Publishing ecommerce website - can I still edit after?!

[biker-dj]

Hi all
I have hijacked OH's user name again as I am still quite confused with my website and it's imminent publishing - you may have seen a previous post by Biker-DJ re Web hosting for e-commerce, well I've found and signed up with an appropriate host and have bought ClickCartPro s/ware, but I now have another problem.
I am a total newbie, so please forgive my lack of tech-speak! I have almost finished building my ecommerce website using FP2k, and need to install a shopping cart (ClickCartPro) because the Paypal cart I was using couldn't handle inventory control.
So - I have my FP site (not yet live) which still needs a few tweaks and the hyperlinks re-doing to link my pages to the new cart, I have my hosting/domain name all set up (using Linux with FPE) and I have the cart software downloaded but not yet linked to my site.
If you are still with me, what I need to know is this - to put the s/cart into my web, I apparently have to have already published my site. But I am scared of doing this, as it is no way finished, and it is going to take a couple of weeks to fill the shopping cart and integrate it into my FP site. If I publish, will people be able to a)see what I am doing "live" (eg all my blunders!) and b)attempt to buy goods before I am ready?! Also, will I still be able to edit my site once it is running live, and if so, how? Could I just publish a "Site Under Construction" page - would that be sufficient to allow the cart to be installed onto my site and prevent the looking/buying problem?
Please help! (Dom was very helpful before - are you out there, my knight in shining armour?!)
Biker-DJ's OH
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[Skunkcap Freddie]

if your using clickcart there should be an option under an administration menu to disable the site to the public until you are ready to "go live" , also if your only just registered the domain name there's little probility that you will get a lot of traffic to your site in a short space of time.

if you havn't put the clickcart onto your webspace. you basically need to upload the files and folders to a specific folder. say your website was .www.bcf.co.uk, and you wanted a seperate area for the shop then you'd make a new folder in the public_html folder called shop.

so it would be www.bcf.co.uk/shop to have access to the shop. you'd dump all the contents of the clickcart into that particular folder .

hope this is what you were wanting to know

[biker-dj]

Hi
Thanks for that - I hope there IS that facility in CCP, it would be great to be able to load it etc without anyone being able to access it!
Re: the public_html folder bit, I don't quite understand - well, I DO understand what you are saying, but the instructions from CCP for uploading and configuring are about 10 pages long! Are you saying it could be as simple as using the public_html folder to upload everything?!
Biker-dj's OH
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[biker-dj]

Just to update website updated sucessfully but having a job uploading the Click Cart Pro to Fast Hosts it says to upload files via address ftp.livedns.co.uk but comes up page cannot be displayed, I suppose the obvious question is Where do we actually upload the CCP folder on the website and is FTP used?? This is giving me a headache
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[Skunkcap Freddie]

if you have msn. check my profile for the email addy. and i'll see if i can help your further

[biker-dj]

Hi Freddy I am not on MSN unfortunately - we've sort of got the problem sussed. We have downloaded a third party FTP client server thingy from Smart ftp website to enable us to transfer CCP to what I guess would be the HTDOC and gone thro the tutorial and can suss out the file upload but new problem is if the files are automatically uploaded separately, ie ascii only then binary only, just spent the last half hr sorting out which files are which - .htm .cgi etc ASCII - .csv .gif etc Binary - and if not if its a case of clicking the button in the toolbar marked ASCII and transferring relevant files and then clicking the Binary button and then transferring the Binary files. Hope this makes sense and I hope I am on the right track. Knackered now so heading for my bed and thanks for your help - I may call upon your help again if I get stuck
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[biker-dj]

Not happy with CCP It's an absolute nightmare to upload the files and even now I don't think we have uploaded it properly. Looks like we may have to shell out another 40 quid and get the administrator to install the files on the website. More bloody money. Can't even get a refund on the software because we bought it through ebay at a discounted price (10 quid discount- wow). Beginning to think we got stitched up.
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[Dom]

I've never used clickcart before but a quick look at their site shows it's a big step up from what you were looking to do previously. I take it your hosting account offers mySQL and you have a database setup? What's the problem you're having with uploading the files, do you have any specific error messages etc?

I don't use SmartFTP but I would expect it has an 'auto' mode which automatically decides whether certain files should be uploaded in ASCII/binary. To clarify the difference between the two, ASCII files are all text-based and binary is everything else (possibly just images in your case).

(Thanks for the ego massage at the start of the thread, btw )
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[biker-dj]

Hi Dom, my wife says you were a great help, thanks since my last post we have actually managed to upload the CCP files, but we were having huge problems connecting to our server, so an hour on the phone to Bt voyager (the maker of our wireless router) opening all the IP ports and nearly an hour on the phone to Fasthosts we can now access our server via the IP address.Hooray Just the headache to configure the shopping cart which aint easy - but having said that we managed to get the files uploaded so we shall just keep slogging away with it. Just for the record Clickcartpro is a very complicated program to use for newbies with no help from the makers Greenbarnweb, and they want to charge you for any advice they give 19.99 to "buy a ticket" which allows you to "ask ONE question" even the forum replies just say ask Greenbarnweb to install CCP - at a cost of 41 quid AND that doesn't involve configuring the cart to your site or helping you to stock it I did as you mentioned, Dom and uploaded the files in "auto" mode so hopefully ASCII and Binary will have been uploaded properly. Thanks again to all that have replied to this post and please offer any more advice if there is something anyone else thinks of to make our lives easier. Big to Dom and Skunkcap - I bow to your knowledge
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[Dom]

If you've managed to get it all installed and running that will probably be the trickiest part, and fortunately from now you should start to reap the benefits.

I can't really suggest anything specific atm but if you do have any probs with getting it up and running I'll see if I can help. I do think it's a bit off to sell a product designed to remove some of the technical issues of getting an eCommerce site off the ground and then charge extra to help with more technical probs caused by the actual software.
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[biker-dj]

Hi again Dom, what I will do if it is ok with you, is pm perhaps just the first couple of pages of the crappy download manual and perhaps you could cast your eye over it and advise us, The first thing CCP instruct you to do, is to move the cgi file to the cgi-bin on the local server - you get the server pathway from the host (which we've got) and change the path. We might be able to suss the scripting out, as they give an example, but what to do with it is anyone's guess! eg do we copy and paste it into the address bar, or what?! We have got the FastHosts Business-Plus package with FPE's running on Linux, so there shouldn't be any problem with the inventory managment/database side - the majority of CCP seems to be in perl and javascript. Let me know if there's any more info you need if you think you have got time to help us.
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[Dom]

PM me the info over and I'll have a look at it. You mention the path, is that the path to perl by any chance (something like #!/usr/bin/perl)? If so it will need to go at the top of the .cgi files. Basically if you think of the cgi as the commands, perl is thing that actually runs them, so if the script doesn't know where perl is, it won't get far. Anyway send that lot over and let me know the bits you've done so far. I can't really look at it before tomorrow evening but I'll get back to you then.
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[biker-dj]

Hi Dom I clicked the email link and sent you part of the manual and my problems. Thanks again for your replies
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[biker-dj]

Hi all, we have had another look at the manual would be right in thinking that we can use our third party client (SmartFTP) to move directories on our web server, so bloody confusing but each day it becomes a little clearer.
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[biker-dj]

Hi again Dom my OH has just emailed you. And yes any help greatly appreciated.
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