jerseyjoe

Forgive me if I comment without taking time to read the above responses in detail. In a nutshell, I think you are wanting to work on the store using a WYSIWYG editor such as DreamWeaver (FrontPage, Nvu, etc.). The simple answer is, you cannot because CubeCart - and all applications such as forums, shopping carts, guestbooks, blogs, etc. that rely on the combination of PHP and MySQL - are "server side" (your web site host), as compared with HTML which is "client side" (your computer). Don't be intimidated by that. It is not necessary to have major command of PHP and MySQL in order to customize a CC store. I have tried to read five or six books on those subjects and my eyes roll up in my head. But after hanging around these forums for a while and reading the many lucid postings on how to do certain things - and after acquiring a few free or very inexpensive tools that manipulate the elements that make up a CC store (and those other formats) - I am surprised and pleased with how much I can accomplish. I'm now building my 9th CubeCart store (see www.itsgreektomejerseycity.com) * My suggestions for a basic toolkit are: * Easy PHP (described in the tutorial I wrote that is linked above) on how to install and run CC on a USB or thumb drive or on any hard disk. It includes an Apache server, plus PHP and MySQL and MyPHPadmin that it will install on your drive or device. With those tools you can simulate your CC store without putting it online. You can break it and reinstall it over and over again as part of the trial and error learning process. * AlleyCode for editing PHP and other languages * FlashFXP - an excellent FTP program. * An image manipulation program that can change the physical dimensions AND the kb footprint of images to optimize download speed. I use PhotoShop because I like its powerful industrial-grade features. But for people on a tight budget, Adobe Image Ready is Photoshop's excellent "little brother" that can do a great many of the same things. For even tighter budgets, Picasa from Google is free and includes an "export" feature that allows you to make batch changes of dimensions and bytes. Finally, bookmark the growing (and superb) CC Documentation project over on www.cubecartforums.org. Best of luck to you . . .

At the moment, the only gateway configured is the "Print Order" that I modified for sending by fax. Two issues are delaying configuring a PayPal gateway. 1) I haven't solved the problem described in a thread over in the PP Gateway forum that produces an error at checkout. 2) After I do, the owner will place a laptop at the cashier station. Orders will come in by email that is pinged frequently. Then the cashier will punch them into the POS touchscreen monitor just as she does now with phone in orders. Those orders are then billed to the customer credit card and a copy is printed on the kitchen printer, telling them to prepare the order. The POS manufacturer is unhappy that the restaurant has rejected a $12,000 proposal (plus outrageous hosting and maintainance fees) for an integrated store that would take the order in through their proprietary shopping cart. That would avoid the manual order entry step. But the owner is willing to live with the manual system and there is hope for an alternative. Sources I have consulted assure me that once I solve the PayPal issue, they can integrate the CC order directly into the kitchen printer too. That remains to be seen. I intend to ask Brooky if Develion might want to quote a price for that custom work - and there are other folks here too, who might be able to write that code. There is incentive. At the moment there are 10 franchised restaurants in the system. The franchisors and I are working closely. If this is a success, it will be applied to all stores. The 10 are all here in NJ, but they have solid plans to go regional and then national. St. Paul cant be that long off - and it's worth the wait. The food is superb. All freshly prepared. The in-store decor recalls a Greek fishing village. See the Interior Views in the site docs under "Information."

I guess all the monitors in Bangladesh are high resolution LCDs. You probably are right in assuming that the owners of the hundreds of millions of CRTs and many LCDs that are set for 800 by 600 don't buy MP3s.

Aside from the issue, that you acknowledge, that you could do with fewer words, there are two issues that I think are more important. Both arise from your fundamental conceptual approach - one that I respectfully think needs reconsideration and reflection. Please do not be offended at the bluntness of my comments and questions. I am not trying to insult you. I sincerely respect you and what you are trying to do. I just think that being straight with you serves you better - while recognizing that I don't have time to slide for carefully polite words. Your layout is too much about you (the store, your issues, etc.) and not enough about the products. The first evidence of this is the HUGE graphics that take up a major portion of the top of every page, thus greatly reducing the space available for displaying your goods. At the top of every page, such a graphic shouts insecurity and self-involvement. And what is the purpose of the star-like grahic in the upper right corner? Anything that does not drive sales should be removed. It is a distraction and waste of time. The second evidence is not only the volume and placement of all that text in the middle of the home page, but the content of the text. You are telling people about your problems and worries and efforts. But that is not what they came for. When was the last time you walked into a store and were greeted by the owner telling you about the clerk who didn't show up this morning and the delivery truck that is late? And gosh . . . all that space devoted to PayPal, when a small logo would do. As for "Grand Opening", in todays online world, that self-congratulatory announcement of your lack of online history is a counter-incentive for scam-wary surfers. Too often, new also means, only here for a few months and then gone. I am not suggesting you mis-lead people and claim a non-existent track-record of satisfied customers. But I am suggesting that it is not in your best interest to boast of what many will see as a negative. My suggestion is that you go into your Home Page admin, delete all that text (all of it, every single word). Then install a centered table with three columns across and as many rows as you need so you can put one 175 pixel wide Category photo in its own cell. Then link the photos the category item in the menu. As example of that approach is at www.vikolya.com. Hope that helps.

a restaurant wanted to attract more catering and takeout (some parts of the world call it take-away). http://itsgreektomejerseycity.com/ I waiting for about 1/2 dozen product photos and more verbose product description, but this site's pretty much done. It appears to not be a registered CC site but it is. I'm just waiting for the key.

I've created a step by step illustrated tutorial that solves the problem caused by the very poor design of the MySQL interface on cPanel. It is not a CC issue. Whoever designed the cPanel interface for the MySQL module has never put it through a simple usability panel review. The design contains a serious flaw in not making clear that there are FOUR steps to setting up a data base. Failure to complete the final one will return the subject (useless and uninformative) error. See: http://buildinghosting.com/CC_Step3_cure.htm good luck

May we see a URL after it is done - or one where it is already working?

I've been through PayPal's tech support and they responded that this is something that is managed in CC. I'm trying to activate PayPal gateway for the Cube Cart shopping cart at www.itsgreektomejerseycity.com I'm getting the following error immediately after I enter credit card details and click on "continue" If you wish to look behind the scenes, send me a PM for the codes. TIA

This is a pretty maddening issue. The error message itself is so vague as to be of no value at all. (The English syntax error it includes only adds to the grief - "setup"is a noun but the sentence uses it as a verb. The correct, verb form would be, "set up.") The issue seems to be related to configuring shipping by weight because my problem began with a test order for a single item weighing a single pound generated a "too heavy" error message. Configuring the item weight to zero as a way of figuring things out stops that message - but then the no shipping method error comes up - even though UPS is already configured. The interface for configuring UPS shipping by weight is so uninformative as to what is wanted that it is useless. A few examples of correct configuration would be a huge help. For example - The first item, the drop down for enable / not enable is obvious, but for a shipper based in the US, the next box (Zone 1 Countries: (List comma separated ISO codes) Is vague, confusing, uninformative and confusing. It makes no sense to put in US because common sense tells you that rates vary across the US. So what goes here? States? That's still not right because UPS calculates rates by zones and those are not mapped to states. But just for the hell of it, I put NJ in there as a test because the shipper is also in NJ and the test account is in NJ. Try to process a test order - it doesn't work. "No shipping to your country." And what setting or configuration goes in the other boxes? Who knows? This whole topic needs more help than it has been getting. The number and frequency of requests for help in dealing with it - and none of them seems to attract a comprehensive and coherent resolution - should be a red flag. So, a basic question - is there a step-by-step tutorial? The video tutorial for configuring shipping avoids dealing with it by showing how to configure or free shipping (unacceptable) and per item (irrelevant) - but does not mention configuring by weight, a configuration that is essential to calculating fees for shipping by almost any carrier. Has anyone created a step-by-step tutorial on configuring shipping by weight for UPS and USPS?

Well, so far, here's what I know . . . the dB for v3.017 contains two tables that do not exist in 3.0.11, "blocker" and "spambot." That seems to be why I m getting the Admin login error. Anyone have any ideas as to how to fix the situation I have? In addition to what I've already tried, I did a fresh reinstall, created a new dB with the required 2 added tables and again imported the old dB into the new. I'm thinking that my problem would be solved if I could edit the data in the appropriate table to add the settings that the error message says it wants "failLevel < 5 AND blockTime < 1184808325" But I don't have a clue which tables and which row/columns to edit. I see there is blockTime in the blocker table; I don't find failLevel in any table. Someone?

I've upgraded from 3.0.11 to 3.0.17 and the store look fine - but on trying to login (valid user/pw), I get the following error If it helps, I did the upgrade by backing up the existing dB as an uncompressed SQL file dropping the tables from the dB uploading and overwriting all the .17 "upload" folder but the skin folder importing the tables from the original dB back into the server I'm suspecting that the dB of .17 is not the same as .11 - and this may be just the first of a series of similar errors. But given my limited experience in MySQL, that may not be the issue all. Before going further, I need informed advice. I'll provide access via PM to recognized members. Any ideas, please?

Based on logging in a few mins ago, I can confirm it is not a session or caching issue. At login to admin I got the expected CC/ACP screen, with a full and apparently active nav menu, but as soon as clicked on anything other than Admin or Store, the login prompt came back and the nav menu, except for those two items, grayed out. Have you tried a fresh reinstall - and without using Fantastico? You really should be using 3.0.16 anyway, and Fantastico, for some reason, hasn't offered an update for a loooong time. A direct installation really is not difficult at all. Go to the CC Support Help Desk (click support above) and you'll see a good video tutorial on doing that. If you get stuck, just ask and one of us will help you. In order to customize CC you'll need a copy on your harddisk so it may as well be the most current version. Good luck

Which browser are you using? In the interest of finding a speedy resolution, I'll guess FireFox - and further, that you are accepting FF's offer to "restore session." Try 2 things: 1) see if you have the problem in IE 2) if that works, next try FF but reject the restore option. That's what works for me (as reported elsewhere in these forums only within the past month).

The subject issue has been standing withoput a response for a week. Someone, please?

Oh, the frustrations of dealing with an obedient idiot (my definition of "computer" and "computer software"). And oh, the satisfaction that is exceeded only by illicit sex, when I can outsmart one of them. My early attempts at importing the CSV file met with the previously reported error. So, I tried importing from the SQL version of the copy. That generated an error reporting that the import was stopped because tabe xyz already exists on the server. I deduced that phpMYadmin is such a total idiot that it doesn't know that it's OK to overwrite a existing table while importing. (If there is a setting that informs our stupid servant of that intention, I never saw it.) So I opened the Structure screen of the problem dB and saw the 29 tables there. I deleted every single table. When that was accomplished, I again attempted an import of the SQL copy of the dB from my hard drive. It worked. The obedient idiot created the dB with the required 29 tables that CC needs - and populated them with the data that had seemed lost. THEN - I went and did the same thing to the second data base for the new CC installation in the _shop folder. The trick worked again. Idiots. That's all these collections of plastic and conductive pathways known as computers are. Friggin' idiots.

Thanks for your reply. The situation just moved from inconvenient to farce to tragedy. I have a CSV copy of the entire db. I also have a copy in SQL. Both were exported from the copy on the server. Somehow, in the process of making those copies, I deleted the data from the db itself on the server. But, no problemo, right? I have those copies, right? All I need do is import one of those copies back into the db on the server, right? But, noooooo-oh. Same error message as above. I can't even import back what I exported. On the face of it, the alleged error would have had to have been introduced by phpMyadmin itself. Does anyone have any idea as to what is going on that I ain't even restore the data? EDIT UPDATE - before replying, see my next post for the results of my desperation

I have a CC 3.0.15 installed in .../store. Its db is _storedb. I want to move the site to a new folder on the same domain called .../shop with a db named _shopdb. The new store is using 3.0.16. So, after a successful installation of CC3.0.16 in .../shop, I exported the data from _storedb to my hard disk as a CSV. So far, so good. But when I tried to import that file of data from _storedb.csv into the new _shopdb, I get the following SQL error. Aside from the obvious fact that it makes no sense that I can't import back into a new db whose structure I expect to be a virtual copy of the original db, the error message itself is opaque to me. I mean, even if the server version has been updated between the time I created the first db and this one created today, should they be so different that I can't import data from one to the other in the same domain? Anyone have clue to help me with this, please? TIA

Add to that. I agree with the comments re Victoria Secrets. Note that its banner image is only 238 px wide by 38 pix high, thus leaving the bulk of the vertical space for that SALES ENDS JULY 12th selling space. And no left / right scroll at 800 wide resolution. Also, as soon as I saw the above comments and went to the VicSecret site I realized I'd been so focused on tech issues that I missed an important point. Color is also a language - and one as powerful as words themselves. Purple or fuscia, or whatever your monitor renders (based on your settings) - and thanks largely to Oscar Wilde - those colors are effeminate, not feminine. The VS site usesa light pink behind text links and "shocking pink" (also known as Shapparelli Pink) both of which are indisputably feminine colors. In fact, look at the right side of their nav menu bar and click on the link "Pink." They have a registered trademark and entire line based on Pink. That trademark would not prevent you from using some other shade of the color pink, or something close to it. You just could not offer a product line called "Pink." But I doubt that a product line called Fuscia would appeal to your target market.

There are millions of men and women whose monitors are set for 800 by 600 pixels display. You are requiring them to scroll from left to right because you changed the width of the Legend default topHeader.jpg to 900 pixels wide. Whenever you build a web site, assuming you want maximum accessibility, check it out in various browsers AND monitor display resolutions AND (most important of all) other monitors. Just because you have a new flat panel screen that looks terrible at 800 by 600, do not assume that the whole world has that problem. There are millions of CRT monitors in use right now that look great at 800 by 600. Further, by fattening the height of the banner to 140px (again because you have a hi-res monitor) your banner is now almost 1/4th of the nominally 600 px screen. If you then consider how many users have screens with extra toolbars, that 140 is probably 1/2 of the actual visible height. Only yesterday I was at a client's office and her browser had a Yahoo toolbar, a WebSeeach (spyware) toolbar, the usual IE bar, a links bar and some other toolbar I ignored. Also, icons instead of just text labels. At the bottom of the screen she had her activity bar and some footer that another "helpful" app had added. Every time some popup offered her a new "wunderbar" she downloaded and installed it. In my experience she is not all that different from your average computer user. Her actual display was a mail-slot roughly 120 pixels high. Even your banner would not have shown in full. I had a hell of a time removing all those extra toolbars to give her some breathing room. And most of those bars, like the Google bar, Yahoo bar and WebSearch bar, do nothing that she couldn't do with the standard Firefox display with a search box on the side of the top row. But that's the real world of what you must design for. Even on a hi-res display, taking up the most valuable real estate on your site with a 140px banner that sits fat and full at the top of EVERY PAGE will do nothing useful for you. Because it is so repetitious, it becomes invisible anyway after a few pageviews. Cut the topHeader.jog down to the original default width and cut its height even further to something like 60px high - and it will accomplish the same thing as 900 by 140 while giving you more space to display products. Moving on to the interior pages, your product photos run about 390pix wide, which is fine. I do the same on the sites I build. But because your store is 3-columns wide, the right hand boxes are hidden to users of an 800 wide display. However, you can could retain those big fat product photos by changing the default Legend to a 2-column wide layout by moving the three boxes that are now the 3rd column over to the left column, and then expanding the width of the center column to take up the former 3rd column space. If you need help doing that, just ask. It's actually pretty easy to do. Hope that helps.

Further - the CC configuration interface is not as helpful as it must be and surely is a source of of un-necessary frustration. The problem is simple: The CC configuration interface says: But that is useless information except for those who already know what it means and therefore do not need it anyway. I say that because on the PayPal page where you get information to fill in the configuration, the words "API certificate" do not otherwise appear anywhere nor are there any examples or guidance as to what goes into this so-called "cert_key_pem.txt" Is the entire text from the PP page the certificate? Such as: or is an API Certificate some of that information? Or something else entirely different from some other source? It's another one of those things unique to computer instructions - if you know already, you don't need this instruction - and if you don't know what it means, this information will only frustrate you further. If someone will tell what text is wanted in this new file and where to get it, I promise I will keep the secret. TIA

For the first time, I have a client using PayPal Website Payments Pro. But I can't tell which of the three CubeCart options for PayPal is the appropriate one. Then to complicate the issue, on the PayPal site, inthe client's account, there is a step that offers: and an option So 1) which of the three options in CC do I chose? 2) which of the 2 options in the PP site do I chose? TIA

None of those ae negatives. Looks good. Best of Luck!

It's possible to install the oldest CC version you can find and then work your way up, one by one, through the releases. But I think that would be like hitting yourself on the head it a hammer (it feels sooo good when you stop). Why not simply install the most recent version directly and be done with it? As for which version that is, see www.cubecart.com.

First thing you'll want to do is a full and verified backup of your database. I also suggest creating a spreadsheet version of your products as well. There are tutorials on both those actions. If you don't find them here, in this forum over in www.cubecartforums.com because the people who wrote those tutorials hang out over there. Then do a full download of the web site itself and all its graphics and any mods you may have installed. As for which files you need, everything that was in the upload folder when you installed CC. But there may be a catch. If you used Fantastico to do the installation, you probably never saw the upload folder. If that's the case, download a fresh copy of the same CC version as your installation and let its upload folder be your guide as to which files you would have installed had you done it the manual way. Caution: if you have already installed and configured one or more payment gateways, you may have to look to the initial backup for associated files. Good Luck