Administration ....
Administration of the application, such as creating product items and testing the IPN system, is all performed via a set of password protected web pages.
The following sections describe the main features of each page.
Site details page
This page is used to set up all the global settings for the application.
Your PayPal Email Address : This address must match the PayPal address that you use to login to PayPal. It is your registered PayPal address. It must be the PRIMARY PayPal email address, that is, if you have multiple email address registered on PayPal, you must use the one defined as primary.
Full URL of installation folder : Enter in the complete
url of the folder you installed the script in. Normally this will be a folder
called 'ipnmonitor' at the root of the web site, so the url will be http://www.yourservername.com/ipnmonitor/
Remember that Unix or Linux operating systems are case sensitive and you must enter the full URL.
The default location where your digital files will be placed : Enter in the folder location of your digital files. This represents the default folder where your downloadable files are located on your web server. Whenever you create a new file item, this default location will be copied into the text box.
The folder location will be of form : /home/mysite/public_html/files/ on a linux system
Do not try to use a http: url web address as that will not work.
Notify URL : This is displayed for information only, and is the url which PayPal IPN uses to post its data to.
Site title : A suitable site title which will be displayed in administration pages.
Choose template : A drop down list of the available templates installed on this system.
Currency : Choose the currency for your products. All products will have the same currency.
Email subject : When an item is purchased, this line is the subject of the email.
Email text for digital products : When a digital item is purchased, this line is the body text of the email.
The email has to send the login details to the purchaser with their username and password. To include these items in the email you should include something like the following :
To download your file(s), enter the following into your browser address
bar : <login_url>
Login with : Username : <payer_email> Password : <password>
The variables <login_url>, <payer_email> and <password> defined by < and > characters will be replaced with the relevant download url, username and password when the email is sent out and should be left as they are.
Email text for physical products : When an item is purchased, this line is the body text of the email.
Your site admin email : This is an address which is used
as the 'from' address when an email is sent. You should enter a valid email
address. If you leave it blank, then the 'from' address of all emails sent out will
be the same as your PayPal Email Address.
The admin email address MUST have the same domain name as the domain that your site is
hosted on otherwise the customer may not receive their email.
Copy Email : A tick box which is used to identify if you wish the emails to be copied to yourself. This is useful for testing so that when an item is purchased you can see that everything is OK. The emails will also include the login password which may be useful to have if a user is having problems.
Cancel URL : The full url address of a web page which the user will see if they cancel their attempt to purchase the item. If this is blank, then a standard page on the PayPal site will be displayed. It is an optional entry, but gives a better impression to a customer and would say something like 'You have cancelled your purchase'.
Note : the web page should be of .php and not .htm or .html
Return URL : The full url address of a web page which the user will see after they have completed their purchase. If this is blank, then a standard page on the PayPal site will be displayed. It is an optional entry, but gives a better impression to a customer and might say something like 'Thank your for your purchase, you will receive an email in a few minutes. If you do not, then contact us at ...'
Note : the web page should be of .php and not .htm or .html
Notify URL Sandbox : This is displayed for information only, and is the url of the script which the sandbox testing server will post to. Sandbox testing is described in the associated page testing.
Sandbox seller email address (optional) : The PayPal developer system has a Sandbox testing facility. Sandbox testing is described in the associated page testing. By entering an email address that you have created in the Sandbox, you can test purchases via the Sandbox rather than via the live PayPal system.
Shipping (postage) page
Physical goods can have shipping added to them as defined in this page.
First tick the box to allow shipping calculations for physical goods. Then choose either flat calculation or percentage calculation. Enter in the to - from values with the last from value being 'and up'. The shipping amount is calculated on the total value of physical goods purchased.
Graphic buttons
Choose a graphic button : Select which graphic button you wish to be displayed for all the items. Or you may enter the full url of another graphic image.
Product item page
PayPal Product item number : Enter in a suitable item code such as 'chapter01'
PayPal Product item name : A short description of the item.
PayPal Payment Gross : Value to two decimal places
For digital products, entering 0.00 will make it a free item. The add to cart button will be replaced with the free button image when the item is displayed in the cart lists. Clicking on the free button will allow anyone to immediately download the files that have been attached to the product.
This is only applicable to digital goods because physical goods have nothing to download. For physical goods, entering 0.00 does not display the free button image.
Free products for digital items will NOT work if you create the buttons by hand, but it should not be an issue because you would simply place a normal href link for a free item if you are creating buttons by hand.
Item title : Provides a title for the product.
Item Description (Brief) : Enter in a description of the item. The detail that you enter here depends on the layout that you are using. You may want to use this entry as just a line of description and then have a more detailed description in the following box.
Item Description (Detailed) : Enter in a detailed description of the item. If you enter text into this box, then a 'more...' link will be displayed. If the box is empty, the 'more....' link will not be displayed.
Note : Within the two editor boxes of item description, you can enter any html code that you want. If you click on the 'Source' button in the editor, this will show the display as html where you enter the raw html code.
mp3 clip Full url : An optional mp3 clip which will be displayed on templates that support this feature. The mp3 clip can be located anywhere on the server in a publicly accessible folder. Enter the full http url of the file. An mp3 clip or preview is intended to be a short section (say 20 seconds) of the full mp3 file and is not protected by the application because it has to be publicly accessible.
Keywords : These extra keywords will be used as part of the search. They are used to add in extra words which may not already be in the main text for the item. Enter each word separated by a space.
Image : The full url of a graphic image which will be displayed in the cart displays. Use a graphic no bigger than 150 x 150 pixels.
Physical Item : Tick to identify this product as a physical item. The processing of physical items is slightly different to digital goods as obviously, there is no need for the user to login to the download area and there are no files to download.
Make public : Checking this box will make the item display in the store front pages. This facility is useful if you want to create test items but do not want them to appear to the public.
Sort order : When display the products through the dynamic shopping cart system, this allows the products to be displayed in different sort order.
Web Page title : When display the products through the template driven dynamic shopping cart system, this allows a web page title to be defined, and is displayed for the full details of the product.
Web Page Meta description : When display the products through the template driven dynamic shopping cart system, this allows a meta description to be defined, and is displayed for the full details of the product.
List of items page
Edit category / subcategory link : This link takes you to a page where you can select category and subcategory for this product. This is an optional entry and you use it depending on the template that you are using. Some templates just display items per category, others display items by category and subcategory.
Download links page
Edit downloads link : This link takes you to the 'edit downloads' page where you can enter the file details for this product. You enter the file name, the number of download retries allowed and the number of days to expire. You may have as many files as you wish for a product item.
The file name will be similar to : /home/user/files/test.doc when on a Unix system or something like c:\data\www\files\test.doc for a Windows ssytem.
Do not try to use a http: url web address as that will not work.
When you create your files, it is recommended that you use lower case letters for the filename and you do not use spaces within the filenames.
- lower case letters only (Unix type servers are case sensitive so using a mixture of lower / upper case letters can cause confusion)
- no spaces in filenames (Some browsers may not correctly recognize the file types if spaces are used)
- Only use letters and numbers for file names not quote marks etc
- Make sure that the filename has the correct extension for the file type, for example .mp3 or .pdf.
Transactions page
Lists all the completed transactions, those from PayPal and from the test facilities.
You may delete transactions from this list and that will remove the values from the sales totals page and also from the sales graph showing sales / month. This is usefull if you are testing and have test transactions appearing in your sales totals.
IPN test page
There are two ipn tests which may be performed on a product item : local test and Sandbox test. See testing page.
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Use my local test IPN page
To perform a local test go to the IPN test page and select the product you wish to test. This will take you to another page which displays all the input fields which must be filled out to run this test. Most of them are filled out automatically for you from the product information list. The only one entry that you have to enter in yourself is the payer email address. This should be a valid email address which acts as the purchaser.
The test by-passes the IPN system but does test all other elements of the application.
You may wish to test what happens when you change other entries on the page, such as the gross payment.
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Use my test via the Sandbox.
Refer to the associated page testing for more information.
To perform a test using PayPal's developer system rather than the live PayPal system, go to the IPN test page and select the product you wish to test. This will take you to another page where there will be a buy now button for this product.
You need to login to the developer network before you actually do the test.
Pressing this button will take you to the PayPal developer site where you then continue as though it were a live sell.
In this system, the sandbox test only checks single item purchases and not cart purchases.
To use this test you must have set up an account at the PayPal developer site - http://developer.paypal.com
Email to all purchasers with a newsletter
Select email format as either HTML or plain text.
Enter in the subject line for the email.
Enter in the body text for the email.
Pressing Submit will send an email to each of the purchasers you have in the table saleshistory.
Email purchasers of a product with a newsletter
Choose the product from the list.
Select email format as either HTML or plain text.
Enter in the subject line for the email.
Enter in the body text for the email.
Pressing Submit will send an email to each of the purchasers of the selected product who are in the table saleshistory.
Send an order without a purchase
This display enables you to create a complementary sell, that is to sell an item to a customer but where the customer does not actually pay for the item.
You may either make a complementary sell to one email address or send to multiple email addresses. The second method might be used for situations such as upgrading a software product where you want to send out an upgrade to all customers who purchased a particular item.
Filling in the details will send an email to the given email address or addresses. The email will contain a password as for normally purchased items. The customer can then log in and download the item in the same way as a normal purchaser.
Manage categories
This is where you define categories and subcategories.
You can define as many categories as you wish and have as many subcategories of the main categories.
You can also set a sort order for the categories and subcategories. This is used in the template driven dynamic shopping cart displays and allows the menu items to be sorted.
Backup / restore
Backup and restore is easy.
Go to the backup page and press the start backup button. This will create a file that you can save to your local computer. This file consists of the sql statements that describe the data.
To restore, go to the restore page and click on the import button to load the previously saved backup file. You must have already set up the tables using the install.php file because the restore process does not change the table structure. When you click on import, and all the data will be restored. Note that all data will be deleted from the existing tables, before the new data is restored.
Both processes may take a little time, so don't move away from the page until complete.
Display sales by date
The sales display enables selection of to / from dates to display the totals sales for the defined period. It calculates totals, but at the moment the total does not differentiate between currencies. If this proves to be a problem, I should be able to fix it, but I believe most users will only sell with one currency.
Administrator password
Change your admin user password and username.
You may want to add in user names and passwords directly into the database if you have the ability to do that.
However, remember that the password is stored in MD5 encrypted format within the database.
Passwords must only have characters a - z and 0 - 9 and must not be greater than 10 characters.
Usernames are restricted to a-z, 0-9, @ and full stop characters.
