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osCommerce

The e-commerce.

OSCommerce newbie needs some help


Foley471

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Posted

OK, just a little backstory. I have an old friend who's been trying to set up an online business selling gaming supplies using osCommerce. About a year ago, he paid someone to get his site up and running. The original "Webmaster" did put a very, very basic site live, and my friend began putting product into the database, waiting for this "webmaster" to add the detail work (colors, greeting messages, banners, etc).

 

Cut to now, no work has been done, save for all the product in the DB (about 6,000 pieces by now). The webmaster gave my friend most of his money back and told him he didn't and wouldn't have the time to get to it. I have always been interested in learning web design, and offered to help my friend and learn OSCommerce to work on the site for him. I bought David Mercer's book "Building Online Stores with osCommerce: Professional Edition", and it actually is helping me learn a lot of the basics. I installed osCommerce, PHP, and Apache, so I have a full development environment, and I have been fiddling with the default site that's in the osCommerce software. I have been kinda stuck on something for about a month now though.

 

I'm having some issues and questions the book doesn't cover. How do I make changes to the files on the already existing live site? The book I bought assumes you're building a new site step-by-step with the chapters in the book, not modifying an existing web page. It seems by going to the admin page --> Tools --> File Manager, the live files are read-only. So do I need to make a copy of the files in the file manager and database from the live site to my PC, to over-write the "dummy" site that's in the osCommerce file when I first installed? If so, how do I do that?

 

I figure once I have a copy of the site on my PC, I could make the changes offline, then use the "replace" button in the file manager to overwrite the older files on the live site with the newer stuff from my PC. Basically, I need someone to take the time to write me out step-by-step instructions for how to copy the live site and database onto my PC, and replace that dummy site that's in my osCommerce file now (taking into account that I am a total newbie, and know nothing about how to FTP files or how to use Apache, and don't know a hell of a lot about osCommerce yet).

 

Thank you in advance for your time and kindness in typing out a response, I genuinely appreciate it.

Posted

Maybe you could tell us a little more about what you are trying to change?

 

Personally, I never use the file manager in the admin console. I maintain an open connection to an ftp, keep a local copy running of what I am working on, and upload it to my site every 15 minutes or so. That way I don't even worry about the read only permissions of my files, attempting to modify them through file manager.

 

On the other hand, if you want to use file manager to modify your oscommerce files, you can change the permissions on them.

Posted

Wouldn't changing permissions in the file manager be a huge security risk? That does seem like it would make life very easy though.

 

What I need to do to the site is customize the color scheme and fonts, set up some kind of greeting or introductory message on the front page, set up some banners at the top, customize the Auto E-Mail messages (confirmations, etc...), and customize the Information Section for starters. As it stands, the site up now is little more than the osCommerce dummy site (check it out for yourself at www.theamusingwidget.com. Orders won't process yet, so I'm not pimping anyone to buy stuff).

Posted

OK, I'm gonna just go with the easy way to start. How would I go about changing the permissions so my file manager is no longer read-only?

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