Our site www.viart.com is operated by latest Viart Shop 5.8.28 with default Clear design
ViArt Shop Manual

To remove the 'evaluation version' message on your ViArt, you will need to purchase a unique license and generate a license.php. Please read this section to get the instructions on the process of activation.

The first thing that you are supposed to do after you have installed ViArt Shop is setting up its main parameters.
The first thing that you need to do after you have installed ViArt Shop is to set up the main parameters.
After you have installed ViArt Shop and set up its main parameters you have to specify its administration settings.
It is natural to desire an online store which is both unique and unforgettable, with ViArt Shop you can do this 'on fly'.
ViArt Shop is supplied with nine layouts as default, 'Default', 'Curved', 'Silver', 'Convex', 'Fashion', 'Rainbow', 'Classic', 'Marine', 'Ecommerce'. You can choose either of these layouts according to the needs of your shop, or if you require, you can build your own one!
Bellow are the samples of screenshots for the 'Classic' Layout. This layout has four available schemes to choose from: blue, green, light blue, red. Select any scheme you prefer.
Bellow are the samples of screenshots for the 'Curved' Layout. This layout has three available schemes to choose from: black, blue, pink. Select any scheme you find the most suitable.
Bellow are the samples of screenshots for the 'Silver' Layout. This layout has two available schemes to choose from: dark and light. You can select the scheme that best suits your needs.
The overall view of each layout is set by its global settings. Read the following section to find out how to change the look and feel of an existing layout, also how to create a new one.
The navigation panel is displayed on all pages of your online store, with ViArt Shop you can change the way it is displayed for each layout. It is also possible to distinguish which navigation options are shown to all your visitors and/or only to those who logged in.
This section details how the home page layout is produced. Read the following to understand how to customize the home page layout to suit your needs.
When running an online store, it is very important to stay up to date with what happening behind the scenes. With ViArt Shop it is possible remain aware of occurrances on your site, even if you are away from your computer!. This is possible thanks toViArts SMS functionality, this function allows you to setup your shopping cart system to send you SMS's whenever certain event/s occur.
This chapter will show you how to add products and catagories into your online store.
Sometimes it might be very handy to have a possibility to inform a friend of yours about what you've found. With ViArt Shop your customers will have it. This can also be a good and free promotion of your site.
Even though you run an online store and deal mainly with orders, it would not be out of place to know who your customers are. ViArt Shop allows you to control your customers accounts through the 'Customers' section.
Sometimes you may need to look through some customer personal details. ViArt Shop provides you with such a possibility.
Sometimes you may need to look through some customer personal details. ViArt Shop provides you with such a possibility.
Sometimes you might need to look through or even edit customer login details. Read what you should do in this case.
As you might have already understood customer type is a key notion in the overall customer account management. It defines main customer account settings, discounts a customer will have and customer profile fields.
Actually, the key notion in the overall customer management in ViArt Shop is customer type. It defines main customer account settings, discounts a customer will have and customer profile fields.
Customer profile contains some information about the customer. You can define what kind of it you need by setting up specific fields.
It often happens that customers forget their password. In such a case they can apply to a site administrator providing their logins and some personal information. But it would be much easier to use a special password restoring option.
Should you ever need to find a customer, you can use the search block in the 'Customers' section.
HelpDesk system is based upon exchanging support tickets. Support Tickets are used for resolving any issue or problem your customers may have. ViArt HelpDesk allows you to track users requests with the help of unique ticket number in a quick and easy way.
Support Ticket System enables your support team to track all the support requests as well as to ensure that no query goes unanswered.
This section provides an information for your customers on how to create a ticket to a tech support team if they face a problem or have a question.
Please read this section to know how to send, assign or edit a support ticket.
ViArt HelpDesk allows to create a request for each client. To do this, you should click Create Message Link and fill the appropriate form.
You or a support specialist may need to find some particular ticket. In this case, you can use a search tool available in the support centre.
The section covers main support center's settings such as Knowledge Base, attachments, random image validation, and email notifications.
This section shows how to assign HelpDesk users - the staff responsible for smooth communication with your customers.
You can estimate your customer by assigning an appropriate status to him. It is necessary if you want to distinguish the most valuable customers.
While preparing an answer to a customer, you can use the Predefined Reply option. Predefined messages can be inserted into your reply by a mouse click. Using predefined messages allows you to save your time and impress your customer with a quick reply.
Once you install your HelpDesk, it is very important to create a department (for example, a support department).
With ViArt helpdesk module you can set the types of a support ticket. Setting the right type of a ticket helps a support team to correctly identify the issue.
One more feature of ViArt HelpDesk is that it provides you with a possibility to support any product you need.
It is usually very important to sort the support tickets by their priorities. ViArt Shop provides you with such a possibility.
ViArt HelpDesk gives you the possibility to create and edit statuses for your replies to customers' support tickets. This option helps you to sort all the tickets at your convenien
You may find it necessary to have some reports on the support tickets. With ViArt Shop helpdesk module you can easily view the status of support tickets, namely, how many tickets were answered, how many tickets are awaiting response, how many tickets were closed, etc
One of the important modules of ViArt Shop is its Forum - an independent portal, intended to provide an online communication between shopping cart users as well as to offer useful information on numerous important issues. If a person has a problem or an idea he/she will have an opportunity to share it with others.
Forum consists of shopping cart related threads or issues which you and your users can exchange and which are later archived for future reference.
Before adding a new topic you should firstly choose the forum to which you want to post your question or issue.
You or someone from your support team may wish to join the discussion and give some piece of advice. In this case, you are to post an answer to a thread.
Categories are 'parents' to forums and are used to hold a group of forums. Your users are unable to post their messages to categories, they can only post their threads to forums. A site which has only a few forum discussion boards may not need any categories. However, if your site has a lot of forum modules, it will be useful for you to create a category.
Sometimes, you may need to create multiple forums for different areas of discussions.
With forum settings you have the possibility to customize your forum according to your requirements. First of all, you should set the global settings.
This chapter is likely to cover the most general settings affecting the whole system and how it works. It allows attuning your ViArt Shop online store just the way you like as well as making main adjustments required for proper operation.
When you are running any kind of business it is no wonder that you need some help. This is true for an online store as well. However, you might not want other people all the information stores in the database. With ViArt Shop you can set up different user groups and assigned different permissions to them.
E-commerce is a place where fraud is very possible. So, you have to protect yourself and your customers as well. With ViArt Shop you can watch IPs your customer use for shopping and block those you think might be trickery.
As time goes by, your online store will grow larger and larger. And it will be quite difficult to watch everything in it, especially what your customers may add or post on it. In such a way you can make your life easier by using banned content functionality.
When working with ViArt Shop you have all the possibilities to make your online store one and only. You can change the feel and look of your site, select different templates and change color schemes. Another great feature is that you have the ability to edit the messages your customers see while surfing your site without the necessity to edit any files.
95. Frequently Asked Questions
95. Frequently Asked Questions
Index

General Questions

MySQL specific questions

MS Access specific questions

PHP specific questions

Tuning ViArt Shop & ViArt Portal

General Questions


  • What is ViArt Shop?
    ViArt Shop is an e-commerce package created in PHP. It supports MySQL, PostgreSQL and ODBC connected databases. The goal of ViArt Shop is to create a system capable of performing all of the functions required to run a business online.

  • What are the features of ViArt Shop?
    ViArt Shop is distributed as three different packages Light, Standard and Enterprise. Therefore the list of features is different for each of them.
    See see section 94.2 for a ViArt Shop feature comparison spreadsheet.

  • How ViArt Shop works?
    A customer browses your company's website, selects the items they want to purchase by inserting them into the "shopping cart", then they proceed to the "check-out" and make payment, just as they would in a regular store.
    See see section 94.2 for ViArt Shop sales process diagram.

  • Why ViArt Shop?
    ViArt Shop is has two main advantages: First, it includes everything you need to build a serious shipping portal.
    Second, it's flexible and highly customisable.
    This means that you take a ready-to-use solution and simply 'tweak' it to fit your needs. It also means that you don't need to do ANY programming at all: ViArt Online Shop allows changes to be made to everything via its powerful web-interface.

  • What server scripting languages does ViArt Shop support?
    Currently only the PHP (www.php.net) version of ViArt Shop is available to download.
    Future releases will include ASP and Perl versions.

  • What web-server do I need to install ViArt Shop?
    Any web server that allows PHP scripts to be run will be fine.
    We recommend using Apache web server (www.apache.org) as this has proved most reliable for us.

  • What databases does ViArt Shop support?
    Currently ViArt 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.

  • How do I get ViArt Shop?
    ViArt Shop is distributed as three different packages Light, Standard and Enterprise.
    They are available to purchase at www.codetosell.com

  • How and when are updates released?
    Users who purchase ViArt Shop automatically receive email notifications about new releases.
    Also, see the, "Releases", section of the Members Area at www.codetosell.com

  • How do I report bugs or problems?
    You can submit bug reports or problems to our online Support System at www.codetosell.com/support

MySQL specific questions

  • It tells me "ERROR 1049: Unknown database '...
    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 the "SHOW DATABASES" command, make sure that the database you have choosen as your ViArt Shop database does actually exist.

    If the database does not exist then create it with the "CREATE DATABASE" command.
    Read more about CREATE DATABASE syntax at www.mysql.org.

  • How do I add a new user to my database?
    You can add a user using the "GRANT" command. Note that the 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';


  • How do I populate my database with an SQL script?
    ViArt Shop distribution contains a folder called "DB", this includes SQL scripts to create the 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 the MySQL client as follows:

    mysql -u User -p Database < MySQL_VA_Shop.sql

  • How do I make a backup of my database?
    You can make a backup of your MySQL database using the mysqldump program distributed with MySQL.
    E.g.:

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

    This will create a file called VA_Shop_Dump.sql that will contain a complete dump of your database.
    Read more about dumping MySQL databases at www.mysql.org.

PHP specific questions

  • Database error: Invalid SQL: SELECT full_description ...
    Please check that you tried to populate your database with the correct SQL scripts provided in the ViArt Shop distrubution.
    Read question above

  • Warning: Access denied for user ...
    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.
    Read question above

  • Warning: Failed opening './includes/db_.php
    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";
  • What if my web host doesn't have Zend Optimizer installed?
    Unfortunately if your host doesn't have Zend Optimizer installed, you can't install ViArt Shopping Cart. But we could recommend:
    (a) Asking your host's support to install Zend Optimizer for PHP. It's free and it enhances the performance of PHP script, so it would be beneficial for them to have it installed.
    (b) There are a lot of hosting companies that have Zend Optimizer installed as standard, some of them are listed at:http://www.zend.com/hosting_sites/phphosting.php

Tuning ViArt Shop

  • How do I change the ViArt Shop look and feel?
    ViArt Shop allows you to change the look and feel of the system in the following ways:
    • You can change the layout of content via the administration web-interface see section 100.9.1
    • You can modify the HTML templates as much as you want to create a unique look for your site see details

  • How so I access ViArt Shop web-administration?
    Please see see section 100 for complete details on how to use ViArt Shop web-administration.

  • How do I add products and categories?
    See see section 100.6 for a complete discussion of adding products and categories.

  • Why I don't receive email notifications when my customers submit orders?
    Each step of "Check out" process can send notifications to you, but only if you specify your email in the "Sales Orders settings" section.
    See see section 100.2.1 to read about setting email notifications.

  • How do I place my text on the main page?
    You can place any HTML text on the Main, Categories or Product details pages simply by specifying the content for any custom block available from layout settings.
    See see section 100.9.1 for details of how to change the content for custom blocks.

  • Is there a way of hiding menu items in the header?
    Yes, header menu is customisable; you can hide and show any menu items you wish.
    See see section 100.9.1 for details how to customise header menu.

  • Is there a way of hiding menu items in the footer?
    Yes, footer menu is customisable; you can hide or show any menu items you wish; the mechanism for doing this is different to that used for the header.
    See see section 100.10 for details of how to customise footer menu.

  • Is it possible to remove VAT from the shopping basket?
    For each order "Tax" can be added. The value of "tax" depends on the tax settings you define for specific countries. Please check the "Static Tables" / "Taxes" section of the Administration panel to modify these values.
    If you wish you can specify certain items to be tax free too simply by ticking the 'tax free option' in the product description section.
    See see section 100.4 for details about Static Tables.

  • Does PHP Shopping Cart have customisable fields?
    Yes, ViArt Shop allows you to specify custom fields for products as products properties - this means that you are able to make custom fields editable, selectable or simply displayed.
    Please look at examples of such fields here: see section 100.6.4

Index