Administration Center

(under construction Katherine C. Davis 5/20/97)

Purpose:

This chapter provides a detailed description of the Administration Center, it functions and uses.

Who should read:

All first time users and those who want to gain an understanding of the functionality provided by the Administration Center in support of Mall and Shop owners.
Note: Please read the directory chapter first!

Chapter Outline:

1. What is the Administration Center?
2. Accessing the Administration Screen
3. Procedures for mall owners
   1. Edit mall configuration
   2. Open a new shop
      1. Pointer to updating pages using TAME markup
   3. Closing Shops
   4. Cart Manager
   5. View customer records
4. Procedures for shop owners
   1. Edit shop configuration
5. Setting Up Email Processing
6. Examples

What is the Administration Center?

the administrator builds you with a starting index.tam, product.tdb, and data directory, and default configurations.

Accessing the Administration Screens

To set up your Shopping System you will use the Administration Screens. Access to the Mall Administration Screens is available through:

http://yourdomain/yourcgi/tame/examples/index.tam

These screen provide you with the path-file locations for your web directory tree, the mirror directory tree and the global directory tree. The primary purpose for the Administrations Screen is to assist you in opening your mall and shops, setting up and editing system defaults and closing shops. You can also manage carts from these screens and view customer records.

The adminstration Center begins with an identification screen.

Make sure that you use your entire email address, e.g., name@location.com.

Once you enter the system you will be given access to all or some of the following options based one your user access rights. Mall owners have access to all of these features. The procedures for mall owners are:

Edit mall configuration
Open a new shop
Cart Manager
View customer records

While shop owners have access to edit their shop configuration.

Opening and maintaining shops with the mall administration screens

Directory structure - tameroot, mirror-named with the domain,docroot

significance of the first sub-directory off the web root - only place to put buy buttons

step through using the administrator to open new shop and accept defaults refer to more detailed chapter on Mall Administrator

The values on the the Mall Administration page are stored in the file domain.tag in your tame domain directory. Changes can be made directly to this file using a text editor, but pay special attention using this method to avoid typing errors.

This screen provides all of the values for the mall name and location information.

The following variable are defined in this screen:

&domain_name
&domain_address
&domain_city
&domain_state
&domain_zip
&domain_phone
&domain_fax
&domain_email
&domain_door
&domain_time_zone
Currency unit
&CU (Character to proceed currency values)

Panel control is also defined in this area. The mall owner can restrict panels to those provided in the panel directory. The mall owner can allow panels in shop directories to override panels in the panels directory, so that the shop owner can customize his screen to fit his needs.

Secure port: Port attached to https server fill in to allow https access
&https_port

Mall uniqueID: Used with 800PASS payment method and other password support features. ID is encrypted - enter new ID to change --&mall_unique_id

Use browser cookies to store cart information when the browser supports it. Cookie Expires in days. An entry of 0 will cause the cookie to expire when the customer next closes his browser.

Perl full path to perl command Sendmail full path to sendmail command or script

PGP full path to pgp command PGP path path to pgp keyring directory

Display closed sign on every tame page in the mall: The contents of this tag are displayed whenever a shop or the mall is closed.

Content of mall_page_end tag: This tag provides the default page_end for all pages not set elsewhere.

Setting Up Email Processing

Processing email is an important part of the Shopping System. To process email through a UNIX machine, simply install the system and complete the information requested in the Administration Screens. UNIX will use the standard "sendmail" command. Email will be processed and forwarded to the appropriate location. The default path is /usr/lib/sendmail which is correct for the majority of UNIX systems.

To process mail through a NT server requires a perl scriptn. The perl script is located at TAMEROOT/global/bin/tamemail.pl. This script sends the mail to any available SMPT server.

To configure the NT mail from tame you must:

1. NT perl must be installed installed and running on you machine. Perl 5 preferred.
2. Use the full path of the perl interpreter in Mall Administration under "full path to perl command".
3. In Mall Adminstration, enter the "full path to sendmail command or script" as:
   perl.exe {~!bin/tamemail.pl}
   which is the default setting on an NT.
4. Edit the tamemail.pl script to indicate the SMPT mail server that you are using.

There is a diagnostic page that is shipped with every system. The URL to this page is:

http://yourdomain/yourcgi/tame.exe/!bin/testmail.tam

This page will test the mail channel and report anything that is incorrectly configured.