Introduction

This guide may seem overwhelming at first, especially if this is your first time running an E-commerce shopping cart. Don't fear though. In order to get started, we recommend you first view the demo store and click the links, mess around, try the different features out.

After you finish with that, try logging into the administration and clicking the various links to see what they do. Don't try changing anything yet, especially the configuration section. After you have clicked on the various links and see what's available, you can go through this guide to understand better what the features do. You will find that our Rental E-commerce system has lots of features to help you run your store, market your website, and make a fun shopping experience for your customers.

We offer consulting and support services, as well as E-commerce packages if you find need additional help with your store.

Index

Quick Setup Guide

How Do I Configure My Store?

How Do I Backup My Store?
Adding Products to the Catalog
      General
      Pricing

      Description

      Pay Per Rental

Payment Modules

Shipping Modules
      Onetime Pay Per Rental Shipping

Customer Edit Page

     Setting Up A Rental Membership Account Manually

Rental Memberships Area

      Package

      Rental Availability

      Return Rentals By Barcode

      Send Rentals

      Rental Queue Rental History 
      Label maker

Pay Per Rental Area

      Calendar Blackout Dates
      Send Onetime Rentals

      Return One Time Rentals

      Return Rentals By Bar Code
      Label maker

Customizing Your Store

      Changing Web Site Text for Information Pages

      Populating the Product Inventory and Rental Inventory Via Spreadsheet

      Adjusting Site Text

      Adjusting Meta Tags

     Template Admin/Changing Site Look/Logo

      Infobox Admin (little boxes on left and right column of site)
      Location/Taxes

      Adjusting Email Text (order receipts, rental sent, site welcome email)
      Using With Other Languages

 

Extra Features

      Coupons/Gift Vouchers

     Recover Cart Sales

     Affiliates
      Fun Ways To Browse

     Admin Access Levels
      Polls

      Trouble Tickets

      Articles

      Referral Reports and Setup
      Site Search Reports (Know what your customers are searching for)

           

Rental Memberships Customer Side

Signing Up

Adding Rentals to Queue

Canceling Membership

Upgrading Membership

Rental Issues

 

Multi-Inventory Centers (Add-on)

     Config settings
     Inventory zone delivery areas
     Check if customer is in inventory zone page

     Setting product inventory by zone

Point of Sale (Add-on)

     How to use

Streaming/Downloads (Add-on)

     Config Settings

     Membership Rental Plans Streaming Options

     Adding Streams/Downloads To A Product

     Viewing A Customers Stream/Download History
     Converting DVDs to a streaming video format
     Getting permission to stream videos

Multi-Store (Add-on)
    Setting Up New Stores
    Setting categories and products to show by store

 

Quick Setup Guide:

 

1. Go to configure > my store – set your store name, owner, email address, etc. You can also set different options under admin > config > rentals. Set your shipping info under admin > config > shipping/packaging.

2. Go to catalog > categories and setup categories such as action/adventure, sci-fi, etc. – or whatever categories fit your store.

3. Go to catalog > products and add products. After adding your products you need to add stock on the inventory tab. Do not add inventory until after you first save your product.

4. You need to setup your payment now. Go to modules > payment – you can use USAEpay, PayPal, Credit Card Via Authorize.net, or Credit Card for rental memberships. Click on the payment module, click install > and put in your info. More info about payment modules is below. Also, notice the last selector on the edit payment module box that allows you to enable it for regular checkout, rental, or both 

5. Go to content management > manage pages to edit your default page contents such as your terms and conditions. 

6. Go to modules > shipping to chose your shipping modules and edit the shipping cost (more info)

 

You are done with the initial setup!

How Do I Configure My Store?
Go to admin > configuration > My Store and admin > configuration > rental > general. Here you will be able to configure many things having to do with your store, such as your store name, rental feature options, etc. In this guide we don't tell you what each option does because this is shown to you on the administration.

For example, if you go to admin > configuration > my store and click on "Ignore Words In Product Listing Alphabetical List" it will tell you on the right side box what this feature does: "Put here the words that you want to be ignored by the alphabetical product listings. Useful so that products with "the" in the title or words like that don't get alphabetized under "t"  Ignored Words: (seperate multiple words with a comma)"

Then you can click on "edit" and edit that configuration setting.

How Do I Backup My Store?
The first step is to backup all your files. You will need to download a free FTP program like Filezilla.
1. Open up your FTP program and put in your connection settings (provided to you by your web host).

Adding Products to the Catalog

Many of the fields for adding products to the catalog are self-explanatory. Here we discuss fields that may be confusing.

General

 

Products Type: check the checkbox for the type of product you want the product to be. 

Date Available: Set the date your product will be released if it is not yet available.

Products Model: SKU for item, not related to barcode

Products URL: put in url here if you want a weblink shown on the product info page for that product shown to your customer.

product weight: make sure to give the product a weight if you want to charge shipping for a product (even if you are using table rate shipping).

Pricing

Tax Class: set this to taxable goods if you want to charge sales tax.

Products Price (Net): put in your product price here for your product types

Product Price (Gross): don't edit this. It is auto-calculated based on if the item is taxed.

Special Authorization Charge: If you put something here, your product will only be authorized this amount to the credit card rather than the actual price of the item. Authorization means their credit card is only authorized, not actually charged. You must also have admin > modules > payment > (your credit card processor) set to "authorize only" for this to work

Pay Per Rental Pricing - this is the pricing for onetime pay per rentals based on time period rented.

Description

Product Name

Product Description

Choose Product Type: This connects to admin > catalog > product types. The goal of this feature is to allow you to enter in custom product fields since all stores are different. For example, you may have a product type movies and here you would enter actors, director, etc. and another product type books, so here you would enter author, ISBN, etc. After you setup your product types, the entry fields will appear after you select your product type from the drop down menu. 

Meta Tag Information - these 4 items are for search engines. You can leave them blank if you like and they will be auto-generated.

Inventory

1. First select the product type tab: new/used/pay per rental/rental members for which you want to add inventory

2. Next chose the inventory tracking method: quantity or barcode. For barcode tracking you must enter barcodes for each product sold or rented. Barcode is the only option available for rental membership inventory. If you have the multi-inventory module installed, you can check the checkbox "inventory centers" to make it track by inventory center. 

Box Set

you don't need to adjust anything here, if you generate a box set this info will be filled in for you

Packaged

This is where you setup pay per rentals products that can include multiple quantities of different products. For example, you might make the main product "movie rental package" within this product under the "packaged" area you setup the movies that are part of the package. 

To add products to a package, first start to type the name of the product you want to add and select it when it appears. then put the quantity, select type "pay per rental" and click add. The product you added now forms part of the rental package. 

Downloads/Streaming

Discussed here: downloads/streaming

Pay Per Rental

One Time Rental Shipping Methods: checkbox the shipping methods you want to use for this product.

Max Rental Days: The max number of days a customer can rent an item

Max rental methods: The max number of months a customer can rent the item.

Allow rental overbooking: checking this box means that when your customer choses to reserve a pay per rental item, they will be allowed to reserve the item on any date without checking to see if you really have that item in stock for those rental dates.

Attributes

You must first setup your product attributes in admin > catalog > product attributes. After you finish this setup, can can load them onto products from this tab.

Custom Fields

You must first setup your custom fields in admin > catalog > custom fields. After that, you can enter in the custom field data here.

Payment Modules

 

Credit Card: This module takes the credit card number from the customer and encrypts the information into your database. From the admin you can see the credit card number and enter it into the credit card processor you use.

Credit Card via Authorize.net: Credit card number is stored in the admin > customer area and customers are automatically billed on their bill date via the member_update.php cron.

Credit Card via USAePay: Credit card number is stored in the admin > customer area and customers are automatically billed on their bill date via the member_update.php cron.

Credit/Debit Card (via PayPal): PayPal transactions will be recorded as recurring billing transactions automatically by PayPal. Rental Free trial periods are not compatible with PayPal, though PayPal claims to support them, they have errors in their integration code causing it to not be able to be supported. Also, coupons and gift vouchers are not compatible with PayPal rental signups, so on checkout_payment.php the coupon/gift voucher entry box will not appear when signup up for rental memberships. We hope that PayPal will support them in the future, if they do we will upgrade your store. Make sure that paypal ipn is set in admin > modules > payment to "aggregate" mode for the coupons/gift vouchers to work with buying regular products.

Cash On Delivery: if enabled, this module only works for regular shopping cart purchases, not rental memberships
Check/Money Order: if enabled, this module only works for regular shopping cart purchases, not rental memberships

There are also some other payment modules, but we do not officially support them.

You will be able to see a customer's billing history by going to admin > customer > edit and looking at their account. You can also view details of each recurring billing in customers > orders, and customers > membership billing reports

Shipping Modules

In admin > modules > shipping you can install the shipping methods you want to use for your sales products. We do not cover shipping method configuration as part of the installation service, but if you need additional help we can configure shipping modules for you at an additional consulting fee.

Onetime Rental Pay Per Rental Shipping
This is where you set your shipping methods for your onetime pay per rentals. You can offer up to 5 different shipping methods for your onetime rentals, that is why there is a #1 - #5 before the Shipping Cost, text, and Days.

Tax Class set to taxable good if you want to tax your shipping charge
Shipping Zone not used
Sort Order not used
Shipping Cost cost you charge the customer for your shipping method #1
Shipping Text the name of the shipping method, such as "UPS Ground" or "Express Shipping"
Shipping Days This is used to calculate how many days before and after the actual reservation date to account for the shipping time.

Customer Edit Page


Setting A Customer’s Rental Membership Account Manually

 

You can go to customers > edit customer to make a regular customer a rental membership customer. You click “set customer to rental membership customer,” then chose their package, set their status to active, and put in the payment method you want to use for them.

 

Cancellation and Package Upgrades: If a member cancels their membership or upgrades their package you will be sent an email alert. Their account will automatically be deactivated at the end of their billing cycle.

If request a upgrade/downgrade on their next billing cycle the web site will automatically update their account and their new membership plan will take effect (note you must have the cron job or scheduled task setup to run everyday for the automatic upgrade/downgrade to take effect).

Label maker

The label maker is for printing shipping or product labels for rentals that you have already sent using send rentals. If you wish to print labels for products that you have not yet shipped, please use the edit product page > inventory tab, and checkbox the labels you want to print

1. Chose the from and to dates for the date you sent the rental item. Click "Generate List"
2. Checkbox the items that you want to generate a label for
3. Chose the type of label you want, and click "Generate Labels"

Rental Memberships Area

Package

Package name: what you want the package to be called

Membership Days: number of days in the membership – at the end of the membership the member will be charged the price for the membership again.

Membership Months: number of months in the membership, use months or days, try to avoid using a combination of both.

Free Trial: how many free trial days are in the membership

Free Trial Authorization Amount: Amount to authorize (but not charge) your customers credit card during the free trial period if using authorize.net or usaepay credit card payments. This is to ensure they are using a valid credit card.

Number of titles: how many products they can have checked out at a time

Tax Class: Set to taxable goods if you want to charge tax on rental memberships.

Rental Availability

The rental availability is calculated through a formula. It takes the priority number that customers have the rental product in their rental queue and subtracts it from the number of available rentals you have. The number is determined like so:

Rental Queue #
1 = 1
2 = .9
3 = .8
4 = .7
5 = .6
6 = .5
7 = .4
8 = .3
9 = .2
10+ = .1

Formula
Rental Queue # - number you have available now in rental inventory = rental ratio

So if 1 person had it as #1 in their queue and 1 person had it as #2, and you had 1 in rental inventory your rental ratio would be 1.9 - 1 = .9

A rental ratio of 0 or less is suggested to show as available now, from 0 to 3 is a short wait, and from 3 + is a long wait.

Return Rentals By Barcode

Put your cursor in each barcode box and scan it or type in the barcode number. Add comments about the rental inventory item if you like. Check the broken checkbox if the rental inventory item is broken or lost so that the rental inventory item will no longer be available for rent. Check the box "return rentals" for the rentals you want to return, then click the button at the bottom of the page to return them.

Send Rentals

Here you will be presented with a page showing all your rental membership customers. It will tell you how many titles they are allowed out, and how many titles you need to send them based on how many are currently out for rental. Click "view" on the rental queue column to view that particular customers rental queue. On the next page you will be shown their rental queue. Check the checkboxes next to the items you want to send to them. If the barcode column says "stockout" for that particular product, then you can not rent them that item because you have either no rental inventory, or all the rental inventory for that item is already checked out.

Rental Queue Rental History
Here you can view the rental history of your rental customers

Rental Issues

Here you can review and respond to rental issues that customers have reported.

 

Sending Rentals

 

To send rentals you go to rent > rental queue. You can view which members need rentals to be sent. Click the view rental queue link. Now click the checkbox next to the titles you want to send out. Then you select the barcode of the movie in inventory you are sending. Then you click rent. If you want to adjust the estimated arrival or return dates you click the arrow and set the date.

 

Returning Rentals

 

Go to Rent > return rentals. You can return rentals by scanning the barcodes of the rentals into the boxes and clicking return. You can also return rentals by clicking the box in the return rentals column, adding any comments if you want, then clicking the remove button at the bottom.

Onetime Pay Per Rental Area

Calendar Blackout Dates
Found under admin > modules > extensions > pay per rentals > edit. This is to select dates that are not selectable on the calendar for onetime rentals. These might be days where your store is closed on the weekends, holidays, or vacation periods. For the blackout dates input boxes, if you select "repeats" these days will be blacked out every year. If not checkboxed repeats, it will be for that year only.

Send Onetime Rentals
1. Here you will select the from and to date for when the customer is supposed to receive their rental item. Click "Get Reservations"
2. Click the checkbox next to the reservations you want to send, and then click the "Send Selected" button at the bottom of the page to send the rentals

Return One Time Rentals

1. Chose the start and end dates for when the reservation is supposed to be returned. You will then be presented with the rentals that should be returned during that time. It will also show how many days late the rental is. You can here enter in comments on each rental inventory item about the condition of the item if desired.

2. Checkbox the items that you want to return and click "Return Rentals" button at the bottom.

Return Rentals By Bar Code

Put your cursor in each barcode box and scan it or type in the barcode number. Add comments about the rental inventory item if you like. Check the broken checkbox if the rental inventory item is broken or lost so that the rental inventory item will no longer be available for rent. Check the box "return rentals" for the rentals you want to return, then click the button at the bottom of the page to return them.

Configuring Your Store

Populating the site Via Spreadsheet

You can also enter your products all at once via spreadsheet if you prefer to make data entry faster. 

Go to admin > import/export > products

1. download EP & Froogle Files heading, chose Download Complete tab-delimited .txt file to edit

2. download the file to your desktop. Open it with your spreadsheet program. For Excel, right click the file, and click "open with Excel"

3. fill in the fields on the spreadsheet. Make sure you put in a unique v_products_model (this is like a SKU) for each product, or uploading/updates will not work.

4. make sure the last row of each product has EOREOR

5. Now save the file, if it asks, make sure to keep it in tab delimited format

6. upload the file by using "upload EP file" browse to chose the file on your hard drive, then click insert into DB. If it times out while importing your file, instead chose the "split EP file" option.

Fields on EP file: fields in RED are REQUIRED
v_products_model: SKU of product, must be unique, is required field
v_products_image: product image
v_products_type: set the product type, possible values (should be comma separated if a product has more then one) new,stream,rental,used,download,member_stream,reservation
v_products_in_box: if the product is a box set product. put 0 if not, 1 if it is
v_products_featured: 1 means yes, 0 means no
v_products_price: price for new
v_products_price_used: price for used
v_products_price_stream: price for streaming version
v_products_price_download: price for download version
v_products_weight: a number like 2 for 2 pounds
v_date_avail: date product will be available, in this format: YYYY-MM-DD HH-MM-SS
v_date_added: date product was added
v_manufacturers_name: manufacturer name if there is one
v_products_categories: categories, if product is in multiple categories separate them by a semicolon. Example: Movies>Action;Movies>Sci-Fi
v_products_name_1: product name
v_products_name_2: there are extra product name fields for other languages if you use them
v_products_description_1: product description
v_products_description_2: there are more product description fields for other languages if you use them
v_products_url_1: custom product url, we recommend you DO NOT fill in this field, these are auto-generated
v_products_head_title_tag_1: custom header tag, we recommend you DO NOT fill in this field, these are auto-generated
v_products_head_desc_tag_1: custom description tag, we recommend you DO NOT fill in this field, these are auto-generated
v_products_head_keywords_tag_1: custom keywords tag, we recommend you DO NOT fill in this field, these are auto-generated
v_tax_class_title: either put --none-- for non-taxable, or you can set a tax class that you have set in admin > locations/taxes > tax classes by default it is Taxable Goods class for tax.
v_status: set to Active or InActive if you want a product to be inactive
v_inventory_quantity_new: inventory quantity for new
v_inventory_quantity_used: inventory quantity for used
v_inventory_quantity_reservation: inventory quantity for pay per rentals
v_pay_per_rental_price_daily:  pay per rental daily price
v_pay_per_rental_price_weekly: pay per rental weekly price
v_pay_per_rental_price_monthly: pay per rental monthly price
v_products_auth_method: Only used for products that use authorization charge. Valid entries: auth or rental If Special Authorization Charge Is Less Than The Rental Fee, Which Should Be Authorized?
v_pay_per_rental_auth_charge: for pay per rentals, if you want to only charge a authorization charge and not the full price
v_pay_per_rental_shipping: comma separated list of available shipping methods for onetime rental products, valid entries: method1 - method5 (see admin > modules > shipping > reservation shipping)
v_pay_per_rental_max_days: max rental days for onetime rental product
v_pay_per_rental_max_months: max rental months for onetime rental product
v_pay_per_rental_overbooking: Yes or No if you allow overbooking more than your inventory
v_attribute_1: Group Name>Option Name>Value Name ( T-shirt>Color>Red )
v_attribute_1 also: OptionName>Value Name if not using a group
v_attribute_1_image: image.jpg
v_attribute_1_views: View Name:View Image; (Front:1.jpg;Back:2.png) – this is not limited to a specific amount, you can have 1 view or 30
v_attribute_1_price: 5 or -5
v_attribute_1_sort: 1
v_attribute_2: Add a number to the end to add more attributes for each field listed above
v_custom_fields_group: Custom fields group name
v_custom_field1: value for custom field. If it is a click to search type field, separate multiple values by semicolons, example: actor 1;actor2;
v_store_id: for multi-store setups only. If you use multi-store, you can find your store ids under admin > config > multi-store > setup stores. This column of the spreadsheet is a comma seperated list of store ids that you want the product to show up under.
v_quantity_discount_1_from: For quantity discounts. Say you want if people buy from 1 - 5 quantity to get a price of $5. So quantity_from is 1
v_quantity_discount_1_to: following above example, this would be the max quantity for the discount, so 5
v_quantity_discount_1_price: price for that quantity level, so would be 5
EOREOR: leave this at the end of every line of the spreadsheet

Go to admin > import/export > product inventory

Same instructions as above, fields are:

v_products_model: SKU of the product that the rental inventory item is tied to. If there is an apostrophe in your model, make sure to put a backslash before it like \'
v_barcode: UNIQUE barcode for rental inventory item
v_inventory_store_center: name of inventory center, leave blank if none you don't use inventory centers

v_rental_type: can be reservation if a reservation (pay per rental), rental for rental membership inventory, new for purchase new, or used for used inventory
v_barcode_status: can be A = available R = reserved O = out  B = broken
v_quantity_available: only use if using quantity based tracking (not barcodes)
v_quantity_broken: only use if using quantity based tracking (not barcodes)
v_quantity_out: only use if using quantity based tracking (not barcodes)
v_quantity_purchased: only use if using quantity based tracking (not barcodes)
v_quantity_reserved: only use if using quantity based tracking (not barcodes)

v_use_center: either 0 = no (use this if not using inventory centers) 1 = yes or 2 = inventory tracking by store
v_comments: comments posted for that rental inventory item about condition, etc.
EOREOR: leave this at the end of every line of the spreadsheet

Adjusting Site Text

 

The text in your information pages can be easily edited in the admin, please see above "changing web site text." Not all text can be edited there though. A lot of the text for the pages is usually in includes/languages/(your language)/filename.php

For example, if the url bar of the browser says "yoursite.com/checkout_success.php" (the checkout success page) then the language file would be includes/languages/(your language)/checkout_success.php

 

Be careful about editing the text, if you need to use a apostrophe, make sure to backslash it like \’ or it will put in a premature end of field.

Adjusting Meta Tags

You can adjust the meta tags for your pages like your home page, specials page, category pages, and product pages. As part of the SEO features, your category and product pages will automatically get meta tags, but you can override them. You can adjust the index, specials, etc. pages meta tags in admin > header tags > text control. To add/remove pages from the header tags control system you can go to admin > header tags > page control and follow the instructions on the page. Admin > header tags > fill tags will auto-fill the meta tags for your products, manufacturers, and products.

Admin > catalog > edit product > description is where you can override the default meta tags.

Template Admin/Changing Site Look/Logo

  

You can also set the template you want to use in admin > config > my store > default template directory to the name of the template. In order to make adjustments to the template, we suggest copying all the files in templates/red to a new directory, like templates/mytemplate, then making your changes so that you always have a backup in case something goes wrong. Then in admin > config > my store you can change your default template directory to this new template. 

 

To adjust the look of your web site page, the main template file is in templates/templatename/main_page.tpl.php (templatename is the name of the currently selected template you are using, by default it is the red template. The code for the pages themselves is in templates/fallback/content. There is also template code in the rest of the files like templates/templatename/footer, header, page_nav, etc. 

In order to change the colors of the website, we suggest installing Firefox web developer toolbar from here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/60/ after that click the CSS > View Style Information, then you can click on any element on the webpage and know where the style definitions come from. Then you can edit that css file. Some of the styles come from templates/templatename/stylesheet.css and main_layout.css, but there are also many that come from ext/JQuery/themes/smoothness/ui.all.css

The logo can be changed in admin > my store > store logo

 

Changing Web Site Text

 

There is a built in text editor for your web site under admin > content management > manage pages. here you can edit the text appearing on the contact us page, about us, or your other pages. You can also insert new pages and have them appear in your Information area.

 

 

Infobox Admin

 

Infoboxes are the little boxes on the left and right column of your web site like “shopping cart” or “rental queue.” These can be turned on and off through admin > content management > manage side columns. When you are on this page, chose from the top right your template (by default the template you are using is called "red"). After that you can drag and drop to the side columns the infoboxes that you want to show. You can also click to drag infoboxes up and down in the list, or drag them to the trash can to remove them. If you click the "pencil" icon you can re-title the name of the infobox, or put in text for other languages if you run a multi-language site. 

 

Location/Taxes

 

Go to Admin > location/taxes click “zones” edit the zone and set it to your State or Area. Then click “details” and set it to your State or Area.

 

Now click Admin > location/taxes > tax rates and edit your tax rate.

 

For items to be taxable or rental packages to be taxable, you need to set them to the “taxable goods” tax class when you edit them.

Adjusting Email Text

 

Email templates can be adjusted under tools > email template manager. when you edit a template, you will see in red text the template tags you can insert into the email that will be filled in with the field shown.


Using With Other Languages

By default English is supported, but it can work with other languages with a little work. To use with other languages:

1. In admin > localization > languages insert your new language if it doesn't already exist. If your language does already exist, just click the "green light" button to enable it. After you have installed your language, it will take some work to translate the content of your website. You can do this by going to includes/languages/your_language/ and editing the files there to edit the text for your language. Careful not to insert ' characters, if you have to use an apostrophe, backslash it like \'

After you language is installed, when you edit a product, you will see little language flags for things like product name and description. You can enter a different product name and description for each language you have installed.

You will also need to copy /templates/email/english/ to /templates/email/italian/ or whatever the name of your language is and translate the email templates. This can also be translated from admin > tools > email template manager but you need to make sure to give 777 permissions to the email template files.

IF YOUR LANGUAGE IS NOT ALREADY INSTALLED

FIRST backup your Files/DB, we recommend you pay for support to add other languages

**option 1 - start with language files from the contributions area of Oscommerce. The language contribution must be in UTF-8 database format. Some languages such as Korean, Japanese do not have a UTF-8 language pack and may require extra billed time to install (about 1 - 2 hours)

2. install the files from your language pack: http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions/category,7 read the readme file that comes with it. IMPORTANT, DO NOT run any php script, or SQL query that comes with the language pack. These can corrupt your store config settings, and make your store not run. Only copy over the language files to the languages directory.

3. It will require some work to insert the extra language files for the rental module. These include files in includes/languages/english like rental_billing_history.php or other files beginning with rental_ there are also other files like wishlist, affiliate_ that don't come with the system by default, so therefor you will need to make the language files. You can start by copying over any missing language files from includes/languages/english to includes/languages/yourlanguage and then translate the files.

4. You will also need to edit includes/languages/your_language.php (replace your_language.php with your language name) for the extra defines that our system uses, for example BOX_HEADING_TITLE means you are missing the language define for that item.

5. make the new buttons for your site in includes/languages/(your language)/images/buttons

**option 2 - copy english files and translate

2. copy all the files from includes/languages/english to a new directory, like includes/languages/korean and copy includes/languages/english.php to includes/languages/korean.php

3. make the new buttons for your site in includes/languages/(your language)/images/buttons

 

Coupons/Gift Vouchers

 

You can setup your coupons under the Vouchers/Coupons box in the admin area. Click Insert, and it will give you different options for your coupon like valid products, valid categories, coupon amount (% or fixed amount) etc.

 

To add gift vouchers you need to add a new product to your product catalog. In the model field for the product, put GIFT, and you can set the price to any amount. Now people will be able to buy a gift certificate from the product you created. If you want to have to approve gift voucher purchases, go to Modules > order total > gift vouchers > edit – set queue purchases to false if you want people to get instant access to their gift vouchers. If you set it to true, you will need to approve gift vouchers when you get orders under Vouchers/Coupons > gift voucher queue.

Recover Cart Sales

 

You can access recover cart sales at tools > recover cart sales. Clicking on that page will show you a page of people with shopping carts that have not purchased them. Chose the date range and people you want to contact and then click send email at the bottom. These people will be sent an email reminding them about their shopping carts.

 

 

 

To check the results of your recover cart sales go to tools > recover cart sales results. Here you can track by date range how much $ in sales you have recovered.

 

 

Affiliates

 

People can signup to be your affiliates and you pay them a percent of sales when they buy something. You can set the options in admin > config > affiliates, most options are self-explanatory and can be left as default, these ones are crucial:

 

Pay per sale %: how much to pay per sale

Payment threshold: how much $ affiliate has to earn before you pay them

Billing Time: how old order has to be before you pay your affiliate (to cover returned items, etc.)

 

Now in admin > marketing > affiliates here is where you can view your affiliates and click throughs. You can create affiliate banners under admin > affiliates > banners. Under admin > affiliates > payment you can run a payment cycle to see how much you owe them. Affiliates won’t show up here until the billing time (see above) has past, and their order status is “delivered”

Fun Ways To Browse

The purpose of fun ways to browse is to give your customers interesting ways of viewing your products. For example, say you want to have a holiday section, or a academy award winners section, this allows you to do this. You would also use it to show products from $10 - $50 or something like that.

Inserting a Category: insert the categories you want, such as "Academy Award Winners"
Inserting Products: you can insert products from your catalog into each category
Inserting a URL Link: you can also insert URL links. To insert a URL link, click insert category, and put a URL in the URL input box.
Linking to advanced search results: you can also link to advanced search results. For example, go to your advanced search page, put price from $5 to $10, then click search. Now copy this url and paste it in the URL box when you insert a category.

Admin Access Levels

The purpose of admin access levels is so that you can have multiple admin accounts, each with access to different parts of your admin. Say one person is the master admin - they can access all files. Then you have a marketing person who can only access your reports area, polls, and articles.

To make a new administrator with certain permissions, click on "administrator" on the top left of the admin menu. Then click "member groups" and then "groups." Here you will see your admin groups. Add a new group, then click "new permission" then you will be shown a checklist of what areas of the admin you want that access group to have access to.

Save it, then click "member groups" again and click "new member" to add a new admin to that access level.

Polls

Polls are in the admin > marketing > polls. You can create new polls here. If you click a current poll and click edit, you can view the current poll results, comments, and you can also delete current comments. Under admin > marketing > polls > configuration you can set some different configuration options for polls.

Trouble Tickets

Customers can reports issues with products that are in their rental queue. You will get a report of this in your email. To respond, go to the admin > customers > customer edit page to respond. There is also a reply link in the admin email.

Articles

You can add articles to your site under admin > content management >  article manager. First create your article topics (categories) then add your articles to each topic. You can set various configuration options under articles manager > configuration.

Referral Reports and Setup

 

Referral setup is useful for telling where your customers found your web site. You first need to setup referral sources under marketing > reports > referral sources. Here you can setup the sources that will appear on the drop down box for “How did you hear about us” on the create account page. You might put in like “google” or “friend” or “magazine ad” here. To view the results of the referral sources, you go to Reports > referral sources. If you click twice on “other” (assuming someone on your site has signed up and put other) you can view what people typed in that field.

Site Search Reports (Know what your customers are searching for)

You will find this under: tools > keyword manager

Before you can test anything you will need to do a few searches on your site to have some data entered into the database. Once you have done this you can then go to your admin section and choose the 'Tools' section, follow the link to 'Keyword Manager'.

The first thing to do is click the button 'Update from Raw data'. Once you have done this the features should be self-explanatory

Contribution provides:

1) Automatic logging of all search terms used on your site.

2) Processing of logged search terms into total counts, with sorting by totals or by name.

3) Admin page provides a Google type facility whereby you can add words or phrases and their suggested replacements to a database table, once you've added data to this table if for example a customer searches for 'wheal' a line is added to the top of the search results page saying: 'you could also try: wheel'. This line is a clickable link that automatically re-searches on the replacement words. For this feature to work you must have made an entry via the admin page for the particular word/phrase used as well as the suggested replacement, obviously this data will take a little time to build up, this is the reason for the keyword logging, so as you can periodically check to see what needs adding to the replacements table.

4) Words/phrases and their suggested replacements can be added/edited/deleted at any time via the admin section.

5) Improved layout of Search results page if no results are found, providing the user with some tips on better searching.

6) Complete admin section to view and process logged search results.

7) When searching, any keywords entered as a plural will automatically have the final 's' stripped from the keyword, this should help if you have your products named/described in the singular form. A benefit of this is that even if there *should* be an 's' on the end of the keyword the correct results will be brought up due to the in-built partial matching of the osC search facility.

 

Rental Memberships Customer Side

 

Signing Up

 

Signing up for customers is easy. They simply go to add a movie to their queue, and then it will ask them to sign in or create an account. When creating an account they can set the package that they want to purchase. The next page gives them payment options and then they confirm their order.

 

Adding Rentals to Queue and Managing Queue

 

The movie rental queue is managed by going to each product page and clicking the add to queue button. Rentals can be adjusted by priority order, and removed from the queue by clicking the checkbox and clicking update.

 

Canceling Membership

 

Members can cancel their memberships by going to my account > cancel membership. Admin will be notified when a user cancels their membership. The customer's account will be automatically deactivated on their next billing cycle. For paypal, you may have to manually set their membership to inactive.

 

Upgrading Membership

 

Members can upgrade their memberships by going to my account > upgrade membership. Admin will be notified when a member wants to upgrade their account. The customer account will be auto-upgraded or downgraded on their next billing cycle.

 

Viewing Their Billing Info

 

Members can view their billing info by going to my account > billing info. It will show them the package they are signed up for, the billing date, and price.

 

Changing Their Rental Shipping Address

 

This is available from the my account page > Change Rental Shipping Address link

Changing Their Credit Card and Billing Address

If you take credit card payments, your rental customers can change their credit card and billing address for their rental account by going to my account > update rental account credit card and billing address

Rental Issues

Customers can submit a rental issue by going to their rental queue, and clicking "report issue" on their sent items in the rental queue. The admin will be emailed about the issue, and can respond to it by clicking the link in the email, or going to the admin > customer > customer edit page.

Rental items pre-registration: whether to show the page to the customer that makes the register their address on the customer side to see if they are in a inventory center zone before they rent something

Require pre-registration to browse: similar to above, except customer must register their address before using the customer side website. This is useful in case customers browse your site, want to order, then find out they aren't in a delivery/inventory zone. 

Allow Manual Zone Selection: allow a customer to manually chose what inventory zone they are in. Customer side image below showing what this refers to:


Rentals require customer to be in zone: controls whether stock is checked on pay per rentals page where customer does their reservation for one location only or for all inventory centers

Allow checkout if not in zone: if customer ship address is not in a rental inventory zone, then it won't allow them to checkout

Google maps API key: you need to put your API key here, can be gotten from here: http://code.google.com/apis/maps/signup.html

Inventory zone delivery areas
Go to admin > config > inventory centers > manage centers to add and delete your rental centers. When you click insert you will be presented with a map. Click on this map the polygonal points that you want to be included in the inventory center delivery area.



Check if customer is in inventory zone page
On the customer side, they will be presented with this page which checks if they are in a valid delivery location:



You may adjust the error messages in admin > content management > manage pages if you don't like the defaults.

Setting product inventory by zone

on the edit product page > inventory tab you will be presented with input boxes for each inventory center, enter in your barcode or quantity to correspond with the inventory center you want to enter inventory for.

 

Converting DVDs to a streaming video format

You will need to convert your dvd files to a streaming video format. The streaming video player can play FLV, MP4, and H.264 files. To do so, you will need a software program to rip the dvd, then convert it. Please checkout the following resources:

10 Free video rippers, encoders, and converters
Blaze Media Pro software
DVD ripping tools

Getting permission to stream videos

To stream videos, you need to get permission and rights from the video producers. This would be one of the major studios if you want to stream a Hollywood release, it is easier to get permission for independent movies. 



Multi-Store (Add-on)
Setting Up New Stores

Go to admin > config > multi stores > setup stores > new store button

First you will put in the store info. The store domain is what you want the store domain to be. The store SSL domain is if you have a SSL certificate installed and want the checkout to use a SSL domain. You do not need to put http or https in front of your domain names, just something like www.domain.com is fine.

The store owner and email address are used in the store email receipts that are sent to customers. The Store Name is used in the view orders view so you can identify what store the order came from. The store template is the template you want to use for the design of the store. Your templates are stored in the templates directory of your web site files. If you want to create new templates/designs, you can copy all the files and folders in the "red" template, change the name, and re-upload it to your templates directory.

The categories tab of the store setup is made so you can quickly checkmark the categories that you want enabled for the store.


Setting products/categories to show by store

When you edit a product, you will see a "stores" tab on the edit menu. Click this tab, then checkmark the stores you want the product enabled for. The same method works for when you edit categories.