Help

Setup

The setup section allows Administrators to edit user information and product field settings.

Admin Users

The Admin Users page can only be accessed by users with "Administrator" access. From this page, you may create more users by typing in a new username, setting the access, and typing a password, then clicking the "Add" button.

You may also edit user access and change passwords from this page. Be sure not to change your own administrative account access from "Administrator" to "Writer" or "None" or else you won't be able to access the administrative settings!

Admin Listings Settings

This page allows you to choose which fields to show and hide, and also allows you to change some selected field names, in particular:

  • Display Name (this is the display name of the user who added the listing)
  • Display Email
  • Name
  • Make
  • Model
  • Year
  • Stock Number
  • Custom Field 1
  • Custom Field 2
  • Custom Field 3
  • Custom Field 4

This feature makes this database template extremely flexible. Although limited to the particular data types defined by the database, you essentially have have nine custom fields with the ability to change the display name for these fields!

Unless otherwise specified, if you check/uncheck a field, it will show/hide it in both the frontend and backend. For example, if you uncheck "Name," the field will not be displayed in the catalog or in the "Add Listings" page.

Note: You will need to decide whether to show the "Name" or the "Make" field, or both. You must have at least one of these checked!

Changing the Used/New field display names

Changing the used/new field display names is a slightly different procedure. Open the "includes/variables.inc" file and change the display text for "Type1" and "Type2." For example, when you first open the file, you should see:

...
Type1 = "Used"
Type2 = "New"

If you would like to change Used/New to Rent/Buy, simply type:

Type1="Rent"
Type2 = "Buy"

Please note that this is case-sensitive. You will want to capitalize each word.

Search Settings

This page allows you to change which fields will be used in the product search. Please note that this page and the listings setting page are independent - changing the listings settings page will NOT change this page as well!

The right column shows you the way the search will look. You may also use it to run some test searches on your catalog.

View Listings

The View Listings Administrative Page allows you to view, search, and sort your listing records. From this page, you may click links to Edit records, Delete records, or Preview the record in an actual catalog page. (Clicking "Delete" will put up a confirmation note to make sure that you really want to delete the listing.)

To add a new listing, click the "Add New Listing" link in the menu area.

Tip: You may always click on the "View Listings" link or "Admin Listings" link to return to this page.

Tip: Click on the column headings (ID, Name, Price, Active) to order your listings by those fields.

Tip: Change the default number of listings shown by opening includes/variables.inc and changing the "AdminShowMe" variable.

Keyword Searching

Use AND, OR, and NOT to create a "search sentence."
For example, leather AND interior will return results that have both "leather" and "interior" within the listing name or description. Actually, leather interior will return the same -- all keywords listed without OR, and NOT are required by default. As another example, leather NOT interior will return all results that have "leather," but don't have "interior." Finally, leather OR interior will return all results that have either "leather" or "interior."

 AND, OR, and NOT are case sensitive - they MUST be uppercase.
You can use +, ~ and - as shorthand for AND, OR, and NOT.

Use quotation marks to search for phrases.
For example, "moon roof" will return one listing.

Use parentheses for complex search sentences.
For example, leather AND interior OR power will return all listings with "leather" and all results with "interior" and "power." In this case, the search runs first on "leather AND interior," then looks for "power." You can use parentheses to be more specific, such as leather AND (interior OR power). This will then look for "interior" or "power" that also have the word "leather."

Editing Listing Information

This page allows you to edit listing information. After changing the various fields, be sure to hit the "Submit" button at the bottom of the page for your changes to apply.

If you wish to cancel and not make any changes, simply use your browser's "Back" button, or click a menu link to perform a new task.

Adding Listing Information

This page allows you to add listing information. After entering the information, be sure to hit the "Submit" button for the listing information to be added.

Note: You will need to upload your listing images separately via FrontPage. Open your FrontPage web, and import your small and large listing images into your listing images folder. (The default folder is "images/catalogimages," but you are able to change this location. See below.)

Listing Active

Use this dropdown to specify whether or not your listing is "active." If a listing is marked as Active, it will show up in your catalog. If a listing is not active, it will not show up in the catalog. This is an easy way to remove listings from your catalog that you may add in at a later time.

Listing On Sale

Use this dropdown to specify whether or not your listing is "on sale." If a listing is marked "On Sale," it will display the sale price and send the sale price to the PayPal shopping cart. This is an easy way to keep the original price in your records while being able to display a sale price.

Used/New

Use this dropdown to specify whether or not your listing is "used" or "new."

Short Listing Description

This short description is what shows up in the "Featured Listings" areas on the home page and catalog pages. Keep this under 255 characters.

Long Listing Description

This long description is what shows up on the Listing Details page. The "Smart Edit" interface allows you to bold, italicize, change fonts and styles, make bulleted lists, create hyperlinks, and more! "Normal" view is similar to any text-editing software. We recommend that you minimize font changes so that the formatting is consistent with the rest of this template.

You may also switch to HTML view, if you are comfortable with HTML code, to make use of additional styles from your stylesheet.

The HTML code from this long listing description field is inserted directly into the Catalog page layout, so keep from adding too many tables, forms, or other code that may conflict with the Catalog page.

Tip: Besides a listing description, you may also want to add dimension or contact information if your "custom fields" are already used up. You may also want to add a line of "keywords" to help the listing search find the listing.

Listing Images

First, listing images should be imported into your FrontPage web site. The images should go into the listing images folder specified in "admin/variables.inc" -- in this case, the listing images folder is "images/catalogimages." (You can change this location specification by changing "admin/variables.inc".)

Then, the Listing Images field on the admin page will refer to the actual file name of the image -- for example, "car.jpg" or "car_1.jpg." You will not need any path information, as this is covered with the "admin/variables.inc" file.

The default width and height for listing images is 95x107 and 225x255. You can change the default dimensions within the "admin/variables.inc" file, but this will affect all your listing images. In other words, your listing images have to all be the same dimensions.

Entry Date

This date is when the listing was added to the database. You will not be able to change this without opening the database in Microsoft Access.

Administer Featured Listings List

This page allows you to select the five listings that you wish to display in the "Featured Listings" section of the home page (and Template 1). Simply select your five featured listings and click "Submit."

Forgot Your Password?

If you forget your password, your only option will be to open your Access database in Microsoft Access and look at the Users table.