Manage Content Pages

A built-in content management system

ProductCart allows you to create and manage your own Content Pages - such as “About Us” , “Customer Service”, etc. - directly from the Control Panel. In other words, ProductCart includes a basic content management system that allows you to create and manage any number of Web pages, without using an external HTML editor.

For example, one of the demo stores on the Early Impact Web site contains a page that provides potential customers with information on the demo store that they are using to test ProductCart.

Adding and editing Content Pages

To access this feature, select Settings > Manage Content Pages from the Control Panel navigation menu. Click on Add New Content Page to add a new page.

Built-in HTML editor

Use the built-in HTML editor to create the page or copy text or HTML code from another program. ProductCart uses a Web-based HTML editor published by InnovaStudio (http://www.innovastudio.com/editor.asp). To learn how to best take advantage of this powerful tool, see the tutorials listed on the following page: http://www.innovastudio.com/editor_tutorial.asp

Active and inactive pages

Check the Active option unless you want this page to remain inactive. Inactive pages cannot be accessed by your customers. If you are still working on a page (or do not want to show it in the storefront for any other reason), set it to be inactive.

Display options

Check the Include store header & footer option if you would like ProductCart to create a page that includes the store's graphical interface. If this is the case, and if you decide to copy HTML code that you have created in another HTML editor (e.g. MS FrontPage, Macromedia Dreamweaver, etc.), make sure to include only code that is in between the <body> and </body> tag.

For example, you can certainly copy and paste an HTML table that you have created in your favorite HTML editor, but you should not copy an entire HTML page.

Remember: if you wish to copy an entire HTML page into the Page Description field, then make sure NOT to select the Include store header & footer feature.

In other words:

If you are creating your pages elsewhere (e.g. using Adobe® Dreamweaver® or Microsoft® Expression® Web), and copying an entire HTML page into the Page Description field, do not select the Include store header & footer option.
If you are using the built-in HTML editor or are copying only a portion of an HTML page created with an external HTML editor, then you must select the Include store header & footer option.

The Page Title is the title that is used by ProductCart's header.asp file for the <title> tag for the page, assuming that you are using the dynamic meta tag generator mentioned in the Search Engine Optimization section. Therefore, the title will not be shown in the body on the page.

Click on Add Content Page to save your new content page to the ProductCart database. All of the content pages that you have created are listed on the Manage Content Pages page. At any time you can edit a page using ProductCart’s built-in HTML editor.

Showing Content Pages in the Storefront

To allow customers to find the content pages that you have created, link to them from other pages on your Web site, and/or from your store’s navigation. You can copy the location of the page to your clipboard by using the button situated on the right side of the page URL.

Technical Note: dynamically loading a list of content pages

The default version of header.asp contains some ASP code that dynamically loads content page titles and corresponding links from the store database. This allows you to create a list of links to these pages that is automatically updated every time you add a new page and remove/edit an existing page.

You could place the code below anywhere in your custom version of header.asp or footer.asp (or another ASP file set up to query the ProductCart database) to load such list. The SQL query is designed to filter out inactive Content Pages and order the active pages by name.

<% 
  '// START CONTENT PAGES
  '// Load a list of links to content pages
   query="SELECT pcCont_IDPage, pcCont_PageName FROM pcContents WHERE pcCont_InActive=0 ORDER BY pcCont_PageName ASC;"
   set rsCP=Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Recordset")
   set rsCP=conlayout.execute(query)
    do while not rsCP.eof
%>
     <a href="viewContent.asp?idpage=<%=rsCP("pcCont_IDPage")%>"><%=rsCP("pcCont_PageName")%></a>
<%
     rsCP.MoveNext
    loop
    set rsCP=nothing
  '// END CONTENT PAGES
%>

Trace: » Manage Content Pages