Setting up a ProductCart-powered store on desktop

You can host a ProductCart-powered store on your desktop or laptop for testing or development purposes.

You can run a ProductCart-powered store on a PC running Microsoft® Windows XP Professional. You cannot run ProductCart (or any other ASP application) on Windows XP Home Edition.

To set up ProductCart on a Windows XP Pro workstation, follow these steps (the steps are very similar if you are trying to set up ProductCart on a Windows 2000 Workstation):

1. Ensure that IIS has been installed
   Look for the folder Inetpub located in the root of your hard drive. If the folder is not there, you will need to install IIS (Internet Information Services) on your computer. IIS comes with Windows XP Professional. To do so, follow these instructions
   1. Select Start > Control Panel
   2. In the Control Panel window select Add/Remove Programs
   3. In the Add/Remove window select Add/Remove Windows Components
   4. In the Wizard window check Internet Information Services, and click OK. Windows may prompt you to insert the Windows XP Professional CD-Rom into your CD-Rom Drive.
   5. An Inetpub folder will be created on your hard drive, and a wwwroot folder will be created within it.
   6. Open the Inetpub folder, and find a folder named wwwroot
   7. Create a new folder, like “myStore”, under wwwroot.
   8. Copy and paste the productcart folder into the folder that you just created. Once you have set up folder permissions and a database connection as explained below, you will be able to access the ProductCart Activation Wizard by going to the following URL: http://localhost/myStore/productcart/setup/
2. Set folder permissions
   Folder permissions are not set through the IIS console, but rather at the folder level. In other words, you need to navigate to the productcart folder, then right click on it and select Properties. In order to be able to set folder permissions, make sure that the Security tab is shown when you access a folder's Properties window. If the Security tab is now shown, select Tools > Folder Options > View and uncheck Use Simple File Sharing. Then it will show.
   1. To assign “Read/Write” permissions to the productcart folder and all of its subfolders: navigate to the productcart folder from My Computer, right-click on it, select Properties and then click on the Security tab. You can now set “Read/Write” permissions by simply selecting the user in the top part of the screen, and checking the correct permission options in the lower part of the screen. Typically, you will use set permissions for the IUSR_MachineName user (where “MachineName” is the name of the server) on a production server, and for the “Everyone” user when developing locally on your workstation. To add a user, simply click on the Add button, enter the user name (e.g. “Everyone”) and click OK.

   2. To assign additional “Delete” permissions to the includes subdirectory of productcart, you will need to click on the Advanced button on the same window, select the user again, then click on Edit and select the Delete option in the Permissions area.

      More specific instructions on how to set folder permissions are beyond the scope of this document, and they differ depending on the operating system that you are using (e.g. Windows 2000 vs. Windows XP). Please refer to the Windows® online help for more information.

3. Set up a database connection
   The easiest way to do this is to create a System DSN that points to ProductCart's database. To create a System DSN, select Start > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Data Sources (ODBC), then click on the System DSN tab and create a new DSN. Simply browse to the folder that contains the MS Access database, select it and name the DSN. You will use this name during the ProductCart activation procedure.

The following versions of Microsoft® Windows® Vista® include support for Internet Information Services (IIS 7):

• Vista Home Premium
• Vista Ultimate
• Vista Business

Note that Internet Information Services (IIS) is not installed by default in Windows Vista. To enable it, follow these steps:

1. Click Start and then click Control Panel.
2. In Control Panel, click Programs and then click Turn on or off Windows Features.
3. In the Windows Features dialog box, click Internet Information Services and then click OK.

Windows Vista uses version 7 of IIS.

There are series of other steps that need to be taken (unfortunately). Here is a good article on this topic.

If you have SKYPE installed and after enabling IIS and setting folder permissions you are still unable to access http://localhost/ try the following :- In Skype go to Tools > Options > Advanced > Connection and untick “Use port 80 and 443 as alternatives fo incoming connections. Restart Skype and in IIS Manger restart the default website.

ProductCart users have reported problems trying to connect to a MS Access database in Windows Vista. Since using a MS Access database can be a handy, quick way to install ProductCart locally, this can represent a headache.

Users have reported that they were able to connect to a MS Access database after following the instructions listed in the following technical articles:

• http://support.microsoft.com/?id=926939
• http://forums.iis.net/p/1108980/1703486.aspx
• Also see this thread in the Early Impact forums

Internally here at Early Impact we found that running the following command in Vista eventually did the trick:

%windir%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd set config -section:applicationPools /[name='DefaultAppPool'].processModel.loadUserProfile:false

OR assuming your ASP page has anonymous authentication enabled:

icacls %WINDIR%\ServiceProfiles\NetworkService\AppData\Local\temp /grant IUSR:(CI)(RX,WD,AD)
icacls %WINDIR%\serviceprofiles\networkservice\AppData\Local\Temp /grant "CREATOR OWNER":(OI)(CI)(IO)(F)

If you use authentication you should use this command:

icacls %WINDIR%\ServiceProfiles\NetworkService\AppData\Local\temp /grant Users:(CI)(RX,WD,AD)
icacls %WINDIR%\serviceprofiles\networkservice\AppData\Local\Temp /grant "CREATOR OWNER":(OI)(CI)(IO)(F)

This section applies to a store that uses MS Access as the database. If you ever need to move an active ProductCart-powered store from your local workstation to a production server, you will not need to reactivate ProductCart on the production server. You will instead need to follow these steps:

1. FTP the files to the Web server
2. Set folder permissions on the Web server as described earlier
3. Download and open the file includes/storeconstants.asp and edit the database connection string and the store URL constants so that they reflect the fact that the store is now running on a new Web server.
4. Save and upload the file back to the Web server.

You should now be able to log into the Control Panel and start using the store on the new server. If you get an error message that has to do with the system not being able to access the database, please check the database connection string again in the file mentioned above.

You can use the testing area of the ProductCart Setup Wizard to check the validity of the database connection string (productcart/setup/step2.asp).

The steps outlined in the previous section apply to the scenario of a store that will use MS SQL in the production environment as well. However, please note the following:

• MS Access to MS SQL. If you plan to run ProductCart using a MS SQL database on the production Web server, but are going to run it locally on your workstation using a MS Access database, remember that porting a database from MS Access to MS SQL is not a simple task and typically requires the assistance of a Database Administrator (in our experience, a DBA should be able to assist you with the task with a few hours of work).
• MS SQL to MS SQL. If you are running the store locally using MS SQL (e.g. MS SQL Server Express Edition), then you should be able to move store database by performing a back-up and restore operation. This assumes that you are using the same version of MS SQL server on the production server.