FeedShare PHP Store Front Instructions

Introduction

The FeedShare PHP Store Front allows you to quickly and easily launch a fully featured shopping cart user interface,
customized any way you like. Unlike JavaScript data-feed systems, the PHP Store Front is run on your
web server and not only gives you full control of the layout but the pages are full index able by search
engines.

Unlike other similar technologies, the FeedShare PHP Store Front system does not require MySQL and is
designed to handle high volumes of traffic. All product data is pulled from our store server live
so there's no need to ever manually update your site.

Simply customize the settings and layout, then upload to your web sever and you're done!

Visit the FeedShare Support Forums to share your tips, ideas and get your questions answered.

Setting Up Your Store

Step 1 - Configure your settings

* Denotes a required setting

Server Access Method

By default, the FeedShare PHP Store Front uses the PHP fopen() function to access data from the feed server.
Some web hosts may disable this function from accessing remote data. If you notice that no products are
being shown after you follow all the instructions below, you may want to try the alternative access method.

To change the server access method, open the fs_php\core\system.php file in notepad or another
text editor. You'll find the server access method setting near the top of the file. Simply set this setting
from the default of 0 to 1 as shown below:

$gc_ServerAccessMethod = 1;

If your are not having issues with the default access method, please leave it on the default setting as
it is faster and more efficient.

Page Specific Settings

The FeedShare PHP Store Front system lets you have as many different product pages as
you like. You can have different pages use different layouts, show different plug-in's
or even different products.

To allow this, each page has it's own settings as follows:

Required Settings

$gs_AdvID
The ID of your advertiser (refer to the page where you downloaded the PHP Store Front files from)

$gs_AffID
Your affiliate/publisher/partner ID

$gs_FeedID
The ID or IDs of the data feeds you wish to display. If your selected advertiser offers more than one
data feed and you wish to show products from more than one, specify each feed ID separated by
a comma. You can also set the feed ID to zero which will display all feeds from the specified advertiser.

$gs_DefaultFeedID
Only applies when using multiple feed IDs. Specifies the default feed to display. Use a value of '0' to
show products from all specified feeds by default.

$gs_LayoutType
Specifics where users are taken when they click on product links.
Possible values are:

0 = Grid (shows product in a table with multiple columns)
1 = Summary (shows products in one column with image to the left)
2 = Auto (initially shows products in Grid mode. searching changes to Summary mode)

$gs_AffID
Your affiliate/publisher/partner ID

$gs_DefaultPageSize
The default number of products to show per page

$gs_PageSizeOptions
An array (list) of page sizes that a customer will be able to choose from

$gs_ImgSize
The height in pixels each product image should be. Each product image
will auto size itself so that the width will adjust to maintain the proper
height to width ratio.

$gs_DescMaxLen
The maximum number of characters of each products description to show.
If a products description exceeds this number, it will show the maximum
number of characters and append a "...more" link to the end.

$gs_DefaultSort
The default order in which products will be sorted.

Possible values are:
0 = Product Name A-Z
1 = Product Name Z-A
2 = Low Price
3 = High Price

$gs_ShowGroups
Specifies if the "Group" drop downs will be shown at the top of the page.
"Groups" are ways of grouping products such as Category, Brand, etc.
and vary by advertiser.

Possible Values are:
0 = Show none
1 = Show categories only (if available)
2 = Show brands only (if available)
3 = Show categories and brands (if available)

$gs_ShowGroupList
Specifies if a list of product groups (categories, brands, etc) are shown
in a vertical list on the left side of the layout.

Possible Values are:
0 = Hide group list
1 = Show group list

$gs_Target
Specifies if the clicking on a product link should show the page in a new
browser window or the current one.

NOTE: If $gs_ProdLinkDestination is set to 0 (details page), the product link will
always open in the same window but the "Buy Now" link will use what is specified
in the $gs_Target setting.

Possible values are:
"blank" = Show in new window
"top" = Stay in the same window

$gs_BuyNowImg
Each product has an image link which takes them to the product
page on the advertisers site. This is the URL to the image.

$gs_ShowDesc
Determines if product descriptions are shown. Applies only if
Grid Mode layout is selected.

Possible Values are:
1 = Yes
0 = No

$gs_UseNoFollow
Determines if the rel="nofollow" attribute is used on product links.
This attribute is recognized by all major search engines and will cause
them to skip product links when indexing your site. This, along with
thorough customization of your store can greatly reduce the chance
that your site may be seen as an "affiliate spam" site.

Possible Values are:
1 = Yes
0 = No

$gs_TitleAppend
Determines what if any values are auto-appended to the store's page title.
Any auto-appended values will be added after any text you specify in the
optional $gs_BasePageTitle setting. Showing the feed name and
category/brand can aid in search engine indexing.

Possible Values are:
0 = None
1 = Feed Name
2 = Category/Brand
3 = Feed Name & Category/Brand

$gs_HideProductURLs
Determines if the product URLs are hidden from the web browsers status
bar.

Possible Values are:
0 = Show
1 = Hide

$gs_ProductURLText
If the $gs_HideProdURLs setting is set to Hide, this setting specifies the url
to be shown in the browser status bar, in place of the product url.

Optional Settings

$gs_Keywords
To show products that match specific words, specify them in this setting,
separated by a space.

$gs_BackupImgURL
This optional setting allows you to specify a URL to an image that will be
shown if a product does not have an image or for some reason it fails
to display in the users browser. If this setting is not set, the text
"Image Unavailable" or "Image N/A" will be shown, depending on
the layout type.

$gs_BasePageTitle
Any value you enter for this setting will appear as the page title in your
web browser.

Possible Values are:
0 = None
1 = Feed Name
2 = Category/Brand
3 = Feed Name & Category/Brand

$gs_AltPriceText
This setting allows you to display any text in place of the product price.
To show the product price, set this value to empty single quotes ''.

Grid Layout Only Settings

$gs_RowSize
This is the number of products to show on each row. Applies only
if Grid Mode layout is selected.

Step 2 - Customize the layout

This store has been designed to make it easy to customize the look and feel to match your
web site. Customizing will help give your site a personal, unique feel and set it apart from other
affiliates. It's also an important part of optimizing your site for indexing by search engines as they
are becoming more and more sensitive to duplicate page content from different sites. To ensure
that your site is well received by search engines, be sure to customize the meta tags and add
some original content.

This store comes with a pre-defined image/style sheet set. They can be used as is or
customize them. If you wish you can create your own style sheet and images or even
customize the HTML in the various store files for a totally unique site.

The style set consists of a "Buy Now" image and a style sheet. In the store.php page is
where you define the "Buy Now" image you wish to use. To change it, simply set the
$gs_BuyNowImg setting to the path and name of the file you wish to use on your site.

Below is a description of each file that makes up the user interface, and what role it plays:

store.php
This is the page the user will see. It ties all the other layout pages together and can be
renamed it to anything you like. Add your own title, meta tags, header, footer an any other
layout HTML you want to this page.

You can also make multiple pages from this store file to show specific types of
products in different layouts.

fs_php/core/list_feeds.php
When multiple data feed IDs are specified, this page builds a list of data feeds names which
are used to display the products of each feed. The list is shown at the top of the page.

fs_php/core/search.php
Contains the group (category, brand, etc) drop downs, search field and search button.

fs_php/core/paging_top.php
Contains the Previous/Next and page number links as well as the page size drop down
and sort the drop down (shown depending on your chosen settings). Shown at the top of
the page above the products.

fs_php/core/paging_btm.php
Contains the Previous/Next and page number links. Shown at the bottom of the page
below the products.

fs_php/core/products.php
Contains the HTML/PHP that builds the actual layout of products.

Using Modules
Modules are optional components that you can choose to incorporate on your site.
Each provides functionality and user interface features which can be customized.
Currently there are three modules that come with the FeedShare PHP Store Front:

list_groups.php
Builds a vertical list of groups (categories, brands, etc) which can be placed on the left
or right of the products.

By default the group list is shown on the left side of the page. To change this, simply move
the following code in the store.php page from here:

<tr>

<? include("fs_php/modules/list_groups.php"); ?>

<td valign="top">
<table border="0" width="550px" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="1">
...
</table>
</td>
</tr>

To here:

<tr>
<td valign="top">
<table border="0" width="550px" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="1">
...
</table>


<? include("fs_php/modules/list_groups.php"); ?>
</td>
</tr>

Or to remove the group list, just remove the bold line of code shown above.

list_special_items.php
Builds a vertical list of "Special Items" which are products labeled as new, on sale
or as having other special attributes .

By default, this module is not used. Below is an example of how you would show
the special items list on the right side of the page:

<form name="FS_form" id="FS_form" method="get">
<table border="0" width="700px" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
<tr>

<? include("fs_php/modules/list_groups.php"); ?>

<td valign="top">
<table border="0" width="550px" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="1">
...
</table>


<? include("fs_php/modules/list_special_items.php"); ?>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</form>

Step 3 - Upload the files

Upload all the store files to your web site and you're done!

Make sure that the the files are in the following folder structure:
store.php
fs_php\functions.js
fs_php\styles.css
fs_php\buynow.gif
fs_php\core\paging_btm.php
fs_php\core\paging_top.php
fs_php\core\products.php
fs_php\core\search.php
fs_php\core\system.php
fs_php\modules\list_feeds.php
fs_php\modules\list_groups.php
fs_php\modules\list_special_items.php