Setup Guide : Introduction

Connecting your web site to your My Shop Cart shopping cart is as simple as adding a few lines of HTML to your pages. Our system also supports any WYSIWYG editor such as  Microsoft FrontPage, Adobe PageMill and others. Please read though all the setup guide before you start adding the code to your pages.

You will encounter several different variables in this setup guide that must be set on your pages. All these variable will be in red in this setup guide. Here are definitions to all the variables.

Merchant_Name = The merchant name is assigned when you signed up. If you are testing and have not signed up you can use demo for the merchant name.

Product_ID = This is whatever number or code you use to keep track of your products

Price = This is the price for the product.
- NOTE: DO NOT use a $. Use numbers and a period only (i.e. 5.95)

Product_Name = The name of the product so you and the customer can identify it.

Weight = This is the weight of the product used to calculate shipping. If you are not using weight to calculate shipping just put a "0".

http://www.your-domain.com/image.gif = This is the location of the image if you are using graphics instead of the regular submit buttons.

All the code that links your site to your shopping cart on My Shop Cart will follow this standard format:

<FORM METHOD="POST" ACTION="http://www.myshopcart.com/cart/shop.cgi">
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="merchant" VALUE="
Merchant_Name">
<INPUT TYPE="text" NAME="item-
Product_ID|Price|Produce_Name|Weight" size="3">
<INPUT TYPE="submit" NAME="add" VALUE="Add to Cart">
</FORM>

In order to better understand what is happening we will explain the above line by line.
Line 1: This basically tells how to connect to the shopping cart.
Line 2: This tells the shopping cart who you are. Simply replace Merchant_Name with your assigned merchant name
Line 3: This line tells the shopping cart all about the product. Product_ID is a simple ID you use to classify your products. Price is the price of the item (do NOT use a $). Product_Name is the name of the product. Weight is used for shipping, if you are not calculating shipping based on weigh simply set this to "0". This line also add a field so the user can select how many of the product they want to order/
Line 4: This add a "Add to Cart" button. This is so your customer can  send the information to the shopping cart.
Line 5: This line sayes that all the information is over and to end the form.