Getting Started

First, if after reading this page, you are still confused, PLEASE call us at 734-913-7940, 10am - 10pm, est., 7 days a week. You are new to the system and it is understandable if you're having a hard time figuring it out. Please do not spend hours tormenting yourself when you could just call us. If we didn't want you to call us, we wouldn't give you our phone number! If you don't want to pay the long distance, no biggie - just call us and ask us to call you right back at our expense. If you get the voicemail, PLEASE leave us a message. We help one person at a time and do not put people on hold - you will get our full attention when you talk to us. So, leave a message and we'll call you back as soon as we can.

Now onto the overview....
At the top of your Management Console, you have a tool bar of icons. These icons help you navigate the Management Console and all the things you can to do with your website.

For example: to edit your pages, you will click on the Edit Pages icon;
to add items to your shopping cart, you will click on the Shopping Cart icon;
to change the look of your website, you will click on the Page Properties icon;
to see your website, you will click on the Website Home icon; and so on.

NOTE: The shopping cart section is where you manage all inventory descriptions and pictures, sales, pricing, taxes and shipping options. All product images are added in the shopping cart.

The actual pages will be general information about your business and overall images of your business location, staff, processes or samples of your work.

You are starting with a fully functional website with a shopping cart and sample pages. All you need to do is add your items, change some settings and type some text into the pages. If it seems more complicated, call for help.

As time goes on, you will build more, add more, and do more, but to get started, stick with the basics.

The Shopping Cart:
During the set up, our system assumes that you will be selling items (or services) - therefore, it comes pre-set with a Browse page and a Shopping Cart page that is already working with one sample item, a broken VCR.

You have a fully functional shopping cart before you even start. Just add your items to the shopping cart and remove our sample item.

We use something called inclusion codes to allow you to add programs to pages. Both of the pages described already have the inclusion codes added (%%SHOP-BROWSE%% and %%SHOP-SEARCH%%).

You can type around the codes and do all the other things you want to do with the page, as long as you leave those codes as they are, your items will appear on the page. If you've deleted those codes, no big deal, you can get them here (they're listed toward the middle of the page).

Building individual pages for your items is NOT necessary because the Shopping Cart will automatically do this for you.

To work on the Shopping Cart, Click on the Shopping Cart icon:

  • Click on the "Add Category" link and add your categories by typing them into the box below "Add new category" and clicking the Submit button

  • Click on the "Add Items" link to add your items; click submit and you will be prompted to add a picture (upload a large picture because the system will automatically create a thumbnail for you)

  • Now check your website - click on the Website Home icon --

  • Click on Browse from your side menu. Your item will be listed. (If it is not, then you have likely deleted the inclusion code from the page - get that code here.) Also, unless you've deleted it, you should have a default item listed - the Broken VCR. You can delete this item by going back to your Management Console, clicking on the Shopping cart icon, and clicking on either "Remove Category" (to remove the sample category) or clicking on "Remove Items" to remove just the item.

  • Note that the instructions given here are just for adding items - you still have to configure your shopping cart so that people can actually buy the items. You can learn more about that here. If you run into problems, call us. After you set up the cart, be sure to CHECK your shopping cart to make sure someone can actually buy stuff.

Building The Pages:
Web pages are separate from the shopping cart and other programing.

To edit your pages, add new pages, or delete pages, you will click on the Edit Pages icon:

You should see a gray box with the following headings: Page Name, View, WYSIWIG Edit, Delete, Page URL, and HTML:

By default, you have the following pages: Home, Chatroom, Calendar, Shopping Cart, Browse, and Contact.

You can add new pages by clicking on the "Add a New Page" link and typing in the name of the page and clicking Submit.

You can rename pages by clicking on the "Rename a Page" link, selecting the page you want to rename from the drop down menu, typing the new name and clicking Submit.

You can delete pages by finding the name of the page under the Page Name heading, and then clicking on the "Delete" link for that page.

To edit a page, find the name of the page under Page Name and click on the edit link for that page. If you want to edit your Home page for example, find Home in the list and look across and click on edit:

When you click on "edit" the HTML editor will pop up.

If you do not see this editor, make sure that your browser is not blocking pop-ups.

The editor works the same way that most word editors, such as MS Word, and e-mail editors such as Yahoo or AOL. To learn more about the HTML editor, please click here.

Basically, you do the same thing here as you do when you type an e-mail - click in the box and type.

Type in the editor what you want to appear on the page and then save your page by clicking on the Save Page button at the bottom.

You can then see your page by clicking on the "view" link right next to edit. Yes, what you see on this page (when you click on "view") is what your customers see.

To learn about all the great things you can do with the editor - such as adding pictures, adding links, changing the font, and so on - please click here.

Again, if you are confused after reading this page, please do not hesitate to call us. We are here 7 days a week, 10am - 10pm, est. -- call: 734-913-7940.