*yourstoredirectory*/download

replacing *yourstoredirectory* with whatever name we use for your store folder.

ADDING ITEMS:
Of course, I will be happy to walk you through a couple of these so that you don’t feel abandoned, LOL, but these are the steps involved:
Click Catalog>Categories/Products
Select a Category and click New Product
Enter all applicable info – Note: you can mark this as a Virtual Product, but downloads are by default already Virtual Products and this is not required
After you’ve added the product, click Catalog>Attributes Controller
Select your new Product and click Display
Under Adding New Attributes, select your Product Option Name Example: Version and the Option Value Example: Windows Zip Format
At the very bottom, you’ll see Downloadable Products
In the orange box on the lower section of the page, click Yes for “Default Attribute to be Marked Selected”
Type in the filename only of the file that you uploaded via ftp to the shop/download directory.- Note: filenames are case sensitive and cannot contain spaces or any other special characters than dashes or underscores.
If you have the red dot next to the filename, click Edit and double check the spelling of the filename, ensure the file exists under /catalog/download, and click Update
If you have multiple files, you will repeat the last three steps, choosing a different Option Name/Value combination for each file (i.e. File 1 of Multiple Files).

First, you need the e-mail address exporter mod from ZenCart. You can find it here. Get it and install it. It’s a simple install, just uploading a couple of files, but if that makes you nervous, contact me and I will do it for a minimal charge.

Once it’s installed, you’ll to go Tools>Export Email Addresses in your Zen admin panel and choose these options:

Save the file to your desktop and open it with Excel. If you don’t have Excel, you can download Open Office for free and use it. Once you are able to open your file, change the title of the column containing the e-mail addresses to “email” (without the quotes) and save it, as a .csv file again. Then you are ready to move on to phpList. Go to Manage Users, then click on Import Users, then choose import emails with different values for attributes.

Be sure the correct list is showing at the top as the list to add to and then import your file with these options:

You can read through the rest of the options, but the main one is to place the comma in the field delimiter box so that it can read your .csv (comma-separated values) file. It’s also a good idea to check the “test output” box, at least the first time you do it so that you know it works. It will ask you what to do with the other fields that the file contains. There are a couple of options here. If you wish to address people by their name in the newsletter, you can identify those fields as attributes and put those into your newsletter, but that’s probably a bit more complicated than most of us want to get with our setup. If you don’t want to do that, simply tell it to skip that field and it will only import your list of e-mail addresses. Then you should be ready to send your newsletter.

Since you will have new subscribers on a regular basis, it’s a good idea to repeat the import step before each newsletter with a new file exported out of ZenCart.

Wordpress:

Add blinkies and links to your sidebar

ZenCart:

Using ImageHandler

phpList:

Using phpList

If you plan to use a header and/or footer on your newsletters, the easiest way to do this is to create a template for your newsletter which will contain the header and footer so that you don’t have to add them every time. Go to Templates in the right sidebar and choose add new template.

When you click the image icon, a box will pop up. Give it the URL of the header image that you have already uploaded to your server and click save. This will insert your header.

Next, you need a placeholder for your content. To add this, simply type [CONTENT] into the box. Your screen should look something like this:

To add a footer, just follow the same process as adding the header image. When you are finished, tick all three boxes at the bottom for it to check your file and link references and hit the “save changes” button.

It may prompt you to upload your image again and if so, just do it…I can’t explain why it does this, but if you comply, you can be sure your image will be there. Now, you’ve created your template. Let’s send a message using it.

Using Your Custom Template to Send a Message

Click “send a message” in the menu in the right sidebar. The first tab that is active in the message window is the “content” tab. This is where you add what you want between your header and footer. You can enter formatted text and you can also add images. To add an image, click that image icon again and enter the URL for your previously uploaded image. One thing to note here…if you plan to link the image and don’t want a border around it, be sure to enter “0″ in the border box, like this:

After you enter your content, click the “save changes” button. Then click the Format tab.

If you want to schedule your newsletter to be sent at a later time, click the Scheduling tab and make the appropriate selections…and click “save changes” again. Lastly, choose the list you wish to send your message to on the Lists tab. That’s all you need to do to create your message.

Sending the Message

Manual Processing
There are different ways to process your messages, but unless you have a cron job set up, you’ll need to process the message queue manually. If you have messages that are embargoed (scheduled to send later), you still have to click the Process Queue link in the right sidebar so that it will know to send your message, even if it is at a later time or date. However, if you have a message embargoed, you can’t close the browser window until the message is sent. This can cause a problem if you compose a message and process the queue hours (or even days) before you want your message to be sent. Also, if your host has limits on the number of messages you can send per hour, you will have to leave your browser window open until all of the messages have been sent. However, you can also use a cron job to do this for you.

Cron Job Processing
A Cron Job is basically a command that is run automatically as you schedule it. You can tell the server to run a command every 30 seconds, every hour, every day, whatever you want. So, if you use a Cron Job, it will run and your first batch will send. Then, an hour later (or whatever interval you set it for), it will run again and the next batch will send. You don’t have to hit the “process queue” button, you just create your message and send it or set it to be sent at a certain date/time. The Cron Job will do the rest. No worries about leaving that browser window open, either…you can “fix it and forget it”.

There are some instructions at phpList that cover setting up a Cron Job manually, but unless you have cPanel, you’ll probably want to call for some help with that. If you have cPanel, it’s a pretty simple process. However, it can depend a little on your host. For this particular client, the hosting was on LunarPages and I can say that this definitely worked for her…if it doesn’t work for you, your host might be able to help you tweak the settings so that it does.

First, let’s assume that you have a large number of subscribers and that your host has some limits on the number of mails that can be sent per hour. Grab your config.php file from your phpList installation. It’s inside the config folder inside the folder you installed phpList in. Use your ftp client to download it and open in Notepad, TextEdit or Dreamweaver. Look for these lines:

# define the amount of emails you want to send per period. If 0, batch processing
# is disabled and messages are sent out as fast as possible
define("MAILQUEUE_BATCH_SIZE",0);

# define the length of one batch processing period, in seconds (3600 is an hour)
define("MAILQUEUE_BATCH_PERIOD",3600);

Change that to meet your hosting requirements, save, and upload back to the server.

Next, copy this and paste it into a blank file in whatever you used to edit the config file:

Replace the obvious variables with your own and then save that file as processqueue.php. Create a folder called cron inside your phpList folder. Upload your new file to that folder.

Lastly, go to your cPanel and click on Cron Jobs, then click on Standard

and click on the grayed options:

Now, in the top box where is says “Command to run:” enter this:

php -q /home/yourserverinfo/public_html/your phplist folder/cron/processqueue.php >/dev/null

again, replacing the obvious variables with your own.

That should be it. I’m no expert, I’m the first to admit it. I got the last part of this tutorial from this thread in the LunarPages forum and want to give credit where credit is due. I also take no responsibility for any issues that come from the use of this information as I am simply trying to decode the mystery that is phpList and offer some (hopefully) useful information to help you use phpList.

Good luck!

This is the first decision to be made when considering using a blog to communicate with your audience. There are pros and cons to both and this will cover those without going into too much depth.

First, we’ll talk about hosted blog solutions and discuss the three most popular options for this option. Hosted blog solutions are great for beginners or those who don’t really want to have to learn a lot about web design. Here’s why:

• No domain or hosting required – these types of blogs are hosted on sites where you just sign up for your account and start blogging.
• Automatic upgrades – most open-source (free) software is upgraded on a regular basis to combat security holes and bugs.  With a hosted blog, you don’t have to worry about upgrades, they’re done automatically, usually without you ever even knowing about it.
• Simplicity – you don’t have to know much of anything about websites or webdesign to utilize a hosted blog…just sign up, choose a few options and start blogging.

Wordpress – This is a free blogging site that offers an easy and secure way to communicate with your audience.  As of April 3, Wordpress.com boasts an amazing number of 213,475 blogs…that speaks volumes about how much people like Wordpress.  Wordpress is also available as a stand-alone solution, which we’ll talk about later, but wordpress.com offers the ability to choose a domain such as ourchurch.wordpress.com or allaboutus.wordpress.com (depending on availability, of course) and offers users 60+ themes to choose from as of right now.  Wordpress also offers many levels of users so that different people can have the ability to do different things on the blog…this could be handy for sites who might have multiple bloggers that don’t need access to all of the administrative functions on the site.  Wordpress also has some themes that make it look more like a website and less like a blog, something to be considered if you are looking for a solution for a full-blown website for your business or church.

Some Wordpress blogs:

Pastor Becca

Kentucky Fried Methodist

Methodist Chick

Blogger – Google’s own hosted blogging platform, Blogger is also free and offers users the same kind of name choices as wordpress.com.  Blogger has many themes, and the themes can be customized to any degree desired, making it a popular choice for those who want to have more control over the appearance of their blogs.  Blogger does not offer as many options for access as Wordpress, but can still have posts from multiple authors.

Some Blogger blogs:

Everything is temporary

Pastor Jason’s Ramblings

Reverend Mommy

Typepad – Typepad is not free, but offers different levels of subscription, depending on the different options you want.  The basic service starts at $4.95 and there’s even an enterprise solution available at $89.95 per month.  Typepad offers several themes, most of which allow you to add your own custom banner, but for advanced stylesheet editing, you must upgrade to the Pro level service at $14.95 per month.  With Typepad, it’s easy to add Photo Albums and other sidebar widgets that add some cool functions to your blog. Typepad also has a user-friendly interface that makes it easy to decide what to put on your blog and where to put it.

Typepad examples:

UM Portal

A hosted blog is a great way to go if you just want to be able to sign up, make a few choices and start adding content.  Each platform has strengths and weaknesses, but the best way to know which is best for you is to try them out.  Wordpress.com and Blogger are both free and Typepad offers a free trial so you can set up a blog on all three, play around with it for a few days and see which one you like best.  They’re all wonderful solutions for communicating with your audience and any of the three will allow you to do just about anything you will need to for a small website.

Stand-alone Blog Solutions

While hosted blogs are great for those who want an easy way to get started, some users prefer to have more control over their websites and blogs.  For those people, a stand-alone blog is the way to go.  There are many platforms to choose from, including Movable Type, the platform that runs Typepad, ExpressionEngine, B2Evolution and many more.  But with a doubt, Wordpress is the most popular stand-alone blogging platform, powering literally millions of blogs.  It has an endless supply of free themes and plug-ins, which can add some wonderful extra functions to your site…and it’s my personal favorite, so it’s the one we’ll be talking about.

Hosting/Domain

To host your own blog/site on your own domain, you will need a domain and webhosting. A domain is just your own little spot on the web, where people go to find you…let’s say it’s your address.  Hosting (or more specifically, your “server”) is where you put the stuff you want people to see when they come to your address…so it would be your building.  I always use www.GoDaddy.com to purchase domains, but don’t use them for hosting. I have been using the same host for several years and he does offer “managed” hosting, which means he will help with technical issues and keep your scripts upgraded for you. He offers a plan for $12.99 per month that should be sufficient for most small websites. The information is here:

http://sitemanaged.com/hosting.htm

Of course, there are other hosts out there that may be less expensive and would be perfectly fine, but most of them will not offer the kind of support that this one will.  You also have the option of purchasing your domain from him, which may help with the technicalities of putting your “name servers” in your domain information…that may sound a bit greek, but it basically means you are telling the World Wide Web where you store the stuff  that you want to show people when they come to your address.

Wordpress lists a few other hosts that they approve of for hosting and I have also worked for clients who have used some of these listed below so if you do want to shop around, check these out, too:

BlueHost offers a Free Domain With $6.95 Hosting Package.

LunarPages is also widely used and offers Website Hosting for $4.95/month + 2 free months, Free Domain, Free Emails, & $775 Free Bonus Software! Limited Time Only!.

Whew, that’s alot of information, but it’s a fairly logical process if you think about it so I’m going to move on to the good stuff…installing Wordpress.

Installing Wordpress

All of the hosts I recommended offer cPanel as the hosting control panel, which probably doesn’t mean much to those new to web design, but it is the easiest, most user-friendly control panel you can have and it usually includes one-click installs of many popular open-source programs via Fantastico.  Now, your control panel may look a bit different, but here’s what you are looking for:

Once you click on the Fantastico icon, you will see a list of items in the left hand sidebar.  Just click on Wordpress and you’ll see a new screen, where you will click on New Installation.  Click on that and you’ll see yet another screen, which may be a bit confusing, but here’s what you need to know:

You won’t have the top box, “install on domain”, but you will have the rest of these.  First, “Install in directory”…if you want the Wordpress front page to be what visitors see when they first come to your site, leave that box blank.  If you plan to have other things on the site and really want to use this as a blog, enter blog in the box…that will put your Wordpress installation at www.yourdomain.com/blog.

Next, enter the name you want to use to get into the back side of Wordpress.  It’s best not to use “admin” for security reasons, so use something else along with a good password.  Move on down to the Base Configuration section and fill in those blanks and then click the “Install Wordpress” button…voila, you have installed Wordpress!

Customizing Your Site or Blog

As I said before, Wordpress has countless Themes to give your site a different look.  Installing one couldn’t be easier, but you need to find one first.  I could list page after page of themes, but I will just give you a few of my favorite sites for free ones:

http://blogsessive.com/blogging-tips/20-corporate-free-wordpress-themes/

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/01/08/100-excellent-free-high-quality-wordpress-themes/

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/08/25/30-free-high-quality-wordpress-themes/

http://www.smashingapps.com/2009/01/28/13-premium-like-wordpress-themes-that-are-free-and-stunning.html

Once you find one, Wordpress makes it amazingly simple to add it.  First, you’ll need to download and unzip it…sometimes there is a folder inside the folder you unzip so be sure to look inside to see if you see files or another folder.  Then, using your wonderfully user-friendly control panel, cPanel, you can upload the theme folder.  Just go back to the cPanel where you saw the Fantastico icon and look for this:

cpanel uploader

Click on the File Manager icon and you will see a list of files.  Unless you installed Wordpress inside a folder (which we decided when we used Fantastico to install it), you will see a list of folders including one named “wp-content”.  Double-click on that one and then double-click on the “themes” folder and look at the top of the screen for an Upload icon at the top:

Click that Upload icon and you’ll see a screen with boxes and browse buttons, just like you see when you upload other files in a web application.  Simply click that browse button and go to the theme file on your computer and then upload it.  You’re almost done!  The last step is go to back into your Wordpress admin panel and look down the left side through the different tabs for “Appearance”.  If you can’t see any options under it like you see on my screenshot, just click on the word “Appearance” and you’ll see them.  Click on “Themes”and your new theme should be one of the options you have to choose from.  Simply click on the one you want to use and when the preview box pops up, click the Activate link in the upper right-hand corner of it.  Voila, your site now has a new look!

I could write for days (or weeks, even) about things you can do with a Wordpress site, but I believe I’ve given you a great start on setting up your site with Wordpress or any of the Hosted Blog Solutions that we mentioned earlier.  Wordpress is so widely used that there are thousands of tutorials out there so if you want to learn more, just google Wordpress tutorials and you’ll find out all kinds of things you can do with it.  But for now, just get in there and start blogging.  I listed a few tools below that you might find handy when adding your content to your pages.

Other resources to help with your site:

Online photo editing: Sharing photos online is a great way to show people what you are doing in your organization. If you are going to share photos, though, you need to optimize them for the web. There are many tools for this including Irfanview, which you download and install on your computer and other programs that are not free including Paint Shop Pro, Adobe Photoshop and Photoshop Elements and many more. There are also online applications to do this, one of which is Picnik. Optimizing your photos is very important for you, because loading full sized images on a site uses unnecessary bandwidth and for your viewers, because full sized images take much longer to load.

.pdf files – Another handy tool is a .pdf creator. .pdf files are a wonderful format to share text documents with your viewers because any .pdf file can be opened with the free tool, Adobe Reader. Adobe is now offering .pdf creation online for a minimal fee. There are also free programs (just google “create .pdf files”) that can be downloaded and installed to do this. Some people may even have Adobe Acrobat, the original way to create .pdf files, because it comes along with Photoshop and other Adobe programs in some versions of the Adobe Creative Suite. Newsletters, calendars and many other documents can easily be shared as .pdf files, but be sure to include a link to Adobe Reader on your site for viewers who might not have it installed.

• If you are a digital scrapbooker and want to look at the designers that have allowed me to use their products, click here.
• If you are not a digital scrapbooker, here are some examples of blogs I have created with digital scrapbooking kits. If you like the look of these, visit this page to see what your choices are.
• If you are looking for a clean, graphic look, similar to this blog or these designs, that’s fine, too! Your design can be created entirely from scratch or with the use of stock images. Just give me an idea of what colors and/or styles you find appealing, even send a few links to blogs that you like the “feel” of and we can work together to create something you will love!
• Want more than just a blog? Visit this site to see an example of Wordpress used as a CMS (content management system). This gives you the option of having several items on your front page at once, but always having current content in those spaces. There are a wide variety of options for this type of Wordpress setup. For more info, just contact me.

First, you have to have phpmyadmin. If you have cPanel for your hosting, you most likely have phpmyadmin. If you can’t find it, ask your host. The cPanel I used for this tut is a bit old and doesn’t have a direct link to phpmyadmin, but many newer versions do. But for this tut, we just clicked on mysql databases in cPanel:

After you click that, you’ll scroll down to the bottom and click on phpmyadmin:

You’ll see this:

If you don’t know the name of your ZenCart database, you can find it in your includes/configuration.php file. Click on your database, then click on the little SQL box in the middle of the five icons above the database names. You’ll see a window pop-up. Now, here’s the first query:

SELECT products_name 'PROD NAME', products_model 'MODEL', products_price 'PRICE', count(products_quantity ) 'QTY', (products_price * count( products_quantity ) ) 'TOTAL'
FROM zen_orders o, zen_orders_products p
WHERE o.orders_id = p.orders_id
AND o.date_purchased > '20081001' (change the dates to suit you here
AND o.date_purchased <= '20081031' and here)
AND product_is_free = 0
AND o.ORDERS_ID not in
(SELECT ORDER_ID FROM zen_coupon_redeem_track WHERE REDEEM_DATE > '20081001' AND REDEEM_DATE  <= '20081031') (also change dates here and above)
GROUP BY p.products_name
ORDER BY p.products_name, date_purchased

So you’ll have this:

After clicking the Go button, you’ll get a new page that shows your query along with the results. At the bottom, you have the option to Export it:

Next, you choose your options:

It will prompt you to save the file to your computer. You are saving it in a .csv format, which works on most versions of Excel, but won’t work in Excel for Mac (that I am aware of, but if someone knows how to make it work, please let me know).

So, that’s report #1. Now, to get the second part, you go through those steps again, but run a different query:

SELECT b.products_name 'PROD NAME', b.products_model 'MODEL', b.products_price 'PRICE', count(b.products_quantity) 'QTY', b.products_price*count(b.products_quantity) 'TOTAL', c.coupon_amount 'COUPON AMT', a.coupon_code 'CODE'
FROM zen_orders a, zen_orders_products b, zen_coupons c
WHERE a.date_purchased >= '20081001' (again changing dates to suit your needs)
AND a.date_purchased < '20081031'
AND a.coupon_code <> ''
AND a.coupon_code = c.coupon_code
AND a.orders_id = b.orders_id 
AND product_is_free = 0
GROUP BY b.products_name
ORDER BY b.products_model

Again, export this report and then put the two together in Excel. This should enable you to come up with the correct amounts to pay your designers.

If you have questions, please contact me. If you have suggestions or something to add, I’d love to know that, too!

After clicking the pink circle with the ‘i’,  you will see this screen:

Click the “new file” button and you will see this screen:

Click the Browse button next to the Default Image File box, browse to your file and upload it.

That should do it…if you have problems with this, check your file size.  Files that are too big can cause a problem.

DIRECTORY NAME: I need to know what directory you want your store in.  In other words, do you want the address to be yoursitename.com/store or yoursitename.com/shoppe or..

PAYPAL INFO: I need the Paypal address to send the payments to for the store.You also need to go to your Paypal account and do this:

Log into your PayPal account and go to My Profile.
Click on “Website Payments Preferences”
Change Auto-Return to “On”
Go to your Zen admin panel and see Modules>Payment>Paypal and it will give you the redirect and IPN link to put into your Paypal account.

OTHER PAYMENT METHODS:Will you be accepting checks/money orders? If so, I need the address for sending payments.

BANNER/CSS: I need a top banner.Size it the same width that you want your shop by about 200 high (either 800 or 900 is a good size).I also need to know your color preferences for the sidebox headers, text, etc… If you asked for them and are willing to pay extra, the banner can include mouseovers for links within the banner (say to your blog or gallery), but not for the links which typically appear below the banner (My Account, Shopping Cart, etc…). If you do want to do this, I will need to give you more specific information on creating and sending the file to be used.

SIDEBOXES: Look at some other ZenCart sites and let me know which sideboxes you want to have on there.

CATEGORIES:I need a list of the categories you want.

MULTIPLE ZIPS: Do you ever have kits with multiple zips? If so, what is the maximum number of zips you would have? I have to set up an attribute (I’ll explain that later) for each zip file so I need to know this.

SALES TAX:Is this something you want to set up? You might check your local laws on that. Most states do not require it, but I always mention it just in case.

STORE INFO:This is displayed on the Contact Us page. I can take out any fields you do not wish to show. I will also need to know the e-mail address you wish to use for the contact us page. I definitely have to have your zip code, though, for the store setup.

GIFT CERTIFICATES: Do you want to sell gift certificates? If so, you will need to make images (more info on images below) for them and let me know what denominations you wish to sell.

UPLOADING:
Upload your zipped files via ftp to:

*yourstoredirectory*/download

replacing *yourstoredirectory* with whatever name we use for your store folder.

ADDING ITEMS:
Of course, I will be happy to walk you through a couple of these so that you don’t feel abandoned, LOL, but these are the steps involved:
Click Catalog>Categories/Products
Select a Category and click New Product
Enter all applicable info – Note: you can mark this as a Virtual Product, but downloads are by default already Virtual Products and this is not required
After you’ve added the product, click Catalog>Attributes Controller
Select your new Product and click Display
Under Adding New Attributes, select your Product Option Name Example: Version and the Option Value Example: Windows Zip Format
At the very bottom, you’ll see Downloadable Products
In the orange box on the lower section of the page, click Yes for “Default Attribute to be Marked Selected”
Type in the filename only of the file that you uploaded via ftp to the shop/download directory.- Note: filenames are case sensitive and cannot contain spaces or any other special characters than dashes or underscores.
If you have the red dot next to the filename, click Edit and double check the spelling of the filename, ensure the file exists under /catalog/download, and click Update
If you have multiple files, you will repeat the last three steps, choosing a different Option Name/Value combination for each file (i.e. File 1 of Multiple Files).

Because all stores are unique and different, I’m sure I’ll have more questions, but this is a basic list of what I always need for a Zen install. If you can answer these questions in an e-mail or word document, I’ll have almost everything I need, for sure. You can attach your banner to an e-mail or upload it to the server via ftp and let me know it is there.

If you have any questions, please just drop me an e-mail and I’ll be happy to answer them for you.