You can add php-code to your custom block with php tags, and operate with contents using $block_body variable. This variable consists of all the html text you have in your block.

To activate PHP code functionality for custom blocks, please go to Administration > System > Global Settings and select where you want to insert your php code. Also, don't forget to switch from the 'WYSIWYG HTML Editor' to 'Textarea Editor' to view the code in your custom blocks correctly. Then open your custom block and insert your php code in the 'Block Content' textarea.

The basic code will look like this:

Feel free to add any text here <br> Something <?php echo "1";>
// simple php code

or like this:

Feel free to add any text here <br> Something <?php $block_body = str_replace("Something", "Anything", $block_body); ?>
// php code with a variable replacement

Here is an example of code that can be used in the footer body:

©CopyRight 2004 - {current_year} - All Rights Reserved
<?php
$block_body = str_replace("{current_year}", date("Y"), $block_body);
?>

To update your shop to the latest version please do the below steps:
- make a backup of all files in your current version
- make a dump of your current database
- download a new version either from http://www.viart.com/php_shopping_cart_free_evaluation_download.html or from your user's area
- unzip the archive with the new version and replace your old files with the new ones (except the ones you've modified, e.g. templates, styles, images).
- Copy the var_definition file from your backup 'includes' folder and paste it in the 'includes' folder of your new version
- Go to your Administration panel ('Administration > System > System Upgrade') and click the Upgrade Database button
- Your shop is now updated to the latest verison.

You can find more information in our online manual:
http://www.viart.com/php_shopping_cart_backing_up.html
http://www.viart.com/ecommerce_system_upgrading.html

In order to add the 'Related Products' block, please go to 'Administration > CMS > Site Layout > Products Details Page', choose the 'Products (Related)' block from the 'Available blocks' section and add it to the corresponding column. Then press the 'Update' button, and the changes will be applied.
Also, you should add related products via Administration > Products&Categories > Related link (under the title of the product).

ViArt Shop contains 97% of open source code; the remaining 3% of the code is encoded within libraries in the ./includes folder. Here is the full list of encoded files:

date_functions.php
editgrid.php
navigator.php
record.php
sorter.php
support_parser.php
template.php
tree.php
url.php
va_functions.php

Within the 97% of open code it is possible to fully customize ViArt to your individual needs.

ViArt Shop represents the culmination of thousands of man hours of work and we encode certain parts of it to protect this work which represents substantial investment on our part. By charging a fee for our work and protecting our intellectual property we are able to reinvest in the product to the advantage of all our users.

To add VAT validation, please implement the following steps:

1. Add a field (e.g. "EU-VAT Number") at:
Administration > Orders > Order profile Page ->Add New Custom Field
and set "Field Type" to "Shopping Cart" and "Field Type" to "TextBox". Set "Show Field" to "All Orders".

To enable automatic checking and basket update as soon as a VAT number is entered, you could add a line in the custom field properties below in "JavaScript Settings" in the "OnChange" Java section. The line to add is: document.order_info.operation.value='refresh';document.order_info.submit();


2. Open your var_definition_example.php file from the 'includes' folder and uncomment the following strings:

// vat validation
//$vat_validation = true;
//$vat_obligatory_countries = array("GB");

like:
vat validation
$vat_validation = true;
$vat_obligatory_countries = array("GB");

You can specify codes of the countries from which the users will obligatory pay the VAT (regadless whether they specify a VAT number or not) in the third string, like: "GB","FR","LT", etc.

1. Create an empty file (you can use Notepad for this) and save it like: money_order.php.
2. Put this file to the 'payments' folder of your shop.
3. Go to Administration > Orders > Payment System, select Personal Payment system and click the 'Edit System' link.
4. Specify 'order_confirmation.php' in the Payment URL.
5. Go to the Advanced Parameters Section, tick off 'Is Advanced' option and specify 'payments/money_order.php' in both 'Advanced Library' and 'Advanced URL' fields.
6. Scroll the page up and tick off 'Use for Call Center' option.
7. Save the changes by pressing the 'Update' button.
8. Now go to Call Centre Orders and create a test order.

Please, open your user_login.php file and replace the following strings:

if (!strlen($return_page)) {
$return_page = $user_home_url;
}

with

}
if (!strlen($return_page)) {
$return_page ="index.php";

The problem is that the PHP-based PDF generation facility in ViArt Shop supports only JPEG images. PDF lib based generation can use JPEG, GIF and PNG images, but will require an installation of a separate PDF library.

Please, check your .htaccess file to include the following code:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /friendly_url.php [L]
</IfModule>

or ErrorDocument 404 /friendly_url.php

Please, note that if ViArt Shop is running from some sub-folder, e.g. http://www.some-web-site.com/some-sub-folder/ then the path to friendly_url.php script should contain /some-sub-folder too, like:

RewriteRule . /some-sub-folder/friendly_url.php [L]
or
ErrorDocument 404 /some-sub-folder/friendly_url.php

If it doesn't help please let us know your web-server access details:
- Site URL
- FTP hostname, FTP login/password
- ViArt administration login/password

and we'll investigate the issue.

robots.txt should have the following lines:

User-agent: *
Disallow:
Sitemap: http://YOUR_SITE/sitemap_index.xml
where YOUR_SITE is your Site URL

please go Administration -> System -> Global settings -> Site Settings section -> Weight Measure option and change the value to the one you need.

Please check the following conditions:

1. Go to ViArt Admin -> Products -> products list on the right -> "Edit" link
Check the following fields:
- "Make this Product available for sales" checkbox is checked.
- "Hide off Limits Products" is unchecked or "Quantity in Stock" value greater then zero

2. Check category settings at ViArt Admin -> Products > categories list on the left -> "Edit" link
- "Show on Site" is checked

3. Check if a product is assigned to the correct category:
Please go to ViArt Admin -> Products -> products list at the right -> "Categories" link near the product

If that doesn't help please send us your Site URL, and login/password to ViArt Admin panel so we could investigate the issue.

Zend Optimizer is a must for running ViArt Shop.
Please, contact your hosting company and enquire if they would install this for you, it is a free piece of software.

ViArt currently provides its own hosted service which supports Zend if you would be interested in this: http://www.viart.com/php-web-hosting

Also, we would suggest to check our 30-Day Free Trial on our server at:
http://www.viart.com/hosting_trial.php

Should you decide to move your existing shop from one domain to another, please do the below steps:

1. Make a backup of all files
2. Create a full SQL dump of the entire ViArt shop database
3. Edit includes/var_definition.php file and check the following parameters:
>$db_name
>$db_host
>$db_port
>$db_user
>$db_password

Further, go to ViArt Admin -> System > Global Settings and change the Site URL field.

Please, do not forget to contact our support team to activate the new domain name - and re-generate a new license file.

There are two ways to place tracking scripts on your site:

1. You can customize Success and Failure result pages of WorldPay and add tracking code to them using the following knowledge base article: http://support.worldpay.com/kb/customising3/result_pages/ppcg_3000.html

2. It is possible to set up Callback function in your WorldPay account using the manual
http://support.worldpay.com/kb/reference/faqs/callback_faqs.html#callback_configure
Then, you can add tracking code to field 'On Success Message' on 'Final Checkout Settings' page of WorldPay system in Viart Shop.

At present, if you want to add blocks to a custom page you should use articles as custom pages. For this go to Administration > Articles > Articles Settings and click the 'New Articles Type' link. Fill the necessary fields and save the type. Then click on the newly created type and create a new article for this category. This article will be your custom page. When the article is created click the 'Details Layout' (above the name of your article) add the blocks you want for this page. Then come back to your article, click the 'Edit' link and copy the path to this custom page, like: article.php?category_id=31&article_id=26. Type this path in the browser bar after the URL of your site (eg. yoursite.com/article.php?category_id=31&article_id=26) and your custom page will be displayed.
Also, you can create a custom page (via Administration > CMS > Custom Pages) and enter the path: article.php?category_id=31&article_id=26 into the 'Redirect to URL' field. Then your custom page will appear in the menu.
Currently, this is the only possible way. In future releases we are planning to make it possible to add columns and blocks directly to custom pages.

-To add some product and create a tree of categories you can use the following syntax in CSV file:

item_id,item_name,category
123,Product1,Category Name>Sub Category 1>Sub Sub Category 1
345,Product2,Category Name>Sub Category 1>Sub Sub Category 2

This will add or update 2 products and assign them to categories 'Sub Sub Category 1' and 'Sub Sub Category 2' accordingly.

-To assign a product to several categories you can use the following syntax:
item_id,item_name,category
123,Product1,Category1;Subcategory2;Subsubcategory3

This will add or update Product1 and assign it to 3 categories subsequently - 'Category1', 'Subcategory2' and 'Subsubcategory3'.

If you haven't done a redirect from yoursite.com to www.yoursite.com, your users may face problems with making orders if they enter www.yoursite.com instead of yoursite.com. In other words, they will add products, but when going to the checkout they will see that their basket is empty. In order to fix this you are to make the following steps, namely:

1. Create an empty file named '.htaccess' in your public_html_folder.

2. Fill it with the below text:

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yoursite.com$
RewriteRule ^(/)?(.*) http://www.yoursite.com/$2 [R=301,L]

3. Save the file, and enter the address: 'yoursite.com' in the browser's bar. If you have done the first two steps correctly, then you will see that yoursite.com is redirected to www.yoursite.com. This means that you have done the trick!

We would recommend to use an absolute path to your SSLCert, like: /home/user_name/public_html/pro/cert_key_pem.txt
Please, also check if your server allows you the outgoing connections as sometimes some hosting providers require using proxy settings.

Friendly URL is our new feature which allows you creating search engine friendly URLs. You can create them manually or let the system do this for you. First of all please go to Administration > System > System Settings > Friendly URLs Settings, turn on the feature (Activate Friendly URLs), select how you want these URLs to be generated (Auto-generate Friendly URLs) and extensions ( Friendly Extension). These are general settings for friendly URLs. However, note that you have to set up your apache as well. Please create a .htaccess file in your root folder and write the following string into it

ErrorDocument 404 /friendly_url.php

After that please restart the apache. Your friendly URL option should be active now. You can set up friendly URLs for individual products at Administration > Shopping Cart > Products and Categories > product details > Friendly URL.

To configure fURLs on your IIS, you are to do the following:

1) Open IIS Manage.
2) Right Click on the web site node and choose properties.
3) Click on the Custom Errors Tab.
4) Scroll down until you see the HTTP Error -- 404.
5) Double click on 404 to open the "Error Mapping Properties" dialog.
6) Change the Message Type to URL.
7) For the URL enter in /friendly_url.php
8) Click OK and Then OK again

You can also refer to this page to get more information on this topic: http://www.prusak.com/archives/2006-01-23/ipb-seo-friendly-urls-with-iis/

Actually, there is a special setting in the 'php.ini' file:
; Maximum allowed size for uploaded files.
upload_max_filesize = 2M

This means that the maximum size of uploaded files is 2 Mb.
So, all other files that exceed 2 Mb should be uploaded via an FTP program into the appropriate folder for downloadable products.

It is possible to export some information from ViArt Shop to Quickbook as ViArt export functionality is based on CSV files and Quickbooks supports CSV import.

You can easily replace ViArt Shop logo on PDF invoices with your own one. For this upload your image to /images folder on your server and then specify the path to your image via Administration > Orders > Printable Page Settings > Image Logo field.

The purpose of the "Approved" button is to allow site administrator to approve or not approve products posted on his site by the merchants. When a product is posted by a merchant it is automatically added with "Not approved" status. As a site owner you can review product(s) and decide whether to approve it(them) or not.

The option "Make this Product available for sales" permits to choose whether to show your product on your site.

In order to move from ViArt Free Version to the commercial one, you need to choose and purchase the license that best suits your needs. We shall send you a unique license number that you are to activate and put the 'license.php' file in the 'includes' folder of your shop. The purchase of the license will not require re-installing your database or shop.

In case you need to upgrade your license to a higher version later, you will only have to pay the difference in price between the Editions.

At present, the PHP-based PDF generation facility in ViArt Shop supports only JPEG images. PDF lib based generation can use JPEG, GIF and PNG images, but will require an installation of a separate PDF library. So, we would recommend to use JPEG images for PDF invoices.

To change the default language into your own one, please open your var_definition.php. file, find the string: $default_language = "en" and change "en" to "tr", for example. Save the changes and access your site. Your default language will be the one you specify in the var_definition.php file.

If this error ocurred it is recommended to check whether your Zend Optimizer is installed correctly. To test it you can create a small script file like test.php that contains:
<?php phpinfo(); ?>
and look at the result output of the function. Then search for the section named 'Zend Optimizer' which contains listing of some Zend variables and their settings. If it doesn't exists it means that Zend Optimizer is not installed.
Also, make sure that you have installed a compatible version of Zend Optimizer. We would recommend 2.6.2 version for PHP 4 and 3.2 version for PHP 5.

If you have a version earlier than 3.1, please do the following to replace ViArt logo:
1. Upload the image you wish to use by ftp.
2. Open an appropriate file in the styles folder .. i.e. default.
3. Within this file find the code:

.headerMenu td#logo img { /* Logo on the site */
width: 176px;
height: 81px;
border: 0px solid #333;
background: url(../images/default/logo.gif);
}

4. Change "../images/default/logo.gif" to the location of your logo, and also change the "width: 176px;" "height: 81px;" to match your logo.

Starting from version 3.1 the procedure of replacing ViArt Logo has become much more easier.
1. Save the image with your logo in the root images folder.
2. Go to Administration > System > System Settings, click the 'Select Image' link and select the image with your logo.
3. Save the changes and your image will be added to your site.

Please note that if you use Curved Layout for your site the procedure of adding your logo is a little bit different. To add your logo for Curved Layout please go to Administration > CMS > Site Layout > and click the 'Site Navigation' link. Find the 'Empty' field (it is number 7 by default) and enter the path to your logo image instead of ViArt logo image in the 'Menu Image' field. Save the changes and ViArt logo will be replaced with your logo.

New layouts are predefined only if a new version is installed. If you just upgrade from your current version to the latest, you have to add these new layouts after the upgrade procedure. New layouts are based on CSS files - convex.css, default.css, ecommerce.css, fashion.css, marine.css and rainbow.css
To add a new layout please go to Administration > ViArt CMS > Site Layout, click the Add New Layout link and fill the following fields there:
a) Layout Name - any name of your layout.
b) Style Name - one of the style names mentioned above, e.g. 'ecommerce'
c) Templates Directory: ./templates/user
d) Admin Templates Directory: ../templates/admin
Click the 'Add New' button and this layout will be added. You can do the same procedure for other layouts as well.

All the encoded files are located within the 'includes' folder. Here is the full list:
date_functions.php
editgrid.php
navigator.php
record.php
sorter.php
support_parser.php
template.php
tree.php
url.php
va_functions.php

At present ViArt Shop supports the following languages: Arabic, Czech, German, Greek, English, Spanish, Finnish, Hungarian, Italian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Slovak, Swedish, Turkish, and Ukrainian. All messages are located in the 'messages' folder. For example for the English language they are located in the 'messages/en/' folder.

To add a new language you need to copy all message files into a new
folder e.g. 'messages/da/' for Danish, and then add that language
option to the static table 'languages' in the admin section.

We offer 30% discount for anyone who is willing to translate ViArt into another language for us.
We would send you all of the messages in an excel spreadsheet and after translation we add the language files to future releases of Viart Shop.
The messages are text for labels and prompts which are used throughout the site. The messages do not of course include product descriptions, these must be entered manually in the language of choice.

Yes, you can use any of ViArt products on Mac computers.

To access an ftp via web browser, please type the following address in the browser’s bar: ftp://your username@hosting.viart.com and click enter. Then the browser will ask your login and password. Please, enter the login and password which we send to your e-mail and you will get to the server.

In order to get rid of the of the link: 'Free Ecommerce Shopping Cart Software by ViArt' you have to buy a license (for ViArt Light, Standard or Enterprise) and activate it at http://www.viart.com/activation (for more information about the activation procedure please see section 3.3. Viart Shop activation of ViArt Shop manual.

In order to remove the link 'Powered by ViArt', you are to delete the appropriate link from 'footer.html' file in the .templates/user folder:
<div class="footerImg"><a title="ViArt - PHP Shopping Cart" href="http://www.viart.com"><img alt="ViArt - PHP Shopping Cart" src="images/tr.gif"></a></div>
</div>
</center>
Save the file and the link 'powered by viart' will be removed from your site.

A reseller program and multiple license program are different things. The main difference is that Multiple site license consists of one serial number while resellers receive as many serial numbers as many copies of the product they purchase. In other words, mutiple site license is usually purchased by companies who own several websites and this license is not for reselling. If you join our reseller program you can buy either one licensed version or multiple licensed version and you are allowed to resell the license(s).

Please check your "includes/var_definition.php" file. Variable $db_user should contain a valid MySQL user that has rights to select, insert, update, delete. See also 'How to add a user for my database?'

Please check if you've populated your database with sql scripts provided by ViArt Online Shop distrubution. See 'How to populate my database with SQL script?'

This and similar errors could occur due to the uploading Zend Encoded files in 'includes' folder. The files within the 'includes' folder should be uploaded in BINARY mode within your FTP program.

There is a function that deletes all products in the database:

http://your_site/ViArt_Shop/admin/admin_products_delete.php

Replace 'your_site' and 'ViArt_Shop' with your own parameters.

We do not have a general link to this script to avoid users accidentally deleting all products in their database.

WARNING: Any deletions can not be recovered. We would strongly suggest that you back up your database before using the script to allow a 'roll back' if required.

You can make a backup for MySQL db using mysqldump program distributed with MySQL.
E.g.:

mysqldump --opt -u User -p Database > VA_Shop_Dump.sql

It should create file VA_Shop_Dump.sql that will contain the dump of database.
Read more about dumping MySQL database at www.mysql.org.

The language in which the whole ViArt Shop operate is is selected while the installation procedure. However, if you want to change this as a later stage, you have to edit this within the var_definistion.php file which is stored in the 'includes' folder in your ViArt Shop root.

Locate the following string and change 'en' to an appropriate language code.

$default_language = "en";

Note: Correct language codes are stored at Administration > Static Tables > Languages > Language Settings.

Yes, we do. To join our reseller program you first need to let us know how many copies of ViArt you wish to purchase to start with. We will then issue the necessary discount coupon.
The more versions you buy, the more discount you get. Please note this discount accumulates (if you buy 2 now and 2 more copies in 3 month time, it is counted at 4 versions); you do not need to buy all versions at once to get the discount.

Discount is as follows:
1-4 versions 20%
5-9 versions 30%
10 and more 40%

Zend Optimizer is a free application distributed by Zend Technologies, Ltd., designed to optimize PHP scripts. Zend Optimizer is a necessary prerequisite for installing ViArt Shop. You can get more info on this here.

You could place any HTML text to the Main or Categories or Product details
pages by specifying the content for any custom block available from layout
settings.

Please check your "includes/var_definition.php" file.
Variable $db_type should contain either "mysql" or "pgsql" value.
E.g.:
// database parameters
$db_type = "mysql";
$db_name = "c2s";

ViArt Online Shop distribution contains "DB" folder that includes SQL scripts
with database structure:
- MySQL_VA_Shop.sql - for MySQL Database Server
- PgSQL_VA_Shop.sql - for PostgreSQL
To populate your MySQL database with MySQL_VA_Shop.sql script run MySQL
client like the following:

mysql -u User -p Database < MySQL_VA_Shop.sql

You could add a user using GRANT command. Note that user should have rights
to select, insert, update, delete.
A MySQL Grant statement for this user would look like this:
GRANT
select, insert, update, create, alter, delete, drop
ON
database.*
TO
user@localhost
IDENTIFIED BY
'password';

Read more about CREATE DATABASE syntax at www.mysql.org.

Please check your "includes/var_definition.php" file.
Variable $db_name should contain a valid database name, e.g.
$db_name = "c2s";
Run your mysql client and perform "SHOW DATABASES" command and make sure
that the database you choosen as ViArt Online Shop database does exist.

You could submit bug report or problem via our 24 hours-online Support System
at www.viart.com/support

Users who bought ViArt Online Shop automatically receive email notifications
about new release. See also "Releases" section of Members Area at
www.viart.com

Currently ViArt Online Shop has support for MySQL (www.mysql.org), PostgreSQL (www.postgresql.org) and ODBC connected databases. Future releases will include support for MsSQL and Oracle databases. You can get more information on databases supported here.

Actually any web server that allows running PHP scripts would be fine. We would recommend using Apache web server (www.apache.org) as most reliable one. You might also consider using ViArt Hosting services (for more info see ViArt Hosting).

Currently only PHP (www.php.net) version of ViArt Online Shop is available to download. Future releases will include ASP and Perl versions. You can get more information on PHP-support here.

ViArt Online Shop is has two main advantages: first it includes everything you need to build a serious shipping portal, second it's flexible and highly customizable. It means that you take ready-to-use solution and simply 'fit' it to meet your needs. And it also means that you don't need to do ANY programming at all - ViArt Online Shop allows changing everything via powerful web-interface. You can get more information on ViArt Shop advantages here.

ViArt Online Shop is distributed as three different packages Light, Standard and Enterprise. We do offer a free version as well. Therefore the list of features is different for each of them. See our Feature List for ViArt Online Shop features comparison spreadsheet.

Users simply connect to your company's website, browse your offerings, select
items that they want to purchase by inserting them into your "shopping cart",
and then proceeding to "check-out", just as they would do in a regular store.

ViArt Online Shop is an electronic commerce package available to install in PHP.
It supports MySQL and PostgreSQL databases as well as ODBC connected databases.
The goal of ViArt Online Shop is to create a system capable of performing all
of the functions needed to do business online.