Accessing the administration panel

Go to www.’yourdomain’.com.au/admin and enter your Username and Password as provided by TOSD.

Note: Replace ‘yourdomain’ in the above link with your own domain name ?

Main administration tabs

The diagram above shows the general administration layout. There are six main menu tabs across the top. Pages and Files are the only ones we will concern ourselves with in this Quick Start Guide. Notice that when you click on any of the main tabs a secondary set of options appears in the right hand sidebar, with the currently selected option shown in orange.

Pages

View All Pages

Selecting ‘Pages’ (from the tabs) then ‘View All Pages’ (from the sidebar secondary menu) displays a list of all the pages in the website.

Clicking on any of the page title links will enable you to edit that page.

Clicking on the ‘Create New Page’ button in the secondary menu will enable you to create a new page.

Creating a new page

• Click the ‘Create a New Page’ button
• Click the ‘Page Options+’ button to expose the options for your new page
• Give the page a ‘Title’ (preferaby one that contains a keyword, or keyword phrase that is relevant to the page content). Do not make the title too long, or, apart from anything else, it may take up too much room in the menu.
• Slug/URL: you can leave this empty. It will be automatically created from the page title when your page is saved. However if you do want something a little different from the title use lowercase letters only and dashes to separate words (no spaces). E.g. daffodil-varieties
• Select the parent page. If the page is to be at the top level of the menu, select ‘index’ from the pull down list.
• Add keywords (I suggest no more that 6 words) and make sure that any keywords are also contained in the general page content.
• Add a meta description (I suggest no more that about 140 characters (including spaces). The title and meta description are both displayed in the search engine results. They must be relevant to the page content and written in such a way that they will encourage people doing searches to want to click them.
• Template: in general leave as ‘Default Template’. Contact TOSD if you are in doubt.
• If the page is to be added to the menu (this would be the normal situation but you may not want to do it until you have finished working on the page) tick the ‘Add to menu’ box.
• Use the editor to enter and format your text, images and hyeprlinks. If you hover over any of the menu icons a text label will appear to tell you what it is. As shown below, icons are available for all common formatting functions.

Adding Content

Images:

These should be uploaded first using the ‘Files’ tab. All images should be set to their final size in pixels before uploading and have a resolution of 96ppi. Images straight out of a digital camera will be far too big, both in terms of their physical dimensions and file size. If you don’t have software to do this go to http://pixlr.com/ , click “Open Photo Editor” and click the ‘Open Image from computer’ link. This will enable you to resize your image and save it at the correct resolution.

Images are added after the text paragraphs have been set up.

• Click on the start of the paragraph the image is the be associated with to set the cursor then click the image icon.
• In the popup window click the ‘Browse Server’ button and select your image from the uploads list.
• Add a brief description in the ‘Alternative text’ box (using keywords if possible) set the alignment to’ Left’ or ‘Right’ and the HSpace to 10px to allow for a little padding around the image. Click OK to save.

Hyperlinks (links)

Highlight the words that will form the link and click the link icon. A popup window will appear.

• If you are linking to another page of your own website set the link type to ‘Link to local page’ and select the page.
• If you are linking to a page on another website set the link type to ‘URL’ and enter the URL e.g. www.anotherwebsite.com.au/pagewhatever
• If you are linking to a pdf (uploaded previously using the ‘Files’ tab) set the Link Type to ‘URL’, click the browse server button and select the file from the uploads list.

Presentation tips

• Leave the main body text of the page at the default size and colour. In other words: just type!
• Best to avoid pasting text from another application but if you must always strip pre-existing formatting by papsting it into a completely plain text editor (e.g. Notepad) first
• Getting the order right will help. Here is what I suggest . . .
• Add the main text content first.
• Format the headings and sub-headings by clicking on the icon with the drop down arrow labelled ‘Normal’ and selecting the required heading size. Note that Heading 1 (H1) should not be used as it is reserved by the system. Note also that the colours of the headings will not show up in the editor. They will appear correctly when the page is viewed, though.
• Add any images
• Add any hyperlinks
• Do any final adjustments to formatting e.g. bold, italic etc

Creating a News Article

If your website has a News facility configured click the Pages Tab then the News Manager button on the secondary menu. The existing News articles will be listed. Click on one to edit, or click the ‘Create New Article’ button to create a new one. Creation is very simple. Just type the article and add images or links as required. An Excerpt (summary / intro) may be added if required but is not necessary.

Uploading Files

• Select the ‘Files’ tab from the top menu – existing files will be listed under the Uploads directory
• Click the ‘Upload files and/or images’ button in the secondary menu to upload a file from your PC, taking note of my comments above in the Page Content/Images section regarding correct image preparation.
• This facility can be used to either upload images for insertion into a page or news article, or documents (preferrably pdfs) that you want to link to.

1. Creating a Custom Page
2. Assigning the Custom Page to the menu

Creating a Custom Page in Viart Shop

• Select [CMS] / Custom Pages from the top menu
• Click the ‘New page’ link at the bottom of the list
• Enter the Page Code (e.g. page.php?page=racing), Page Title (e.g. Racing Schedule), and Friendly URL (e.g. racing-schedule). Note the way the friendly URL is to be entered, with the words separated by a hyphen (-), not a space.
• Indicate whether you want the page to show up in the sitemap.
• In general the only other information you will need to enter is the Page Body content using the editor.
• Finally enter the Meta Data.  Meta data allows you to set up your website so that search engines can readily index your content. This is quite important. The page title and description should both contain the most important keywords relating to the page content. Keep the Title to just a few words and the Description to 10-20 words. The keywords field should also contain the main keywords relevant to the page. Separate them with commas and whatever you do don’t indulge in keyword repetition or you may (will?) be penalised.
• Click [Add New] to submit

Assigning a Custom Page to the menu in Viart Shop

• Select [CMS] / [Site Navigation] from the top menu
• Check the top two boxes to indicate whether you want the new custom page to be available to logged in users, users who are not logged in or both groups.
• If the new page is to appear in the top level menu leave ‘Parent item’ blank, otherwise use the drop down box to select the heading you would like to place it under.
• Enter a page Title
• Enter a Menu URL e.g page.php?page=racing
• For internal pages don’t enter anything for the Target
• In general that is all you need to assign the page to the menu – click [Update] to submit.

See also:

• Viart Shop Quick Start Guide
• Viart Shop: adding options to products

If you fould this article helpful please feel free to leave a comment. If you have any queries relating to Viart Shop please Contact us

To add an information page follow these steps:

Step 1: Creating the new information page

• In admin, select the [Tools] tab then click the CMS link.
• Click “Add new”
• Enter the Meta Title, Meta Description and Meta Keywords
  • The ‘Meta Title’ should include keywords that relate to the main page content
  • The ‘Meta Description’ should also contain the keywords, can be longer than the Title, but I suggest you keep it to about twenty words long.
  • Don’t go overboard with the ‘Meta Keywords’. Keep them revelant and do not repeat them. Half a dozen well chosen keywords are usually sufficient.
  • The ‘Friendly URL’ should also contain your main keywords separated by a a dash. e.g: ‘product-selection’
• Use the editor to enter and format the required page content. You can copy and paste text from an Office document if required.
• Click [Save] to record.

Step 2: Enabling your page content for display

• In admin, select the [Modules] tab
• Scroll down to the ‘Blocks – xx modules’ section and click the Info block / configure link.
• The new page you have just created will be displayed. Click the check box next to it and then click [Update} to save.
• Your new page should now be displayed in the Information module of your website.

See also:

• Prestashop attributes (options)
• Prestashop quick start guide
• Prestashop image preparation and upload

Did you find this article useful? Feel free to leave a comment.

1.  Locate the video you want in YouTube (www. youtube.com.au), click inside the ‘Embed’ frame and copy the code (Ctrl+C) (see below)

2. Go back to the page where you want to insert the video clip. In the appropriate editor enter a heading for the video clip and underneath it the {/literal}  {/literal} tags e.g.

3. Click on the HTML button in the editor menu.

4. Locate the section of code with the tags and insert the code you copied from YouTube between the tags.

5. The result will look something like this:

6. Save and submit. That’s it! You should now be able to view the video on your website.

Tip: It is sometimes the case that you would like to place the video clip in a sidebar of your site that is not wide enough to accommodate the standard size. In the above example you will see that the height and width are 222 and 265 pixels respectively.
As an example, if your sidebar was 200px wide you could:

• set the width to 190px (to allow a little space)
• and set the height to (190/265) X 222 = 160

Note that the little calculation makes sure that the ratio of the image is kept the same.

The modified code within the <embed> tags would then look like this:

<embed src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/7Opkk-oBQaE&amp;rel=1″ type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” wmode=”transparent” height=”160″ width=”190″></embed>

To link to a another external page

• Using your web browser go to the Internet page you want to link to and copy the URL.
• Come back to the page you are editing, highlight the text, then click the link icon (it looks like a chain link).
• Paste the URL into the ‘Link URL’ field.
• If it is an external page you are linking to (ie. one that is outside your web site) I suggest that you also select ‘Open in new window (_blank)’ from the ‘Target’ field.
• Click ‘Insert to complete the step.

Finally click ‘Preview’ at the very top or bottom of the page to verify your work and ‘Submit’ to record it. Your hyperlinked text should now be visible and active.  Don’t forget to test it.

To link to a pdf document

• Determine where your pdf document is stored on your PC (you will need to navigate to it in order to upload it)
• In the page editor highlight the text that you want to link to the pdf brochure then click the link icon (it looks like a chain link).
• Click the Browse icon to the right of the “Link URL” field.
• Open the folder where you want the uploaded pdf brochure to reside, or click “Create Folder” at the bottom of the popup window.
• To upload a new brochure click the “Browse” button at the bottom of the popup window and navigate to the folder on you PC where the document is stored. Select it, then click upload.
• The document’s filename will now be displayed ready for selection.
• When you have selected your document you will be taken back to the previous popup window screen. I suggest that you select ‘Open in new window (_blank)’ from the ‘Target’ field and don’t forget to insert a meaningful title for the link. This will not be displayed onscreen but is useful to search engines.