[ic] saving carts poorly documented=>Dan Browning

TGroup interchange-users@icdevgroup.org
Tue Oct 1 00:20:01 2002


>I think your question wasn't very clear, that's why I didn't answer it.
While I'm at it, the answer to your question is:  WFM (Works For Me).  It
works fine on the >Live Demo, even.  Apparently, your modifications to
Foundation is causing it not to work.

[First, thank you for a reasonable response with some humor intertwined.
There are some MIGHTY defenders here, whose defensive knee-jerk responses to
my "observations" lacked any attempt to find solutions.  For instance, my
comment about asking Nick at CPanel to remove Interchange was intended as a
joke.  At this stage of the game, I would have wasted six months of
development if Nick at CPanel would remove Interchange.  Unfortunately,
comedy writing is not my forte].  Regarding "WFM" - it doesn't WFM, and I
haven't made modifications to Foundation that would in any way affect that
feature.  I'm not smart enough to make those kinds of modifications yet.  As
I stated in my original post, this problem has been reported long before my
request for help.

>If I'm correct in understanding what you're saying, then it certainly comes
as no surprise.  There are two steps to improving that situation:
>1. Identifying documentation work needs
>2. Finding someone to do it.

>You hit #1 on the head by identifying "save cart" as one thing that needs
better documentation.  #2 is usually the tricky part.  No matter how many
times I've tried, >my wife wont eat documentation (even when I tell her that
it's high in fiber).  Therefore, I have to work so she has something else to
eat.  :-)  It is much the same >situation with a lot of people involved in
Interchange.

Your wife is fortunate that 1) you don't hold her need for food against her,
and 2)  you don't make her eat the good, high fiber stuff.

>However, as you can see, the mountainous pile of documentation came from
/somewhere/, and, you guessed it, we do spend time on documentation anyway
>(Mike Heins wrote most of it).

To which I wrote:  "To Mike Heins and others who have contributed to the
development of this application, and of whom the brilliance of the
accomplishment is undeniable, I share these "feelings" and observations."  I
hope this is not the case, but [if ]anyone on this list thinks I am
underestimating the hard work involved in the documentation, you are very
mistaken.[/if]  There is no question in my mind at all that the work is
superhuman in scope.

>It's really easy.  People do it every once and a while, but not very often.
And I don't want to hear about how you can't write documentation because
it's too hard.  >If you can write the e-mail you just did, then you can
write documentation.

>Heck, I'll even make you a deal.  For every word that you write as
improvement to the current documentation, I'll write one word in documenting
the save_cart >feature.  Deal?

That depends on who determines if what I write is an improvement.  :-)  I
have already written some things to help people having certain problems that
seem to pop up frequently in the forums.  I posted a step by step
explanation of importing .xls files into Interchange when using the Admin
Panel, at Interchangeville, in the IC Documentation forum:
http://www.interchangeville.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=2470&sid=0428f6134cf46
7860b048f7efdcefff7#2470

Will you match the following word for word please, unless, of course, it is
not an improvement to the current documentation?  As you can see, my
documentation is intended for laymen, because I'm not yet able to absorb
ITL, Perl, etc. well enough to put it into laymen's terms.
<! -- START OF DOCUMENTATION -->
1) FTP to the location of your Interchange Site.  Enter the "public_html"
area, and click on the folder "cart".  When in that folder, click on the
folder "images".  When in that folder, located the file "template.xls", and
transfer it to your hard drive (remember where it goes).  Close your FTP
program.

Open your EXCEL program.   Find and open the "template.xls" file you just
transferred.   Then save as "products.xls"  (this will be your new"template"
for your products - I would recommend you make a backup of this file, name
it something like "productsBAK.xls", and keeping this backup "empty", so you
can open it for future use if necessary. If you somehow corrupt your
original, you can fall back on the Backup.

2)  You will notice that the template has several sheets.  Products,
Inventory, etc.  You may not need all the sheets, depending on what it is
you are trying to do, but I have found that the sheets labeled  "products"
and "inventory" were necessary, otherwise the creation of those tables would
have to be accomplished manually.

3)  After you have entered the product information under the desired fields
on the "products" sheet of the Excel worksheet,  (the "sku" field,
according to what I read in the documentation, is required as "key"), and
any other of the sheets you may be using in your open file, save the file as
products.xls (I also "save as" productsBAK.xls to have as a backup)  for
future use.  But keep the file open.

Then covert the open products.xls file to a tab delimited .txt  file before
uploading it to Interchange (I initially tried importing the products.xls
file as an .xls file,  and received volumes of error messages as a result):

File => Save As = > products.txt [note:  Excel will warn you that the .xls
worksheet you are using has several sheets, and it can't save all the
sheets, and will only save the "products" sheet.  That's okay.  Ignore all
the warnings that "saving in the .txt format might make the file
incompatible for certain uses, etc.".  Whatever Excel "warns",  just keep
saving until you are left with the file "products.txt"

4)  Two ways to upload your products.txt file to Interchange:

A)  Sign in to your  Interchange Admin Control.  At the first page after
signing in, you will see the "tables" link near the bottom of the page.
Click on it to open the Table Manager.  Look for the "products" row.  The
icons to the left of the word "products" are your controls.  Put your mouse
over them to see what they do.  You will want to click on the "import
products" icon (second from the left).  When you click that icon, the Table
Import form will be presented at the next page.  Locate your "products.txt"
file on your hard drive, and click the import button. (I just leave
everything else there set to its default).  The file should then be
imported, and you will hopefully get a "success" message afterwards.

Click on the "apply changes" link.

B)  The second way to get the products.txt file into Interchange:  FTP to
your site.  Before you enter the public_html area, you will see a
foldercalled "catalogs".  Open that folder. You will see a folder with the
name of your catalog (by default, the same as site username).  Open that
folder.   You will see a folder called "products".  Open that folder.  Look
at the files in there. You will see "products.txt" among them.  You will
also see "inventory.txt". Now, transfer (in ASCII Mode) your products.txt
file.  You can also transfer the "inventory.txt" file there as well.

5)  You can close your FTP program.  Click on the "apply changes" link in
your Admin Control Panel (I'm not sure if this is necessary.  I do it to be
safe).

6) Depending on what you are doing with your catalog, you may need to reopen
the "products.xls" table, and click on whichever other sheet you need, such
as "inventory", and import or ftp to Interchange as described here.

<! -- END OF DOCUMENTATION -->

I also posted the answer to a tech support question I asked my hosting
provider regarding the installation of PGP on the server (another frequent
question).  Although I didn't write it, it may be an improvement to the
current documentation:
<! -- BEGINNING OF DOCUMENTATION -->

What needs to happen is that the user will export the key and send to the
host. The host will upload the key to the server and then from SSH place it
in '/home/cpanel'.

While in SSH as root the server admin will need to 'su cpanel' in order
to change to the Interchange user of 'cpanel'. While logged in as
the 'cpanel' user the admin will issue these commands from
the 'home/cpanel' directory where the key to be imported should be:

gpg --import [filename]
gpg --update-trustdb

This imports the key and makes the key trusted.
After this was completed we restarted the Interchange service.
<! -- END OF DOCUMENTATION -->

Then there was another CPanel user who couldn't figure out how to modify the
background color of the menu bar.  Is my answer in any way an improvement to
what can be found in the current document?

<! -- BEGINNING OF DOCUMENTATION -->
Posted: 28 Jun 2002 07:12 pm    Post subject: Dumb question...
I know that there is probably a simple answer to this, but how do I change
only the background color of the Menu bar and the left column of the
template in the foundation store? I have figured out how to modify the
images, but I don't know enough about IC to get the templage edited to my
liking, and the layout of the foundation store is fine. Any help would be
appreciated
Joined: 24 Dec 2001
Posts: 250
Location: Florida USA
Posted: 28 Jun 2002 10:10 pm    Post subject:
----------------
Admin
Look for the theme.cfg file. There you can change colors. :wavey
----------------
Where would I find the file? I am on a C-panel host and the only files that
are in my cart folder are images...
---------------
zippnet
Member
Joined: 05 Jun 2002
Posts: 25
Location: St. Louis, MO
Posted: 29 Jun 2002 01:52 am    Post subject: theme.cfg and cpanel
Hello-
I'm no expert on Interchange. On a scale of 1-10, I am about a -3. But in
answer to your question:
[Quote]:
....how do I change only the background color of the Menu bar and the left
column of the template in the foundation store? [/Quote]
1) Log in to your demo store admin section
2) click on "Content"
3) you'll see a folder with two dots following it. Open that folder.
4) click on the "Templates" folder
5) click on the "Foundation" folder
At this page you will see the theme.cfg file.
1) click on the triangle that allows you to download the file (clicking on
the word "theme.cfg" will also allow the download.
2) download the file to somewhere on your hard drive you'll remember. Leave
your admin page open, you'll be coming back there soon.
3) open the file in a text editor such as notepad. Examine the file.
4) You will see, among other things, this section:
# Define some colors and fonts
Variable BACKGROUND #FFFFFF
Variable LINK #000066
Variable LINKHOVER #CCCC99
Variable LINKDECO underline
Variable LINKHOVERDECO underline
Variable MAINCONTENT_TEXT #000000
Variable MAINCONTENT_BG #FFFFFF
Variable MAINCONTENT_FONT Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif
Variable MAINCONTENT_FONTSIZE 12px
Variable MAINCONTENT_WEIGHT normal
Variable CONTENTBAR1 #CCCCCC
Variable CONTENTBAR2 #CCCCCC
Variable CATEGORYBAR_TEXT #CCCC99
Variable CATEGORYBAR_BG #000066
Variable CATEGORYBAR_FONT Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif
Variable CATEGORYBAR_FONTSIZE 11px
Variable CATEGORYBAR_WEIGHT normal
Variable CATEGORYBAR_LINK #CCCC99
Variable CATEGORYBAR_LINKHOVER #FF0000
Variable CATEGORYBAR_LINKDECO underline
Variable CATEGORYBAR_HOVERDECO underline
Variable MENUBAR_TEXT #CCCC99
Variable MENUBAR_BG #000066
Variable MENUBAR_FONT Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif
Variable MENUBAR_FONTSIZE 11px
Variable MENUBAR_WEIGHT normal
Variable __THEME_IMG_DIR_BG__ /~whatever/cart/images/foundation/bg2.gif
Variable THEME_CSS <
<! -- END OF DOCUMENTATION -->
I also attempted to contribute to Ye Old Developers search for a new logo
(is a picture worth a thousand words?  how about 500 words for effort, since
my design wasn't chosen anyway?):  http://www.icdevgroup.org/~ton/logos.html
GROUP L - L1

I also have the dubious distinction of being the only grateful dummie who
took the time to contribute to Kevin Walsh's search for a new RTFM banner:
http://www.interchange.rtfm.info/graphics/index.html .  I know it won't earn
me any matching words from you, rightly so,  but Kevin has been very helpful
in the forums, and through some Emails, so I just want you to know that my
enthusiasm to contribute in any way with my own particular talents is very
sincere.

I also have donated a CPanel hosted website to Kevin for his personal use if
he should ever need to investigate problems with Interchange when the user
is stuck in a shared hosting environment with a CPanel install version.
Want one?

Finally, for Jeff:
http://interchange.redhat.com/pipermail/interchange-users/2002-September/026
669.html .  Do you ever make as much effort to answer a request for help as
you did to "defend" against my observations?
>If you don't have the time or knowledge, obviously you will have to find
someone who does and then compensate them.
I have plenty of time, and I'm smart enough to try to get the knowledge.
But I don't have the funds.  There.  Are you happy?

Open source, then, following your advice, is far from "free".