Here are some frequently asked questions about
XpressCart:
General Questions
Installation Questions
GENERAL QUESTIONS
Q. How many products will the shopping cart handle?
A. XpressCart can handle up to approximately 10,000 products without any serious lag.
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Q. How are shipping charges calculated?
A. The program allows you to create your own shipping calculation tables to cover your shipping and handling costs.
This is very flexible and allows you to charge shipping automatically based on a per item basis, weight basis,
or total cost per order.
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Q. How is sales tax calculated?
A. Sales tax is based on the state to which the order will be shipping. You can set which states would require sales tax, and in what amounts.
The cart will then automatically calculate this amount and add it to the orders that are shipped to the affected states.
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Q. How do I add items and configure the shopping cart? Do I need to know HTML?
A. XpressCart comes with an easy-to-use, web-based "back-office" type admin interface. No HTML knowledge is needed. You simply login
to the XpressCart admin area, and through menus you can configure shipping information
and sales tax, add or delete products, upload pictures, and manage orders.
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Q. What type of payment options does the shopping cart support?
A. XpressCart allows you to accept all major credit cards using the Authorize.net payment gateway, the most popular payment gateway in the world.
Additionally you may also accept electronic checks via E-Check option. Credit card
and check orders are processed in real time. Authorize.net is available from Merchant Accounts Express at http://www.merchantexpress.com.
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Q. Does the shopping cart run on my site?
A. Yes. All XpressCart software will be installed on your website and under your control.
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Q. Are there any monthly fees?
A. No. There are no monthly charges for using XpressCart. XpressCart is free to all Merchant Accounts Express clients.
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Q. Do I need an SSL certificate, etc.?
A. No. XpressCart is specifically designed not to require an SSL (Secure
Sockets Layer) certificate. Customers are sent to Authorize.Net to securely enter
their credit card information. Authorize.net will provide the final
checkout page in SSL where customer enter their credit card info.
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Q. Does the customer ever leave my site?
A. Your customers remain on your site until the final checkout page, where they review the order and enter their credit card information. This page is hosted on an Authorize.net SSL secure page and eliminates the need for you to have your own SSL certificate. XpressCart customizes this final checkout page with your site name and the contents of the shopping
cart. Additionally, the background color of the page and the color of
the text can be customized through the Authorize.Net merchant interface
to match the look and feel of your website.
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Q. Can I customize the cart?
A. The general look and feel of XpressCart can be customized with an HTML
template. Further HTML customization is also available via a configuration file. More complicated customization can be done by a competent Perl programmer.
Contact Merchant Accounts Express at http://www.merchantexpress.com
for a programming quote if you do not have this expertise in house.
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Q. How do I upgrade to the latest version?
A. Instructions on how to upgrade your copy of Xpresscart to the latest
version is contained in the text file upgrade.txt. Changes from your version are
documented in the file changelog.txt. Both of these text files are in the
current Xpresscart ZIP file.
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Q. What will I get for support?
A. Due to its free nature, phone support is not provided for the cart. However, email support is provided free for current Merchant Accounts
Express clients. If you have a specific question about the installation or operation of the cart that cannot be found in the FAQ or instructions,
please email it to support@merchantexpress.com
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INSTALLATION QUESTIONS
Q. How do I install the cart? Can I do the installation myself?
A. Complete instructions for installation are provided in the README.txt
file (or see Installation).
Yes, you can do the installation yourself. Installation does require a basic
understanding of how to configure and run Perl CGI scripts on your web
server. If you do not have these skills or are uncomfortable
performing the installation yourself, you can ask your web host to install it for
you. Alternatively, Merchant Accounts Express can also perform the installation for
$99. See the install_order.txt file for details.
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Q. What are the system requirements for XpressCart?
A. XpressCart runs on web servers with Perl 5 or higher installed (an
extremely common setup). It runs equally well on UNIX or Windows based
servers. The script requires NO additional database software because data is
stored in simple pipe-delimited text files.
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Q. What permissions should be set on the scripts?
A. Windows servers do not require any file permissions, but your web server
must allow CGI programs to execute, and your script must be able to read and
write to the folders you define for authentication, customer data, photos, and
working data.
UNIX servers do require file permissions, but requirements can vary from
server to server. Normally all the scripts should be set to 755 with the
exception of config.pl and common.pl, which can be set to 644. This grants
the scripts permission to execute, and config.pl and common.pl can be read.
Again, your script must be able to read and write to the folders you define
in config.pl (usually the default settings will do, if not, start with 777
and work your way down).
If you are still confused about file permissions on your web server, contact
your web server system administrator and ask him or her what the correct
permissions settings are for what you want each script and folder to be able
to do.
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Q. The office script seems to be working at first, but when I try to log in I
get sent back to the login screen or I get a blank screen. Why?
A. Assuming you entered the right user name and password, this is likely a
permissions problem (see above). The script cannot write to the auth folder
and create a session file for authentication so it can't verify that you are
logged in. Make sure you have created the auth folder, have defined it properly in
config.pl, and that it has read and write permissions. You can start with
chmod 777.
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Q. I can't get the photos to upload. How do I fix it?
A. There are several potential problems. It could be a permissions problem
(see above). It is possible that your server will not allow normal http
access to images in your cgi-bin folder. If this is the case, you will need
to move your photo directory outside of the cgi-bin (don't forget to specify
the path changes in config.pl).
Also, upload.cgi uses CGI.pm, a Perl library. In some rare cases this library might
not be installed on your web server. If this is the case you may need to ask
your system administrator to install the library or upgrade to the latest
version of Perl.
Lastly, there is always the tiny possibility that your web hosting company will
not allow http uploads. If this is the case, you will need to switch hosting companies.
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Q. The program works great in Internet Explorer, but it chokes sometimes in
Netscape. What is wrong?
A. The HTML output of the script is very basic HTML code that should be
easily interpreted by most browsers, but there are a few things to keep in
mind.
First, the script pulls in the HTML code that you define with your
template.html file for the look and feel of your shopping cart. If your
template.html file is not compatible with multiple browsers, then the script
won't be either. Netscape can be particularly frustrating, because if it
doesn't like your code, sometimes it won't display anything at all.
Definitely check the template.html for browser compatibility through a secure
URL before you put the shopping cart into production. Since you are using
Authorize.net, you must use full secure URLs for all the images and links on
your template page or it won't work correctly in any browser! Style Sheets
are big browser compatibility traps, too.
Second, if you are linking to categories from static HTML pages, you must use a
"+" instead of a space in the URL. This only matters in categories that have
more than one word, of course. IE doesn't really care, but Netscape will
choke if there is a space in the URL.
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Q. How do I link directly to products and categories of products?
A. This information is available in the README.txt file distributed with the
XpressCart. Please reference that file.
