Introduction
VP-ASP Shopping cart is one of the most comprehensive e-commerce solutions available anywhere and for any
price. It allows you to build an Internet shop that can
sell one product or tens of thousands of products. VP-ASP
is ready to use and comes with extensive customer
facilities for browsing, searching and ordering
products. The back end administration allows the
merchant to alter and manipulate products, run reports,
bulk mail, track and display orders.
Installation Summary
Installation
should only take 5 minutes.
When you receive VP-ASP it will be in the form of a zip file. You will need a utility such as WinZip to uncompress the one file into 300+
files. All are files stored in a single
folder. This document includes details for Windows both
on your local PC and on Windows web hosting company.
The VP-ASP Starter Pac for Windows supports Microsoft Access databases. Microsoft SQL Server and MYSQL databases are supported by VP-ASP Value, VP-ASP Plus and VP-ASP Deluxe.
Documentation
The VP-ASP website provides you with a detailed Help section, which includes information on setting up your VP-ASP store, Design Guides and general troubleshooting.
Please visit our Help Centre at http://www.vpasp.com/helpnotes.
Running VP-ASP on your own local Personal Computer
First determine what Windows operating system you have.
Then determine if you have the appropriate Microsoft prerequisites.
Windows
95/98 |
If you have Windows 95/98 VP-ASP requires that you have the free Microsoft product
called Personal Web Server (PWS).
If you do not have PWS installed, then you must install it.
It comes either free on your Windows CDROM or it can be downloaded from the web.
Please see http://www.vpasp.com/virtprog/info/faq_pws.htm
|
Windows
NT/2K/XP Professional |
VP-ASP requires that you have Microsoft Internet Information Server
(IIS).
This is available on the NT or XP CD-ROM. |
Windows
ME/XP Home |
Unfortunately Microsoft has not made available any software
that can run ASP on these operating systems. To evaluate VP-ASP you will need to use VP-ASP on your
web hosting company. |
Steps to install VP-ASP on your local PC
- Unzip the files to a folder on your hard drive
- Tell IIS or PWS that this is a virtual directory.
See Windows 95/98/NT PWS
or Windows XP set-up
for the proper way to do this if you have never done
it before
VP-ASP is installed
The next step is to run VP-ASP
1. Start your browser
2. Type http://127.0.0.1/shopping
or http://localhost/shopping
The 127.0.0.1 is Microsoft's magic number meaning my own personal PC.
Shopping is the virtual directory that you
created. If you have installed VP-ASP on a web server that has an
actual domain name the 127.0.0.1 will be replaced by your normal domain name.
If you are using Windows 95/98 and are unsure how
to create a virtual directory go to www.vpasp.com/virtprog/info/faq_pws
For Windows XP Profession go to www.vpasp.com/virtprog/info/faq_xpsetup.htm
- You should now see the default VP-ASP home page
- Click on the shop button and you should see the demo shop
categories.
What can go wrong?
The most common problems are these:
1. Instead of seeing the shop categories, a program tries to load.
This is caused by an incorrect setting of your virtual directory.
Please see
http://www.vpasp.com/virtprog/info/faq_helpme.htm
2. On Windows NT/XP an error occurs trying to write to the supplied VP-ASP Access database.
This is because the correct permissions have not been set that allow people from a browser to update the database. Use our diagnostic tool
diag_dbtest.asp to test the database and then see our help file at
http://www.vpasp.com/virtprog/info/faq_databasesetup.htm
3. The Database cannot be opened, You get errors such as
ADODB.Recordset error '800a0e7d' The application requested an operation on an object with a reference to a closed or invalid Connection object. See
above link on database setup.
If running on your web host, make sure they have the
necessary pre-requisites. See www.vpasp.com/virtprog/info/faq_hosting.htm
- Create
a folder on your web host. Copy the files from
your PC to your web hosting company using your normal
FTP tools. such as CuteFTP or WSFTP.
-
Copy the supplied Access database,
shopping600.mdb, to a special directory your web
host supplies. It cannot be in the same folder as
the rest of VP-ASP. Most web hosting companies
supply a special database directory since normal directories on a web host are
read only.
- You must edit
shop$config.asp to tell VP-ASP where the database is
located. See www.vpasp.com/virtprog/info/faq_databasesetup.htm
- To use VP-ASP and see demo shop, use your browser
go to the location that you uploaded VP-ASP to (eg. http://www.vpasp.com/demo600/).
- Now run our supplied diagnostic tool,
diag_dbtest.asp. Make sure the database can be read and
written.
Administration
Shop administration is for the merchant or web developer and not for the customer. The administration facilities include:
Details of Administration are in the VP-ASP Merchant's Guide and VP-ASP Developers Guide.
shopadmin.asp is the main Administration page.
· Add, delete and modify products
· Add, delete and modify any other VP-ASP table
· Define administrator userids
· Define menus and tasks for each administrator
· Restrict administrators to viewing or updating specific tables
· Display sales reports
· Perform searches of the database
· Export data from tables
· Mail to selected customers
· Configure most of VP-ASP options
· Send messages to customers via order tracking
and much more
Two userids are defined:
admin with password admin
vpasp with password vpasp
The first step is to
verify the shop works by clicking on the shop. This
should bring up the demo categories if the demo store is
installed. If you simply want to play with the
demo store, it will run immediately and no further
configuration is required.
To log into VP-ASP Administration, click on the
Merchant Administration hyperlink. After you login go to
Shop Configuration. Administration is used to:
- Change the store name and address, e-mail address and
more
- Configure options for taxes, shipping, discounts,
product layout, and many other options
- Which categories and products you have
- To run sales reports
- To update any table
- Turn on or off the hundreds of VP-ASP features
using the Shop Configuration
Customizing VP-ASP
VP-ASP "look and feel" are controlled by
these
files. The VP-ASP Developer's Guide goes into great
detail on how to make VP-ASP look any way you want.
shoppage_header.htm will be displayed as your top and
or top/left navigation bars and logo.
shoppage_trailer.htm will be displayed as your bottom
navigation bars.
shop$colors.asp has much of the HTML generated by VP-ASP
shop.css is the style sheet used
The diagnostic facility, diag_dbtest.asp, can be used to determine if your database and mailing system are working. The fields displayed come from the configuration file shop$config.asp. You can play with different values.
If you move the database, we recommend you run this diagnostic tool to verify the database can be read and written to.
If diag_dbtest.asp works, you should receive a message
such as:
VP-ASP
Diagnostics 6.00
Database Read |
Database can be read |
Database Write |
Database can be written |
Database Permissions |
Database permissions tested OK |
Summary |
No problems reading or writing
database |
-
Check the FAQ at www.vpasp.com/virtprog/info/faq_databasesetup.htm
if you have any problems
|