Converting Mercanted SoftCart to ShopSite 7.1 Pro

[Average Joe]

I need to convert a site from Mercantec SoftCart (it's a highly
customized site) to ShopSite 7.1 Pro. I don't suppose there's a
step-by-step how-to for doing this?

I've converted and uploaded the product database. Keeping the
existing look is imperative. For now, I can do with either a
hard-coded site, with the ShopSite codes replacing the Softcart code
(and being careful not to let ShopSite rebuild the site), or using
ShopSite custom templates, whichever is simplest. I've gone through
the Help screens on customization, but it's still a jumble.

[jim]

There is a perl script that will extract some of the page and product
information from your Mercantec databases and put it into a tab
delimited format for uploading into ShopSite. This would give you a
good start on the conversion process but to keep things looking like
they are now would probably take a custom template. If you would like a
copy of the conversion script please email me directly.

Can you post a link to the current site so we can see what you need it
to look like?

Jim

Average Joe wrote:

I need to convert a site from Mercantec SoftCart (it's a highly
customized site) to ShopSite 7.1 Pro. I don't suppose there's a
step-by-step how-to for doing this?

I've converted and uploaded the product database. Keeping the
existing look is imperative. For now, I can do with either a
hard-coded site, with the ShopSite codes replacing the Softcart code
(and being careful not to let ShopSite rebuild the site), or using
ShopSite custom templates, whichever is simplest. I've gone through
the Help screens on customization, but it's still a jumble.

[Average Joe]

Thanks. I have the Perl script and have used it. Ultimately, I found
it easier to convert the Mercantec data to a table in word, change the
field names, resave as tab delimited and upload that. It's the whole
rest of the process that has me going in circles. Obviously, if I
took a week to "familiarize" myself with typical stores, as their
customization guide advises, I would be able to figure this out. I'm
hoping to become a ShopSite expert a little more gradually, however
. Setting up a stock template store isn't as easy as I'd hoped,
but I may have to do that, and then figure out what to copy and paste
from it or into it.

Current site is http://www.legweardirect.com

Reminds me of learning to use my first word processor 23 years ago.
Even just a month later, I couldn't imagine how such small jumps in
logical explanation could have been such chasms.

[jim]

It does take a little effort to get familiar with how ShopSite templates
work but once you understand the process it is very powerful.

Break your existing pages into html segments that are independent from
each other. Lets work off of the Tights page for example. What is
unique to this page and what is common to it and other pages?
It looks like the background colors, a header across the top and a
footer section across the bottom are the same as on other pages. In
between the header and the footer there is some text that is specific to
that page, "Whatever your fashion style, here are top-quality tights to
fit it perfectly." and some that appears on other category pages,
"Click on any of them for a closer look." and a group of products or
categories (can't tell for sure which you would call them) that are in 3
columns. That would be all of the basic elements of the page. Now we
just need to convert those sections into a ShopSite template.

We can start the template by selecting all of the html for the page and
putting it between these tags
[-- define page --]
put your html here
[-- end_define page--]

Now find the section of text that changes on the page i.e. "Whatever
your fashion style, here are top-quality tights to fit it perfectly."
and replace it with the field from the page that contains that text.
This would probably be the Text field 1 area so you would replace it
with the tag [-- page.text1 --]

Now assuming that the images and text that are in the 3 columns are
products we need to make a section to display the products in columns so
we would replace all of the products on the template with code like this:
<table width="100%" >
[--LOOP PRODUCTS 3 --]
<td valign=top align=center >
[--PRODUCT--]
</td>
[--END_LOOP PRODUCTS--]
</table>

The page template would now be pretty much complete but may need some
minor tweaks.

Now we need to define how the products look. On the Tights page the
products have some text (product name?), an image and a number (sku?)
with the image and sku being links to the products more information
page. So in a product template we need to define the html to display
the product in that layout. The product template also defines how the
moreinformation page and any subproduct are displayed. So in our
product template we need sections for each of these type of items.
for the product it would be something like
[-- define product --]
[-- product.name --]
<a href="[-- PRODUCT.MoreInfoURL --]">[-- PRODUCT.Graphic --]</a>
<a href="[-- PRODUCT.MoreInfoURL --]">[-- PRODUCT.SKU --]</a>
[-- end_define product --]

(Pretty simple product template isn't it.)

The moreinformation section of the product template would be more
complex since it needs to create the entire html page. In this regard
it is similar to the page template with all of the html for displaying
the background layout, header, footer etc. and instead of having the
[-- loop products --] section you just put the tags to display the
various elements of the product data. This section of the template is
enclosed in
[-- DEFINE MORE_INFO_PAGE --]
with your page source being placed here
[-- END_DEFINE MORE_INFO_PAGE --]

Since you are using quantity and ordering options these fields need to
be in a form. This information would replace the [-- loop products --]
section of the page template. You would also leave out the page field 1
tag and the text about clicking on an image for more informaton.

<form action="[-- SHOPPING_CART_URL BASE --]/order.cgi" method=post>
<input type=hidden name=storeid value=[-- STORE_ID --]>
<input type=hidden name=dbname value=products>
<input type=hidden name=function value=add>
<input type=hidden name=itemnum value=[-- PRODUCT.RecordNumber --]>
<table ><tr>
<td> [-- product.graphic --]<br>
Click Here For Enlarged Photo</td>
<td><b>[-- product.name --] - [-- product.sku --].
[-- product.productdescription --]</td>
</tr>
<tr><td colspan 2>
<table><tr><td align=center>Qty</td><td>Price</td>
<td [-- PRODUCT.OptionText --]</td>
<td><!-- just for spacing --></td>
</tr>
<tr><td></td><td>[-- product.price --]</td>
<td>[-- ORDER_OPTION_MENU LINE --]</td>
<td><input type=submit value="Add to Cart">
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</form>


This should give you most of the general layout that you are looking
for. You can do more formatting and checking for if certain field are
to be used or not through IF statements but for simplicity I have left
those out. Note: I did not check my typing really close but hopefully
there aren't any typing errors. There are sample templates in the help
if you would like to check out various things. Start here:
http://www.shopsite.com/help/8.0/en-US/ ... lates.html
There are links near the top of the page that go to tutorials.

Hope that helps. If you have specific questions post them to the list.

Jim

Average Joe wrote:

Thanks. I have the Perl script and have used it. Ultimately, I found
it easier to convert the Mercantec data to a table in word, change the
field names, resave as tab delimited and upload that. It's the whole
rest of the process that has me going in circles. Obviously, if I
took a week to "familiarize" myself with typical stores, as their
customization guide advises, I would be able to figure this out. I'm
hoping to become a ShopSite expert a little more gradually, however
. Setting up a stock template store isn't as easy as I'd hoped,
but I may have to do that, and then figure out what to copy and paste
from it or into it.

Current site is http://www.legweardirect.com

Reminds me of learning to use my first word processor 23 years ago.
Even just a month later, I couldn't imagine how such small jumps in
logical explanation could have been such chasms.

[Average Joe]

Thanks, I'll give it a spin.