

I've searched Amazon.com for books and there appears to be only one authour available.

Some of the reviews are far from favourable.

Before paying $AU to buy $US to buy a book, then waiting umpteen days for it to arrive I'd want some kind of indication that its what I need in the first place.

I'm not exactly wealthy.

 

There is a very real opening for a bright young man or woman here to make a LOT of money selling a book on osCommerce.

This product has the abilty to be the single best thing to happen to Ecommerce since the credit card but without a way of getting answers, it just won't ever reach its full potential....IMHO

[♥Vger]

it just won't ever reach its full potential....IMHO

 

It's only the mostly widely-used Shopping Cart in the world!

 

Vger