Book Image

Building Online Stores with osCommerce: Professional Edition

By : David Mercer
Book Image

Building Online Stores with osCommerce: Professional Edition

By: David Mercer

Overview of this book

<p>The book can be read from front to back, but each chapter is self contained so the reader can skip chapters to read those that they are interested in. Each chapter will move from basic to advanced where applicable and also relate what the administrator (reader) is doing to how this affects what the client sees on the site.</p> <p>So, for example, the customization chapter will start off with a discussion on the concept of design and how to relate this to your business. Once the reader has a clear idea of what they need to do, we look at some really simple changes such as modifying the site's language, before moving to some advanced modifications which may involve some PHP programming. At the same time the discussion will demonstrate how the changes made affect the site.</p> <p>Throughout the book, much consideration is given to the "right" way to doing things. Readers will have the great advantage that they begin, from the very start, doing things properly. This will save them a lot of time and effort in the years to come as they build on and modify their site. Utilizing best practices and sound methodologies is a great asset for beginners and experienced users alike.</p> <p>At all times, the coverage given in this book pays homage to the fact that, ultimately, the reader has a business goal in mind. To this end, the material never gets bogged down in technical issues or long discourses, but rather focuses on what is practically important for the online business and then moves on. To complement this, there are plenty of suggestions and hints as to how and where to look for further information.</p>
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Building Online Stores with osCommerce: Professional Edition
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
Foreword
Introduction
Index

Preparing to Add Product Data


Many of you will already have a list, or at least a partial list, of all the products you intend to sell via your website. You may be an established business with a full catalog that you need to enter into your osCommerce site, or you could have a single product to begin with that you want to sell. Whatever your situation, there are certain things that you will need to get in order before you can create an online catalog that will actually promote the sale of your goods. So what are these things? Well, the best way to find out is to let osCommerce answer that.

Open up the administration tool to the Catalog section, choose the Categories/Products link and navigate all the way down till you reach a product and click edit—it doesn't matter which product for the moment. You will be presented with a screen that looks something like this:

Looking up and down this page you can see that there are a number of properties assigned to this product. Most are pretty intuitive...