The first thing to do when you've opened
up Dreamweaver is to define your site - go to Site>New Site
from the top menu of Dreamweaver.
Give your ecommerce
template site
a name and browse to the folder you extracted the template to.
For getting started you won't need to fill in any other information.
You'll find the package has some sample pages, the store .asp/php
pages and a file called Main.dwt in the Templates folder. To make
site-wide changes to the design, adding your company name, changing
the menu etc. you'll need to work from this file. The news sections
are often library files and these can be found in the Library folder.
Once you've made the changes, save the file and you'll be prompted
if
you want
to
update all the files using this template or library file - agree
to the prompt and
you should be able to see the modifications you've made.
Now that you can see how the general design changes can be made,
this is how you would proceed.
- Get your general design done locally, more or less the look
you need for the site - don't worry about the products and links
for the moment. The ecommerce templates come with .png files
in the images/extras folder, so changing colors, titles and company
name etc is simple - Adobe have
a 30 day free trial available for Fireworks if you don't already
have a copy.
- You don't need to make any design changes to the files in the
vsadmin folder as you'll be the only one using those pages for
adding product information, shipping stuff, categories, credit
card processors etc.
- Now you can upload all your site to your server - you can do
this through Dreamweaver itself or using a specialist
FTP program.
- This is where the fun starts - you'll probably want to get
some categories and products on your store so you'll have to
log into the admin section - chances are that first of all you'll
need to change the path to your database in the file vsadmin/db_conn_open.asp
or vsadmin/db_conn_open.php - here's a quick way of checking
to get the path correct for the ASP ecommerce
plus templates and here for the PHP
version.
- Now that's done log into your online admin control panel at
www.yourdomain.com/vsadmin/login.asp or www.yourdomain.com/vsadmin/login.php
- and the first thing to do is change the default username and
password so no-one else can get in.
- Take a look around the various options, the ecommerce templates
come with some sample products, categories and descriptions and
although they will need to be deleted, they should give you a
good idea of how the system works.
- That's about it, you can now start setting up your shopping
cart and site in general - check out the user
manual and if you run into any difficulties, take a look
at the support
forums.
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