Contributing to the ProductCart Encyclopedia

We are counting on your help to make this WIKI-based system a complete encyclopedia on ProductCart. We want to have not only documentation that is absolutely outstanding, but also technical articles, "how to's" of all kinds, widgets, code snippets, third-party add-on's, you name it!

Of course, we will be the first ones working hard on this project every day.

However, whenever you find that a topic should be added, expanded, or edited, go ahead and contribute. We use DokuWiki for this Web site. Here is a complete reference to the formatting syntax to use. Below are some general recommendations and basic syntax instructions.

Register an account to contribute to the project. We ask you to register so that we know who you are (so if we have a question about something that you have contributed, we can contact you about it). In addition, registering gives you the ability to create a User Page on this Web site, which can give you some great visibility as a ProductCart expert. Here is an example >>

You can contribute in two ways:

1. Editing existing content
   For example, you could expand an article that already exists to better explain a ProductCart feature. Or fix inaccurate information about the integration with a payment gateway. For full details on how to edit content, see editing existing pages.
2. Adding new content
   Here things get a bit trickier. To add a new page, you can just search for a topic and click on “Create this page” when you don't find it. Or you can edit an existing page, create a link to something that does not exist, click on the link, and create the new page (see adding a page for more) . However… we need pages to follow a certain structure so that they can be easily locate when people navigate this ProductCart Encyclopedia (versus just performing a search). Read the section below about giving a structure to your new pages.

There are two kinds of things to do on the ProductCart Encyclopedia:

1. Contribute Content
   E.g. improving our documentation, documenting new features, offering tips and tricks, etc.
2. Post comments or opinions
   To post comments or opinions on a certain topic, click on the “Discussion” tab at the top of the page. This way we keep separate documents and conversations on those documents. For example, the “discussion” area is where you would post problems using a certain code snippet provided by another customer.

When you create a new page or edit existing content, use the Toolbar to apply simple formatting to your content. For a complete overview of the syntax that you can use in DokuWiki, syntax. Don't let that page scare you. You will pick up the simple syntax used by DokuWiki very quickly after writing a page or two, and then you'll feel like you've mastered a new foreign language and brag about it at the dinner table.

For now, a couple of quick tricks that you'll use often.

When you add a link, the name of the page that you link to (whether it already exists or not) does not need to be the same as the text used in the link. Separate the two with a pipe to accomplish this.

[[my_new_page|This is the text of the link]]

We call “sections” what the DokuWiki documentation call “namespaces”. This encyclopedia is organized in a number of sections. For example, there is a section called “Widgets, snippets, add-on's, and more”.

• Identifier
  The identifier for this section is the name used by the WIKI to identify it. It's what was initially used to name the page. For example the identifier for “Widgets, snippets, add-on's, and more” is “widget”.
• Name
  The name is automatically picked up from the first headline (H1) used on the page. In this case, it's “Widgets, snippets, add-on's, and more” and it may change if that title is ever changed. The identifier cannot change. The name can.

When you create a new page:

• Same section. If it's a simple page that should be added to an existing section, create a simple link to it. For example:

[[new_page|My New Page Name]]

• Different section. If it's a page that should go into another section, and the section already exists, make sure that your link is formatted accordingly. You need to use colons (:) and the name of each section. For example, if you wanted to add a new page to the section called “Third-Party Add-on's”, you would first navigate to another page in that section to see how the URL looks like. You would notice, for example, that the URL for the page that talks about the “Matrix” add-on looks like this "http://www.eidocs.com/doku.php/widgets/thirdparty/matrix". This tells you that the page is in the section “thirdparty” which belongs to the section called “widget”. To create a new page in that section, you would use the following link code (NOTE the use of colons):

[[:widgets:thirdparty:new_page|My New Page Name]]

• New section. If it's a page that should go into a section that does not yet exist, follow the same format, but add to the link location the name of the section that does exist, and then your new page. For example, if I wanted to create a new section called “JavaScript Tricks” in the section “Widgets”, I would write the link as follows (the name “javascriptTricks” could be anything, but do not use spaces or special characters):

[[:widgets:javascriptTricks:new_page|My New Page Name]]

If you are undecided on where a page should go, if you'd rather have Early Impact create the page for you before you contribute to it, don't hesitate to contact us.

It's useful to highlight content on pages that you are editing by using the following syntax (thanks to the ”notes” plug-in)

• <note>This is a general note</note>
• <note important>This is an important note</note>
• <note tip>This is great for tips and tricks</note>
• <note warning>Great for "warning" messages</note>

This will be useful for the developers among you! When you want to insert ASP code on the page (e.g. a code snippet for people to copy and use in their stores), use the <code asp> and </code> syntax. DokuWiki does a great job at displaying nicely formatted code (and none of the code is executed, of course). For example, here is the ASP code used in ProductCart to show content only to logged in customers.

<% if session("idCustomer")="0" or session("idCustomer")="" then %>
     This stuff is shown to everyone
<% else %>
     This is shown only to store visitors that have logged in
<% end if %>

We monitor all contributions to the Wiki, but if you notice incorrect or inappropriate content, notify Early Impact immediately