Leftpanel

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[edit] The Left panel explained

The default view of the Shopfitter 4 is 'Shop Items', in addition there are tabs for 'Publish', 'Theme' and 'FTP'.

Image:SF4-left-menu-top-shop-items.png

Shop Items Tab

The Shop Items window lists every item in your shop.

There are 4 main types of files:

Layout Pages (yellow triangle) - site design sections

  • Header Top of every page - add shop name / logo and contact information here.
  • Footer Bottom of every page - add shop name, address, contact and any legal information here.
  • Left Future upgrade.
  • Right Future upgrade.
  • Search Adds text to the search results page.
  • Cart Adds text to the cart page - e.g. delivery charges payment details.
  • Checkout Please ignore this, the checkout page is on our secure server.

Info Pages (green triangle) - Information pages.

  • New shops have blanks for - Home page, about page, terms page, help page.
  • Ideal for added useful background information and also expanding on information for visitors to your site.
  • See Links tab to add these pages to you shop menu.

Category items(blue circle basket) - Shop category pages holing products.

  • Shop pages showing in the main left menu - these can contain products or even other categorys (subcategories).

Products items(blue triangle) - Items to purchase.

  • Shop pages showing product to purchase with more information, larger image and any options.


Shop Items hilighted - new category button activated
New category being added to main shop
Category hilighted - new category and new product button activated
New product added to 'Designer Bags' category

To add a new item hi-light the section you want it in (either Shop Items, Info Pages or in a Category page already made) then click the button at the top of the list window to add the item, then you can rename it. A new window on the right will open showing your new page ready to edit.


Image:SF4-left-menu-top-publish.png

Publish

The publish button generates the shop on your machine, once shopfitter has finished publishing press the preview button to check your shop - it will open in your default web browser, you always have to publish this way to see the whole shop as it will look once uploaded using FTP to your web hosting.


Image:SF4-left-menu-top-theme.png

Theme

Select a theme to style your shop from the thumbnail views - a larger image will appear showing the selected theme, more themes will be added in future updates. And if wanted a bespoke theme can be designed for you - just contact shopfitter.


Image:SF4-left-menu-top-ftp.png

FTP FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol and what it does is transfer files from one computer to another. In this instance, from your computer to the web server where your site will be hosted.

To upload your website to your hosting you need to complete the fields on the FTP panel in Shopfitter 4.

  • Hostname: this will be provided by your hosting ISP and will be something like ftp.yourdomain.com or www.yourdomain.com. Occasionally this will be something different but the terms 'host address', 'Host' or 'hostname' will be used to identify it. Please enter your host name into this field.
  • User Name: the username will be supplied or confirmed by your hosting ISP too, this is often similar to an e-mail address or can be just a word or alphanumeric (words and numbers) phrase. Enter the username supplied by your hosting company in this field.
  • Password: your password will be given to you by your hosting ISP. Please enter it into the 'Password' field.

The above items all tell Shopfitter 4 where to upload the files to and also allow it to connect to the hosing server.

  • Port: For standard FTP this should be set to 21, which is the default setting.
  • Passive Mode: This is an advanced feature of FTP that enables the two computers, once they are connected' to automatically switch to alternative ports for uploading files. It should be left ticked by default unless specified by your host ISP.
  • Remote Path: You hosting ISP will tell you which folder in your hosting account your website files should be uploaded to. This should be entered into the Remote Path field along with any sub-folders you may wish to have your webshop in.

Hosting ISP's differ so there is no one setup with a generic Remote Path name. Here is a list of some of the most common:

  • mainwebsite_html
  • public_html
  • htdocs
  • www
  • httpdocs

Once these are set you can click the 'Upload' button.

A new window will open, the top panel shows the website files and folders on your computer. Click the 'Connect' button to connect and log into the host web server, this will then show you the 'remote' computer and the files on it, a small 'connected' popup will also appear.

To transfer your website files either for the first time or if you are updating the site, please click 'Upload'.

Uploading can take some time, depending on the number of products so please be patient, once finished the small 'connected' popup appears and you can close this and the ftp window using the X button and check the live site using your web browser.

Using another FTP program to Upload your shop

If you prefer to use a separate FTP program (eg. Cute FTP, Filezilla, Fox FTP) you can, just edit your shop as normal in SF4 then publish and preview the shop.

Publishing the shop generates the htm files in the 'web' folder:

C:\ShopFitterBeta\Shops\YOUR SHOP NAME\web

So to upload the site using another FTP program just upload all of the contents of the 'web' folder to your remote folder.

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