How to Configure Your Store in osCommerce
One of the most popular e-commerce solutions available, osCommerce is free and open-source, and it has a huge, active community supporting it. Versatility is a big part of what makes osCommerce so popular. It boasts a wide array of settings that each user can employ to custom tailor the store to their precise needs. In addition, osCommerce has full add-on support. With this capability, you can add a wide range of features to the platform, and thanks to the large, active community, almost any component you can imagine is already developed and tested, and available for you to download and use without cost.
How to Configure Your Store in osCommerce
• Use your username and password to log in to your osCommerce account.
• This video tutorial assumes that you have a valid account and have logged in to it.
• The main osCommerce page is a control panel with a series of clickable categories or action groups.
• The top leftmost category is labeled ‘Configuration.’ Click it.
• That action will navigate you to the configuration pages for your store.
• On the configuration pages, you can edit all of the setting available for the store object.
• On the left-hand side is a navigation menu.
• The menu comprises a series of tabbed categories, and each of those has subcategories.
• The default page is the ‘My Store’ page. My Store is the first subcategory of the Configuration category tab.
• To edit a settings item, mouse over to highlight it.
• Next, click the ‘Edit’ button that appears to the right.
• The default name for your store is ‘My Store,’ so you should at least change that value.
• Mouse over the ‘Store Name’ item, and then click the Edit button.
• Enter the new store name in the text box that appears below the edit button.
• Whenever you make a change, there will be two more buttons: ‘Update’ and ‘Cancel.’
• Click Update to confirm your change.
• Click Cancel to end the process and use the original value.
• To return to the control panel main page, click the ‘Administration’ link in the top left-hand corner.
More about osCommerce
The true power of osCommerce lies in its versatility, and the platform realizes that flexibility through a series of settings. Each osCommerce has its own settings. The platform has a long list of built-in settings, and whenever you install an add-on, that component introduces its own series of settings. At the core of this customizability, is a wonderfully simple but highly effective configuration panel. The panel consists of three primary components: a menu pane on the left, a settings pane at the center and an editing pane on the right-hand side. Each osCommerce component integrates itself into this system by adding its own categories, called chapters, or by adding subcategories to the default categories. The editor usually consists of a text box and update and cancel buttons, but the platform is sophisticated enough to host advanced editors for those components that need them.
