: Product Generator How To

You need to understand how the On-Line Store works before you will be able to understand why the Product Generator works the way it does.

Tip: How to edit .src files using Microsoft FrontPage.

The Product Generator gathers data you have entered about each of your products in your database. The On-Line Store works off of information contained on your web page, so the Product Generator has to get this data onto your web page somehow. The way it works is from .src files. For each web page you will have a product or product information, you need to create the HTML web page with a .src extension instead of a .html or .htm extension. The "Product Generator" will take this page and replace any product tags with their appropriate store code and create a web page with a .html extension. The Tags look like this:

<O(product ID)>   replaced with an "order" button containing the appropriate tags
<P(product ID)>   replaced with the product price
<N(product ID)>   replaced with the product name
<S(product ID)>   replaced with the individual product shipping charge
<SU(product ID)>  replaced with a credit card surcharge flag (0 or 1)
<DATE>            replaced with today's date

All you need is the <O...> tag for the On-Line Store. The price and name tags are for including them in your product description on the web page. For example, let's say we have a product like this in our database:

Product ID | Name              | Price | Additional Shipping | Surcharge
NPC1025      Tiddle Weedwacker   85.99   10.00                 yes

The HTML code in our web page source (tiddle.src) would look like this:

<img src="images/weedwacker.gif" align=left hspace=5>
<NNPC1025> <BR>
$<PNPC1025> <P>
This weed wacker is like no other, buy it!<p>
<form method=post action="/ssstore/cart.html">
<ONPC1025>
</form>
<br clear=left>

Please notice that the <form> tag "action" always starts with the "/store/" directory.  A global alias is defined in the server config files so that the "/store/" directory always points the page to the correct place on the server.

After running the product Generator, you would end up with a web page (tiddle.html) that would have something in it like this:

Tiddle Weedwacker
$85.99

This weed wacker is like no other, buy it!

You can define which button you want to use for the order button in your site configuration setup.

If you wanted to be more controlling in the way things appear, different than just using the <Oid> tag, you can use a combination of the other tags to do something cooler. For example, have a pull-down menu for color and quantity.

After running the Product Generator, you would end up with:

Tiddle Weedwacker
$85.99

This weed wacker is like no other, buy it!

Having your web page setup this way allows you to modify the information about the product including title, price, surcharge, and shipping from your database. This saves you the time of changing it everywhere on your web site.

Tip: How to Edit a .src file using FrontPage

You can use the FrontPage editor and edit the .src file as a HTML file by doing the following:

1. open your web with FrontPage Explorer
2. open the "Tools" menu, and select "Options".
3. select the "Configure Editors" tag from the popup box
4. click on the "Add" button
5. type in the following boxes this information
File type: src
Editor Name: FrontPage Editor
Command: (click on Browse and double click "fpeditor.exe")
6. click on "OK"

Now when you double click the .src file you want to edit, it should bring it up in FrontPage Editor as an HTML file.