To clone a product in the ECT store:

1. Login to your store’s control panel

2. Click on Product Admin

3. Locate the product you’d like to clone.

4. Hold down the “CTRL” key (or “alt option” if you’re on a Mac) while clicking Modify.

5. Notice at the top of the page it says “You are cloning the product “Your Product Name Here”.

Use this feature to quickly make new products that are very similar to each other to save yourself time.

One benefit of using this mod is that it has the ability to send out emails recursively. This means that if your hosting company has a limit specifying how many emails you can send out per hour, you can set the mod to make sure it doesn’t exceed that limit. For example, if your hosting company has a 100 email per hour limit, you can set this mod to send out 9 emails every 6 minutes (90 per hour). Pretty cool feature.

You should make sure you know the rules of your hosting company so that they don’t blacklist you as a spammer. One common rule is that people can opt in or out of your newsletter, meaning you can’t just send it to whoever you want. Some hosting companies have very complicated rules, and this is one reason why many clients, even those with ECT online stores, will use a monthy fee-based service. Another reason they use these other services, is that often they have really fancy tools that make it easy to format pretty newsletters. This mod is a very basic, kinda do-it-yourself newsletter program. It does not have any bells and whistles, but it is inexpensive.

Once you’ve purchased and installed this mod, you can follow these steps to send out a newsletter to the people who have added themselves to your email list inside your ECT online store.

From the store’s admin page, click on “Home”. At the bottom of that page, you should see a line for “Mailshot” with a link that says “Admin Page”. Click on the link.

You should now be looking at the newsletter admin screen. It’s recommended that you first send your newsletter to yourself before sending it out to everyone. Follow these steps:

1. Put in an appropriate number (“6″ is recommended) in the delay box. This is a very, very, very important step. Your batch size and delay must not exceed the limit set by your hosting company.

2. Put your own email in the To: field
3. Enter Subject:
4. Click “Design View”
5. Create your message.
In the message, you must put in how to unsubscribe.
Here’s the code

http://yourdomain.com/store/cart.php?unsubscribe=##Email##

Replace yourdomain.com with YOUR domain and make sure the path to your online store is correct.

6. How to add an image from a product in your store (optional):
First you will need to know the exact URL of the image. Navigate to the product and then put your mouse over the image you want. Right click and select “View Image” and you should see just the image all alone. The image URL is now displayed in your browser. It might take the form of “https://yourdomain.com/store/prodimages/imagename.jpg”

Copy the URL. Now back in the Newsletter area, put your cursor where you want the image to go, and click on the little “Insert Image” icon that looks like a tree. Paste in the image URL.

7. Click Send email. Don’t worry, this only sends it to you, if you clicked “Test” earlier.

8. You should receive the email. Check it over for errors.

9. Now you’re ready to send out the real thing! Uncheck the “test” box.

10. Put your cursor in the To: field and click the “Insert in the To Field” little icon. It looks like a little envelope with a lightening bolt. It will put this: ##Email## in the To Field.

11. Click “Send”. Do NOT refresh your window or close it – it needs to stay just as it is until it’s finished. It may take several hours.  One of my favorite clients uses this in her store and it takes about 20 hours to send it to her huge database.

If for some reason it stops in the middle, do whatever you can to avoid refreshing the page and starting over, as it will send it to your readers all over again. If you accidentally log out, for example, open another window in your browser and log into your store.  Then in the Mailshot window, click “Pause” and then “Resume” and it will continue where it left off.

A detailed description of the Advanced Newsletter/Mailshot admin area is here:
http://www.ectmodifications.com/installs/mailshot/Mail_Interface2.html

This article is written for clients who may have just had their ECT (Ecommerce Templates) online store upgraded to a new version. One of the wonderful things about using ECT for your online store, is that they are very dedicated to continually improving their product, and come out with updates (newer versions) on a very regular basis. How do you, as an ECT store owner get the most out of your upgrade? Read on.

The ECT online store is a very complex application. There are hundreds of files, some with thousands of lines of code in them. Each time a new version is released, a subset of these files are updated.  Click here to learn how to have ECT notify you of new releases. Once your web developer has updated your store to the latest version, it will be important for you to do a review of what’s changed so that you can make the most out of your improved online store. It’s also a good idea to take this opportunity to review what ECT can offer, because there might be a wonderful feature you store already had that you weren’t aware of.

The first thing I’d recommend, is that you know what version your old store was, and what the version of the new store is. This will help you figure out what’s changed. Your web developer should give you this information. If you log into your store’s admin area, the version number appears at the top of the screen.

Once you know the old and new version numbers, it’s time to scour the ECT website to see what might have changed. Keep in mind that some changes will be bug fixes, while other changes will be new features.

Here’s a list of links inside the ECT website that I recommend visiting to look for what might be different in your new version:

http://www.ecommercetemplates.com/support/forum.asp?FORUM_ID=21
Click on every release that’s beyond your old one up to and including up to the new one.

http://www.ecommercetemplates.com/phphelp/ecommplus/parameters.asp
This is a list of parameters that can be set. Often ECT will highlight the most recent ones.

http://www.ecommercetemplates.com/phphelp/ecommplus/about.asp
This is a features list, review them.

http://www.ecommercetemplates.com/help/admin-help.asp
Look on the right hand side under “Admin help” and click on each one.

The best way to get the most out of your ECT online store, is to really spend time looking around and reading about all of the features. Most clients won’t need to utilize all of them, but there are certainly always new features with each version upgrade, so take the time to learn and discover!

Here are step by step instructions for setting up PayPal Website Payments Pro with your ECT (ECommerce Templates) online store. “Pro” allows you to accept credit cards directly in your online store without sending your customers through PayPal – it communicates with PayPal in the background. Note, you MUST have PayPal Website Payments Pro fully activated – if you only have Website Payment Standard, this will not work!

Please follow these steps very carefully. You will need to have two browser windows open at the same time: one to view the admin area of your ECT store, and another to view your PayPal account.

1. Log into your admin area and select “Payment Providers”

2. Select to modify the PayPal Direct settings:

3. You’ll now see a window that looks like the image below.

Fill in how you want this payment method to appear to your customers via the field labeled “Show As”.

Put a checkmark next to “Enabled”.

4. Now, we need to get the rest of the information from your PayPal account. Leave the ECT admin window open and open a new window in your browser and log into your PayPal account.

5. After you’ve logged into your PayPal account, click on “Profile”.

6. Under the left-hand column titled “Account Information”, click on “Request API Credentials”.

7. Select Option 1 and click on 2. Set up PayPal API credentials and permissions.

8. On the right-hand side, click on “Request API Credentials”.

9. On the left-hand side, click on “Request API Signature”. (Do not select “Certificate”).

10. You will now see your API credentials. One at a time copy and paste the following into the corresponding fields in the ECT Admin area for PayPal Direct:

API Username (paste this into field labeled “API Account Name”)
API Password (paste this into field labeled “API Password”)
Signature (paste this into the field labeled “Path to certificate”)

11. In the ECT Admin window, set the API Method to “API Signature”.

12. In the ECT Admin window, set the Transaction Type to “Authorize Capture”.

13. In the ECT Admin window, leave Login Level as “No Restriction”.

14. In the ECT Admin window, click “Submit” and you are now ok to log out of your PayPal account.

15. You’re all set up. You should now do a test purchase to make sure everything’s working right.

Troubleshooting:

First make super duper sure your PayPal account is set up for Website Payments Pro – if it’s not this won’t work!

Next, make sure you follow these steps very, very carefully. This methodology works, I’ve used it on over a dozen online ECT stores – if something’s wrong, and you’re getting an error code, it’s either because your PayPal account is not set up correctly, or you’ve not completed these steps and copied and pasted the wrong information.

Here’s the video. It’s based on the ECT store version 5.5, so if you have a different version, some of the fields or choices might be different. As always, if you have questions, please contact me.

The ECT (ECommerceTemplates) online store has a nice administration area that allows store owners to manage every aspect of their stores. Here’s just one quick tutorial on how to view orders in your ECT online store.

Once you’ve logged into your admin area, click on “View Orders” on the left hand side, or the middle top area, both lead to the same page.

Follow the steps outlined below:
1. Select a “from” date (clicking on “DP” will display a calendar you can click on to select a date)
2. Select a “till” date
3. Optional: Enter search text. (Order ID, Name, etc. This has built in wildcard features, so you can enter “Suz” to find “Suzanne” or “Suzi”)
4. Optional: Select search Text Field – If you’ve selected to search for text, you’ll need to select which field the search text will apply to.
5. Click the “Search” button.
6. Optional: Order Details – click on the Order ID you’re interested in to view the order details.

(Note: This screenshot was taken from a store that has been modified, so not all the fields and columns shown here may be visible in your store, but the process for reviewing orders is the same).

Follow these steps to set up PayPal Website Payments Standard to work with ECommerceTemplates (ECT) Online Store:

(Hint, you may find it helpful to print out these instructions so you can easily refer to them while you’re setting this up)

1. Log into your admin area and select “Payment Providers”

2. Select to modify the PayPal settings:

3. You should now see this window:

You’ll need to do the following:

- Select “enabled”

- Enter the email address that you use for your PayPal account.

- And notice the PDT Identity Token is blank…we’ll need to get this from PayPal and paste it in here, so open a new window on your browser so you can log into your PayPal account.

4. Log into your PayPal account.

5. Under “My Account” click on “Profile”

6. Click on “Website Payment Preferences”

7. Set “Auto Return” to “on”

8. Paste in your return URL:

http://yourwebsite.com/store/vsadmin/ppconfirm.php

(note: many stores I install in a “store” subdirectory…if your directory is different or your cart files are right in your main directory, adjust this URL as needed to match your particular path.)

9. Set “Payment Data Transfer” to “on”

10. Scroll to the bottom and hit “save”

11. Now, we need to retrieve the PDT Token from PayPal and paste it into that blank field in your store’s admin area. Go back to the PayPal “Website Payment Preferences” page, and you should see your new token just underneath the Payment Data Transfer Section. Copy this token (it will be a long string of letters and numbers) and paste it into the appropriate field in your store’s admin area.

12. Hit “submit” in your store’s PayPal settings window to save it.

13. Go back to PayPal “Website Payment Preferences”

14. Copy the URL you used for the return page (we’re going to need to paste it soon)

15. Go back to your “Profile” in PayPal.

16. Select “Instant Payment Notification” in PayPal.

17. Turn “Instant Payment Notification” to “on” and paste in the URL you copied from the previous step.

18. Save the Instant Payment Notification settings in PayPal.

19. Log out of your PayPal account.

20. Run a test order in your store to verify it’s working. You’ll need to use a credit cart that PayPal doesn’t “know” about (because PayPal doesn’t let you move money from yourself, to yourself).