jerseyjoe

Thanks for the reply, but I don't see anyhting there that helps. That thread starts out with discussion of an upgrade that's missing some code and then seems to wander into discussion of situationswhere spurious code appears - but none seem to address my unique issue. When I am in the ACP and click on Store, I get /offline.php, just as if I were not logged in as Admin. This happens in both FF and IE. Never saw this before.

I'm setting up my 5th registered, licensed CC (hooray! drinks all around - be sure to give 'em the bill, too.). My question has been raised before, in a virtually identical structure but I have not yet seen an answer. It's a cigar store. He sells dozens different types and price points of high-quality, handrolled cigars, either one at a time individual cigars or by the boxed. For example: 1 cigar @ $5.00 25 cigars in box $100.00 In other words, a discount of $25 for buying a box of $25 that would otherwise cost $125. One way of having CC handle this is to set the price for the product at $0.00. Then, in Product Options, create an option - let's call it "Price" - with two choices, one for each of the above options. But this means that the price showing in the Product precis would be $0.00 - clearly a problem. And "Quantity: " next to the "buy" button, in either case, would remain at "1" which will confuse the customer. Likewise, when the full product description is displayed, the price would show in one place as $0.00" and in the options as either $5.00 or $100, depending on the order in which the options are set up. Again, confusing to customer. How to handle this without all the confusion? One way would be to treat them as separate products - the single ciagr is one SKU at one price; the box another. But that should not be necessary - and it is not good merchandizing - and it would double thte work of installing products now and forever. So that's not a desireable solution. Ideas, please? BTW - When I have time I will be going over to .org looking for a mod that will impose a minimum of $50 per order, a mix of any variety of single cigars because he doesn't want to sell small value orders online. So anyone with input on that, please pick up on it there later this morning.

I suspect the resaon why there has been no followup postings on this question is that the answer becomes self-evident as sson as you try it.

This is a fresh new isntallation of 3.0.11. I've taken the store offline while working on it. I have the option set to allow Admin to view the store off line. But I cannot open the store from the Admin CP menu unless I take the store back online. Suggestions for fix? TIA

That won't get you what you need - hmmm, but wait - actually it might. At installation the system will tell you the URL that opens the Administrative Control Panel (ACP). The location of that info depends on which method you used to install CC. If you install via cPanel > Fantastico, that information is in the Overview - and you would have been given the option to send yourself an email with the ACP logon details, including the URL, user name, password, etc. If you do a manual intsallation by uploading the files to your server via FTP and then use the CC Installation system, the login link is given to you at the final step but you are expected to either know or have written down the login you created a few seconds earlier in the previous installation step. Anyway, go to the URL www.yourdomain.com/admin. You will be prompted for the user name and password you created at installation. If you have forgotten the pw, the system will send you one at the email address you used at intsallation. You then may change either in the ACP > Administration link at the foot of the menu. Hope that helps.

I'm basically a freelance writer so I easily become stuck on words. In this case, I'm really stuck on those you are using. You say, "put the upgraded folder." To my knowledge, there is no upgraded folder. There's a folder that contains the upgrade files. Why would you upload the folder itself? Think about it. Logic says you need the contents of the folder, not the folder itself. Or am word-obsessed again? The root is public_html. Why would you want to upload something to a location outside the root? Root is root, right?

Frankly, I'm confused. It appears to me as if you are upgrading to a folder called 3.11 - which to my knowledge does not yet exist. Further,l without going through the process myself, I don't know why there are references to 3.6. So let's go back to basics. Am I right in assuming you have a CC 3.010 store installed in a folder called public_html?

Sometimes it is. Sometimes it's because the final step of creating the Db and creating a Db User *AND* installing a Db User has not been completed. The problem is not the CC install program but lousy interface design in various servers' control panels, such as cPanel. It's easy to miss the essential last step in setting up a Db. When you do, it will produce that error message. See my own tutorial on this at: http://www.cubecart.com/site/forums/index....ost&p=90491 I hear you that you've tried a search but if you had used the keyword "step 3" it wou;ld have come up in the search results.

If you have a bricks and mortar store, you can either learn to replace a burnt-out fuse yourself, or pay a licensed electrician $100 just to show up, plus his hourly fees and inflated parts costs to do it for you. If you have an online store, you should learn to do stuff or be ready to pay someone to do it for you. There's no middle ground. There is no auto-install for upgrading. But if you want to get started, here's how: Don't be intimidated by something you have never seen before. Go get yourself an FTP program. Your hosting company will supply you with the access codes to the server. Then follow the very same instructions you quoted. You do not need to know what they mean. They are so step-by-step simple that it does not matter what they mean. Just follow the steps and the upgrade will be done. QUOTE: Auto Method +------------------------------------------------ a. Upload every file to the server replacing your existing ones excluding: includes/global.inc.php install/ language/*/home.inc.php (If you have made changes.) END QUOTE after you do that, go to step ".b" Per se, those instructions have *nothing* to do with CC or PHP or MySQL or any computer codes. They are telling you which files to replace and which files not to replace. The major assumptions made are: 1) that you know how to open the server where your web site is hosted 2) that you know how to download or upload using an FTP program That's it. No more no less. Go get an FTP program and learn to use it. Everything you need to know can be learned in about 15 minutes. For example, see the tutorials for the tool I use: http://www.ipswitch.com/Support/WS_FTP/tut...tours/index.htm A 10-year-old could follow them and learn everything needed. (TIP: use the F11 key to maximize your screen so you can see the control bar at the bottom of the tutorial). After you learn that - Then upload per the step by step instructions for upgrading. As you can see from reading the messages here in the forum, there are animated tutorials. There are detailed instructions in the "pinned topics" covering just about any commonly encountered issue. And when something goes wrong there are people here to help you with free advice on how to fix it. I don't think I've ever seen a "we'll get back to you" here. But keep in mind this is all peer-to-peer volunteer help. Yes, the lead programmer of CC lurks and even deaf-signs something once in while, like "want banana" or "hug love" but given a change of nappie and bowl of warm beer, he usually goes away quietly, humming something to himself. The rest of the time it's just us chickens pecking away in the barnyard. Patience and quiet persistence go a long way. I've been pecking away in various software barnyards for a few years now. Sometimes I've seen things best not discussed with children in the room. Other times I've stepped in stuff that I didn't need to see just to know what it was. But as barnyards go, this one has some of the fattest, juiciest worms I've ever pulled up for breakfast.

No pain; no gain. That's not meant to be flip. I understand your point. There is no easy way for anything worth doing. On the other hand, to upgrade from one version of CC to the next, you do not need to know anything at all about MySQL and PHP. Upgrading is done by replacing certain files with new ones. Once in a while, you'll encounter the need to replace a portion of a file. But again, you need not know or understand anything about PHP or MySQL. It's just copy and paste. Yes, there are things you *will* need to know in order to customize your store. You will need to know how to use the previously mentioned FTP tool. You'll want to control the graphics and product photos on your web site, so you'll need to learn how to use an image manipulator such as Adobe's Image Ready or Adobe Photoshop. (does Adobe still sell "Elements?") In the course of using CC tutorials and reading the postings here in the forums and the advice over in cubecart.org, you'll learn as much as you need to know. Take a look at my photo. If a 73-yr-old klutz can do it, so can you.

There's a wealth of guidance already here in these forums if you will use the search tool. Also, click on the word "support" at the top of this page and then watch the animated, step-by-step tutorials. You will need a few tools to edit the files. My toolset includes . . . Photoshop to manipulate images, change their sizes, improve their look and, most important of all, reduce their download time. Maybe someone can suggest a free or less expensive program for you. WS_FTP - a file transfer protocol program for move files to and from the server so you can edit them on your local computer and then upload them to the server so the revised files can be seen. There's a free thirty day trial version and my own experience is that paying for it is worth the cost. But there are many free FTP programs such as PHPdesigner - a free file-editing tool. After you install it, assuming you are running a Windows computer, go to MyComputer > Tools > Folder Options > File Types and associate the following extensions with the PHP editor - PHP, TPL, JS and CSS. While you are there, if you have not already corrected Microsoft's outrageously stupid default setting that hides extensions, unclick the box next to Views > Hide Extensions for known file types. I have never been able to understand the mentality of whoever controls that default setting. Either they don't trust the intelligence of users or they don't realize how important it is to know what type of a file you are dealing with, and the prime source of that information is the extension. Finally, before you ask how to do something as basic as edit the header, it's a reasonable assumption that it's been asked and answered often. Read the "pinned topics" at the head of each forum. For example, if you read the topics at the top of this very forum "General Support," just a short scroll up from where you began, you'll find almost everything a new user encounters has been answered in detail. Like wise, in the Skinning forum there a perfectly lucid, step-by-step explanation of all the main issues leading to a customized CubeCart. It's called, quite correctly, "READ THIS BEFORE POSTING TO THIS FORUM!" Good advice. Good luck with Cube Cart. There's a lot of first class help here but you first must help yourself.

I do not want to be seen as justifying ANY attack. It is a despicable thing. But I believe I know one reason why Invision Power Board forum software has become a target. I was an early user and supporter of IPB. It was an atmosphere of love, peace and free software supported by voluntary registration and payments for additional services. Like many others, I paid for a license out of a sense of support and responsbility. I bought mods from IPB costing hundreds of dollars. I participated often in the tech support forums. Along the way, with the support of their user community, they made big break-throughs in the marketplace and started selling service contracts to major corporations who discovered forums as powerful marketing tools and intranet portals. Then one day, without prior warning, IPB cut off the free trial downloads. They eliminated the voluntary, unlimited paid license and "forgot" to register those who had bought them. They announced an annual fee program. They shut down the support forums and opened a separate support site that was accesible only to people who paid annually for a license. When a security defect was discovered, attacks began and IPB abandoned its former supporters who had paid for licenses. In order get a patch for the defect in the IPB software, any one who had not paid for an annual license - even those who bought a license when it was a one-time voluntray payment - were shut out. All the support contact email addresses have been removed from the IPB web site. They have built a wall around themselves that shuts out those who helped them get where they are now. Requests for a patch for the defective software are rejected. Is it a stretch to suspect that some disgruntled customers might be involved in attacks? Lest anyone think I am being cute and secretly supportive of the attackers, my own licensed, paid IPB forum that I customized during many self-taught hours and built up membership over a few years, has been offline for the past three weeks thanks to a hacker. If and when I can get it repaired, I'm going to reopen it it using something like VB or PHPBB. I am in full sympathy with any one whose IPB has been hacked - but have nothing but contempt and loathing for IPB itself.

Have you tried this? http://www.cubecart.com/site/forums/index....ost&p=90491

I'm not a shill for Mark - or anyone - but speaking as someone whose CSS skills are limited, I have found him to be responsive, professional, skillful - and even cheap. My skills related to CubeCart are in other areas. While I'm good at selling carts to other people and I know something about layouts that sell effectively, I'm not so good at the codes to customize them. When I need help, I turn to Mark and others like him who can be found at www.cubecart.org. At one time or another I've bought code from most of the principal players over there and never once been dissatified. Now to comment on issues where I think I know what I'm talking about . . . That 259px-high header is a huge waste of valuable real estate. Putting it atop every page only compounds the problem. Look at it this way - A common 600 by 800 display (there are milllllions of them out there and you want to sell to them, right?) actually offers only about 450 pixels high of unused display space most of the time after you deduct the browser's tool bars and all the crap that people put at the top and bottom of the screen - or was installed for them when they bought the computer and they have no idea how to change. If you put a 250px-high banner at the top of every page, that means your products are displayed in a mail slot that requires scrolling down on every page just to get to the products. But what's the point of a huge logo? If the person visiting your site doesn't know the name of the store by the time they are there, there's some other issue, such as inadequate IQ or illicit drugs, or too much time on the iPod, going on that not even a 500px-high logo can help. A logo takes its power from repetition, not from size. Look at how people who really know their web users treat the logo. Look at www.barnesandnoble.com/, www.amazon.com, www.jr.com/, www.cbs.com/, www.gm.com/ and so on. And by reducing the size of the logo - and height of the banner, look how much more product can be displayed without scrolling down: www.vikolya.com, www.whirlpoolparts.co.uk, or even www.cubecart.com itself! Good luck with your site. Regards, Joe

Hope you are not offended by sincere but uncoated critique. The banner graphic (poorly trimmed and not very attractive to start with, by the way) is more than 65k, roughly 150% of good practice for an entire home page. The graphic in the center of the home page is almost 133K, more than 3 times the suggest upper limit for a fast downloading home page. A few of the product images I checked are in the 25k and up range. Yet not one of them needs to be over 10k - and probably could be much less without loss. A run through Photoshop's "Save for the web" at 60% or some similar tool would do wonders for download speed. If you don't already know it, what matters is not what you think is the download speed - because after the first visit to a page, the page is not being downloaded but delivered from your computer's cache. What matters is the speed of the download for a first-time visitor. That's why many first time visits are aborted due to impatience. A long-accepted standard is, a home page should not exceed a total of 40k. Question - what purpose does the drop down box for currency serve, given that the box directly above it says the same thing - and you accept only one currency anyway? Viewed at 600 by 800 (you'd be surprised how many of us there are out here - and we spend money, too) the login is invisible. The area to the right of the right hand column is totally empty and therefore wasted. Hope this helps. Regards, Joe

There are those who may want something "cooler" but there's a lot to be said for keeping things simple. So I say, thumbs up for what you have done so far. A few comments: Your logo appears on every page in the same position. The power of a logo comes not from size but from repetition. Instead of the curent 85px high, reduce it to 60. It will be just as effective - maybe more so - and you'll offer more prime selling space for your merchandise without scrolling. That blank space to right of the logo is an unfortunate waste of valuable real estate. You'd be a lot better off putting the search and login functions there, just as they are in the default skins. And remove the secondary links (home, site docs) from that prime position and remove the blue bar they are in, as well. The issue here is that the layout should promote the function of the site - which is to sell things. When you walk into a real life store, you are not handed a brochure describing the history of the store, a bunch of press releases and a list of the names of the owner's cats. That would distract you from buying the automobile or hamburger or diamond ring that is the lifeblood of the store. You might get so engrossed - or discouraged - by something you read in those docs that you might never buy anything at all. The most difficult acomplishment of all for both an online or real world store is to get the prospective customer into the store. Once you accomplish that, it's wasting that accomplishment if you do anything but sell, sell, sell the product. So why give those secondary items such a prime position? There are things about the CC default skins that I don't like, but putting those secondary links at the foot of the page is a smart thing! On that same issue, what's the point of installing a Google Search and defaulting it to search the web? Is it to help potential customers go somewhere else? You already have a search function built into the site that searches just the store. That's all you need. The drop-down shopping menus are clever. Well done! - but why repeat the Shop by Category function and Homepage links in the left side menu? All those boxes!!! Too many boxes. Just because the default skin offers all those boxes does not mean you must use every single one of them. Every one of them should be carefully reconsidered as if clutter. Will it really help sales if your offer Popular Products, Latest Products, Featured Product, Language, Currency, etc? Or will fewer be more? I suspect if the default skin included a box that displayed the phases of the moon or joke of the day, most stores would use it blindly. Remove the counter at the foot of the page. It is a so-1994 thing. It does not help your public image to show a small number - and if you have a lot of traffic, why invite competition? If you want the stats for your own use, the CC / ACP contains a rudimetary stats module. Your hosting company probably offers a full stats package such as AWSTATS or Webalizer or Analog or Urchin. Upscale hosts offer all of them. If your's does not, get yourself another hosting service because you can't run a successful online business without that information. Tone down the shade of blue just a bit. It's kind of bright. I can't tell when a CC copyright removal is legit or not so, if you have actually paid for registration of your CC software, good for you! In sum, I suspect that the only reason for the redundancy of those links and the clutter of boxes and the toys of the Google box and hit counter is simply because they can be there. But take lessons from the real world stores you shop in. For example, a supermarket. Everything in it is carefully and obessively placed. Low margin, high volume items such as bread and milk are back in a corner. You have walk through the high margin vegetable and fruits to get to them. Larger profit items are at eye-level; lower margin items are below at floor level. Every square inch of the store is planned based on huge volumes of research into customer behavior. Apply that kind of retail wisdom to your online store. Never waste a single pixel. Don't allow anything between the customer and the product. Do not distract or send them off somewhere else. Sell, sell, sell the products. Good luck!

I used to have problems with dropped connections that would not restart properly. After I switched to the free 30-day trial version of WS_FTP (http://www.ipswitch.com) the problems went away and never happend again.

There are so many choices - and the value of any depends on your needs, what you brintg, etc. I suggest spedning time browsing either a Barnes and Noble, or the well equipped library of a college that offers a CS degree.

agreed - and as further advice, a good free editor (not WYSIWYG but well done) can be downloaded from www.mpsoftwareweb.com. After you install it, configure it so it edits CSS, TPL, PHP and JS. Hope that helps,

I suspect you are a bit confused. A Red Hat Linux server is one that uses the Red Hat operating system, usually together with Apache. Whatever is the current MySQL and PHP configuration is also common for such a server, dedicated or shared, managed or self-managed. What makes me think you are confused are the questions about Gnome. You need not have a Linux desktop to interact with that kind of Linux server. While it can be done - and I'm sure many do - it's just as simple with a WinXP desktop if the server is equipped with a combination of Web Host Manager and cPanel. WHM simplifies managing mutiple domains on a single server and cPanel gives each domain owner an excellent GUI for controlling the domain. Some server suppliers offer what I consider inferior proprietary or "off-brand" alternatives. I suspect they are saving money but, in my opinion, none of those alternatives are in the same league as the above combo. As for CubeCart, it runs beuatifully on a server configured that way. cPanel even incudes a few dozen user apps, including CC, already installed on the server, that only need activation with a few fields filled in and three or four clicks. Hope that helps.

That's a joke, right? Please tell me it's a joke. Oh, yes, I'll install Vista on the new computer I'm going to have to buy when the news sys comes out - but only because I need to see the web sites I develop the same way as so many unfortunate Win users see them. Oh, the tragedy. Oh, the humanity. Meanwhile, it's strange cross-browser behavior and I'm now going to look at other CC sites to see if I encounter there as well. Joe

That's strange that it is only on my desktop's FF. I'll hook up my laptop and see if what happens. OK - interesting result, deeper mystery. In my desktop, using FF, when I click on Test Category, the size of the surround shrinks left to right by about 10 pixels. I do not see that in IE. On my laptop, in FF, when I click on Test Category, the size of the surround shrinks left to right by about 10 pixels for just long enough that it is visible - maybe for one second - and then pops back to its full width. In IE, there's no apparent shift or change in the size of the display. Very strange.

answer 1) There is no manual as such. However, there is a great deal of information and support here on this forum and on the sister-forum at www.cubecart.org, amounting to the same thing. For example, if you click on Support (above) you'll find step-by-step videos that cover basic topics. At the top of each forum category (general, skinning, shipping, etc.) there are sticky postings that cover the latest and most common issues. Further, the forums themselves are a rich source of help, not just by doing simple searches for past resolutions of questions that may be new to you but have been well covered in the past. 2) There are two flavors of PayPal. One is the original which requires that the customer have or establish a PayPal account before the purchase can be completed. That's adequate for really small or newbie stores. But it does result in a certain percentage of abandoned orders when customers bailout rather than create a PayPal account. This type of PayPal can be appealing to start-up stores with limited capital because the only fees are the transactions fees published on the PayPal web site. The better way to go, especially for a serious online store, is the version introduced earlier this year (PayPal WebSite Payments Pro) that costs the merchant $20 per month. At checkout, the buyer is offered a display asking if the customer wishes to pay via major credit card or via a PayPal account. Again, the transaction fees are as published on the PayPal site - plus the monthly charge. The advantage of this plan over a traditional merchant account is the lack of startup fees, no monthly minimums, no need for a SSL certificate and it's related integration into your web site, etc. - There are forums here that support each of these approaches and you may want to go through them to see what issues are discussed that may relate to your particular needs. Good Luck!

Please look at this store under construction: http://www.rodriguezpuroscigars.com/store/ Click on Test Category. Note how the display surround shrinks. Then click on Home Page and the display returns to the orginal size. To my knowledge I've not edited the width of ANYthing. I've simply changed some colors, changed the header height from the default 116 to 80, replaced the default images - and that's it. Any idea where that change is coming from? BTW - this happens ONLY in FireFox.

Surely you mean "bated" breath. Bated means "withheld," as in holding one's breath while awaiting an imminent event. "Baited breath" is likely to smell pretty bad, being associated with catching fish or other wildlife as in a "baited hook" or "baited trap."