Instruction Manual

[kimberly]

Can somebody direct me to the osCMax manual for basic admin? All links and searches are taking me in circles. I am just getting started with osCommerce and am looking for basic help files regarding adding products, customers, etc.

[met00]

I'n not going to knock manuals, but the reality is that the best way to learn the feature set with OSC is to set up a fake store and beat the crap out of it trying everything you can.

Once you do that you will be able to see how it works from both the user side and the admin side. This will help you understand what contributions that are not in MAX that you wish you had and are useful.

Here is a great example.

I have a store that has some products that are on special order. I also have 10,000 products. Now, sometimes I have these products in and they are NOT a special order ite. I need a simple way of displayiong to the potential customer a very clear "flag" of when they are looking at a special product or not.

Now the simple way of doing this is to add a line like <p><b>This is a special order product and can take an addition 4-6 weeks for delivery</b> at the end of every special product description. But after playing with the system and adding and removing this line for a while, well it becomes a painful way to administer the store. So there has to be a better way.

Since the text doesn't change we can most likely put that into the /languages/english.php file. Now we just need a way to flag special products. That means that we have to change the products table an add a products_special_order field. Then we have to modify admin/categories.php to take the new field and allow it to be set and displayed with the product. Finally we have to take the /templates/<templatedirectory>content/product_info.tpl.php and add a small piece of code after it writes out the product_description to display the line we defined in english.php.

Viola! A fairly simple fix that will reduce the headache of maintaining this information.

Now that you have the flag, you can easily create a report that will list all products where this flag is set, so you can see what is and isn't flagged. Again, easier than having to look at each product to check the descriptions for the special order text.

But, until you have played with the system and tried to see how easy it is to do these type of tasks, it's hard to understand that the simple solution your initially thinking is really a headache for you to maintain in the long run.

So, again, I may sound like I'm not helping, but really, unless you want to go through the pain of upgrading a store that is in operation, may I suggest that you beat the crap out of the OSC product for a week or so with a totally bogus store so you can get an idea of what it really can and can not do, and how it does it. By then you will understand not only the basics, but you will have a good understnding of what your needs are, what modules you will want on and off, and most of all, what mods you may want to add or what custom programming you may need to make your store run the way you want.

One last note. Remember scale. A store that is doing 4-5 orders a day, when it takes you 10 minutes to process an order is far different than one that is doing 50 orders a day. What you won't see as "too much of a problem" at 10 orders become a personal living hell when the solution doesn't scale.

[kimberly]

Thanks for the reply and I will use that information for a similar need on my site. I also plan to spend plenty of time playing around with everything...but still am wondering why all the links to the "guide" and the "manual" come up empty. Are there actually no help files for osCMax?

[michael_s]

The osCDox Wiki does not come up empty for me, all the pages load just fine. I can read and view all the documentation there without a problem...

Are you saying these pages do not show any content for you?
http://oscdox.com/index.php?op=modlo...&pagename=
http://oscdox.com/index.php?op=modlo...me=Ms2MaxGuide
http://oscdox.com/index.php?op=modlo...me=Ms2MaxAdmin

I can read all the content on those pages without any problem at all.
If you can't, update your browser or disable your software firewall...

[kimberly]

Thanks...Yes, I can read content on those pages just fine, but I am having problems with the links. For example, if I go to http://oscdox.com/index.php?op=modlo...me=Ms2MaxAdmin
and then click on "customers" there is no information. The "customers" page says "How to add, remove, contact, etc your customers " and nothing more.