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.

73.1. Setting up main parameters

The first thing that you need to do after you have installed ViArt Shop is to set up the main parameters.

73.3. Assigning administrators

After you have installed ViArt Shop and set up its main parameters you have to specify its administration settings.

73.4. Customizing storefront appearance

It is natural to desire an online store which is both unique and unforgettable, with ViArt Shop you can do this 'on fly'.

73.4.1. Default layout templates

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!

73.4.1.1. Classic

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.

73.4.1.2. Curved

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.

73.4.1.3. Silver

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.

73.4.2. Global website layout

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.

73.4.3. Site navigation

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.

73.4.4. Home page layout

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.

73.5. SMS functionality

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.

75. Adding products and categories

This chapter will show you how to add products and catagories into your online store.

75.11. 'Tell a friend' option

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.

78. Managing customer accounts

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.

78.1. Viewing/editing customer account details

Sometimes you may need to look through some customer personal details. ViArt Shop provides you with such a possibility.

78.1.1. General details

Sometimes you may need to look through some customer personal details. ViArt Shop provides you with such a possibility.

78.1.2. Login details

Sometimes you might need to look through or even edit customer login details. Read what you should do in this case.

78.2. Customer types

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.

78.2.1. Customer account settings

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.

78.2.2. Customer profile settings

Customer profile contains some information about the customer. You can define what kind of it you need by setting up specific fields.

78.3. Restoring forgotten passwords

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.

78.4. Searching customer accounts

Should you ever need to find a customer, you can use the search block in the 'Customers' section.

79. HelpDesk

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.

79.1. Support Tickets

Support Ticket System enables your support team to track all the support requests as well as to ensure that no query goes unanswered.

79.1.1. Create a support ticket

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.

79.1.2. Answering a support ticket

Please read this section to know how to send, assign or edit a support ticket.

79.1.3. How to create a request

ViArt HelpDesk allows to create a request for each client. To do this, you should click Create Message Link and fill the appropriate form.

79.1.4. Search for a ticket

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.

79.2. HelpDesk Settings

The section covers main support center's settings such as Knowledge Base, attachments, random image validation, and email notifications.

79.3. HelpDesk Users

This section shows how to assign HelpDesk users - the staff responsible for smooth communication with your customers.

79.4. Customers Ranks

You can estimate your customer by assigning an appropriate status to him. It is necessary if you want to distinguish the most valuable customers.

79.5. Predefined Replies

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.

79.6. Departments

Once you install your HelpDesk, it is very important to create a department (for example, a support department).

79.7. Types

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.

79.8. Supported Products

One more feature of ViArt HelpDesk is that it provides you with a possibility to support any product you need.

79.9. Priorities

It is usually very important to sort the support tickets by their priorities. ViArt Shop provides you with such a possibility.

79.10. Statuses

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

79.11. Reports

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

80. Forum

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.

80.1. Forum Threads

Forum consists of shopping cart related threads or issues which you and your users can exchange and which are later archived for future reference.

80.1.1. Create a new topic

Before adding a new topic you should firstly choose the forum to which you want to post your question or issue.

80.1.2. Answer a thread

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.

80.1.3. Add a new category

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.

80.1.4. Add a new forum

Sometimes, you may need to create multiple forums for different areas of discussions.

80.2. Forum Settings

With forum settings you have the possibility to customize your forum according to your requirements. First of all, you should set the global settings.

81. System management

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.

81.1. Privilege groups

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.

81.4. Black IPs

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.

81.5. Banned Content

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.

81.6. Static messages

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.

91. Reminder Service

Manuals Search

83. How to set Downloadable Products and Links

ViArt PHP Shopping cart allows you to sell downloadable (or digital) products online and configure a variety of other settings, like sending downloadable links and serial numbers, set downloadable period for each digital product, possibility to download the product directly after purchase, etc.

Downloadable Products feature is ideal for the electronic delivery of digital goods such as downloadable software, electronic documents, eBooks, images.

There are a number of settings which you are to make via your Admin panel to start selling digital products. In general, there are three main steps you may need to do to activate your downloadable products. They are as follows:

In addition, this section covers the below issues:

Step 1: Configure general settings for downloadable products

Firstly, it is recommended to configure general settings for downloadable products. To do this please go to Administration > Products > Downloadable Products. The below sample shows approximate settings to be filled on this page:

Please note that you can also specify the absolute path to the folder where the downloadable products will be located. The absolute path should be like /home/shop/public_html/images/.

When it is done you may further setup the default notifications which your users will receive by default after the purchase of any downloadable product. Do not forget to enter your valid e-mail address in the field 'From'. You can also replace the default subject and text body with your own texts.

Note: To get a detailed description of all e-mail fields press the 'Click here to learn more about all email fields' link.

ViArt Shop can send email messages in both HTML and Plain text formats. Setting the 'Message Type' radio button to 'HTML' allows you to send emails in HTML format, thus HTML tags will be used for formatting message as HTML. The 'Plain text' option discards any HTML formatting - the message will be sent exactly as it is.

Another option of e-mail notifications is the ability to use special ViArt Shop tags. These tags are placed in braces, and when an e-mail message is sent, the tags are replaced by the tags values. For example, the {first_name} tag will be replaced with the first name of the customer who submitted the order. You can see the full list of tags by clicking the 'click here to learn more about email settings and see all available message tags' link. Note that you can add these tags into your email body and email subject.

Step 2: Make individual settings for downloadable products

When you complete the first step - general settings you can start with configuration of downloadable products. For this go to Administration > Products&Categories, select a product and click the Edit product link and then select the 'Downloadable' tab. Please, view a below image for a sample:

Downloadable marks the product as downloadable.
Download Period specifies how long the link will be active.
Path to Downloadable File specifies the full product address. Note that the link will be encrypted automatically for the security purposes. If you specified the correct path to your downloadable products in the General settings for downloadable products, just press the 'Select' link and the product will be added.
Show Terms&Conditions option gives you the possibility to oblige your users to agree to your terms and conditions before purchasing a downloadable product. Accordingly, you should specify the terms in the 'Terms & Conditions' textbox.

Please note that you can upload downloadable products for options as well. This is done via Administration > Products&Categories > select a product and press the 'Options&Components' link. Further, go to Option values section and specify the correct path to the Downloadable products and the validation period the products will be available.

Step 3: Settings for downloadable products in the order statuses

There are a few extra settings for the order statuses which you can consider to use for downloadable products, namely:

Activation of downloadable products (including links, serial numbers and gift vouchers)
Notification for downloadable products (click here to configure email settings)

Activation of downloadable products (including links, serial numbers and gift vouchers)

If you want to make an automatic activation of the downloadable link, then it is advisable to check off the option 'Activation of downloadable products'. For example, if you activate this option for the 'paid' status then the downloadable link will be only activated when the status of the order is paid.

Notification for downloadable products (click here to configure email settings)

If this option is activated then notifications for downloadable links, serial numbers or gift vouchers (set in the general settings for downloadable products) are sent to a user automatically when this status is applied.

Serial numbers for downloadable products

If you are selling downloadable products you may need to use serial numbers for downloadable products. ViArt Shop provides you with a few options for serial numbers to choose from, namely:

Do not use serial numbers.
Use random serial numbers. If this option is selected serial number will be automatically generated on a random basis when the product is bought. A serial number will be something like: 1234-ABCD-EF12-DF12.
Use predefined serial numbers. Should you decide to choose this option then you can specify your own serial numbers in the 'Predefined Serial Numbers' section. You are allowed to set any number of predefined serial numbers.

Note: You can limit activations in the Activation Options by specifying the maximum number of activations. Also, it is possible to specify the validation period for serial numbers in the 'Serial Number Period' field:

How to check that your downloadable products are set correctly

When all the aforementioned settings are completed, you will definitely want to check how downloadable products work. Please, view the below steps to ensure that everything works smoothly:

1. Go to your home or products page and add any downloadable product to the shopping cart.

2. Proceed with the checkout procedure and then return to your Admin panel (Orders > Sales Orders).

3. Press the Edit new order and you will see order details. Further, click the Download Links and you'll be redirected to the 'admin_order_links.php' page where you will be able to activate the downloadable link (unless you check off the option to automatically activate the downloadable option). You will see something like this:

Note: The number of links depends on how many of them you've specified in the 'Product Details' section.

The table allows sorting the links by their ID, product name (in case a few of downloadable products were purchased) or activation status (click the name of the corresponding column or the arrows next to it). You can also check the link by clicking its download URL or view/edit its setting by clicking the corresponding link.

4. Press the 'Downloadable' link. If your settings are correct, you will be redirected to a site page where you'll be able to download the product.

In order to view the current downloadable link or to make any changes, press the 'View/Edit link. Your screen will look like the below one:

Product is selected from the drop-down menu and indicates the product the link contains.
Notes may contain some information about the link or when it should be used; is shown only to administrators.
Download Path indicates the full address of the product. Note that if left blank, the link will be taken from the corresponding field in the 'Product Details' section (or the first one provided if there are several of them).
Date Added and Expiry Date define the time period when the link is valid. Please be sure to use the proper time format.
Activated enables/disables the link.
Maximum Downloads limits the number of downloads allowed from different IP per month. The value is taken from the 'Downloadable Products Settings' section
Download Statistics usually indicates when the product has been downloaded and from which remote address.

5. When this is checked, you may wish to send the downloadable link(s) to a customer (in case you are not using an automatic notification sending mentioned above). In order to send an e-mail notification, you have to fill out the fields in the 'Message From' section of the page. As a matter of fact, all of them, except the 'From', have been done for you. However, you can edit the contents or even remove it (click the corresponding 'Clear' link). Click the 'Send' button to send the message or 'Reset' to reset the default settings.

6. When downloadable link(s) are done it is time to check serial numbers (if there are any). You can get to the 'Serial Numbers' page by clicking the 'Serial Numbers' link on the 'Order Details' page. Note that you can also click the number itself (if any); in such a case you will get immediately to the 'Serial Numbers' page.

In order to view the current serial number or to make any changes, press the 'View/Edit link. Your screen will look like the below one:

Activated enables/disables the number.
Product is selected from the drop-down menu and indicates the product the serial number should be applied to.
Serial Number is generated by the system (if selected on a random basis) or by you (if selected predefined serial numbers option) and should be passed to the customer.
Expiry Date specifies the period the serial number will be valid. You as an administrator can always extend or shorten the validation period by entering an appropriate date or by using the calendar next to 'Expiry Date' field.
Max Number of Activations specifies how many times the serial number can be used.

Free Shipping option for downloadable products

From version 3.5 ViArt shop has been updated with a new feature - Free Shipping option. This option is most suitable for downloadable products. The option is activated on the Edit product page (Stock&Shipping) tab. Even if you have set some shipping methods and then select this option for a downloadable product, the shipping costs won't be calculated for this product(s) if the option 'Free Shipping' is activated.

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