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This is a premier shopping system. Not only does it offer you shopping cart software, but also ease of use, flexibility and a system to build pages on the fly out of your database files. By combining your creative page design with simple TAME™ commands, TAME™ pages are created.
This product provides intuitive shopping for customers through an attractive shopping cart. To encourage one-to-one relationships with each consumer, instant identification and greetings are available when a customer returns via a bookmark. And to make sure the customers remembers all their items, the Shopping Cart retains their selections even when they return days later. The consumer has a choice of payment methods, and can select a shipping method based on options provided and controlled by the merchant. Email confirms each order and searches are made easy by the categorical and key-word search engine.
In addition to the shopping cart and other features described above, there are many other functions provided by TAME™ that enhance your pages through interactions that would normally require CGI programming. The shopping system is an effective and proven product that will reduce your development effort and allow you to provide opportunities for your customers in the shortest possible time.
The shopping system links are designed to maintain track of any customer entering your shop. When the customer enters a TAME™ page an unique cart assignment is established. By establishing this connection, the system can retain all the customers choices for purchase even if he leaves the page and returns at a later time. In this way we make it easier for your customers to make purchases and ultimately increase your revenue potential.
TAME™ uses unique tags to define a page as a "tamepage". Then these pages are linked using the following linking command to maintain the customer's identity and cart:
Standard HTML links will not maintain the continuity between pages.
In addition to maintaining information between pages, the product retains information between customer session. If the customer's browser supports cookies, the system uses a "cookie" to associate the customer with a cart for future access. A cookie is a unique nugget of information that is sent to your customer's browser from the web. When the customer returns to your shop, this software checks for the cookie and associates the customer with selections made on prior visits. What is unique about the shopping system is that if your customer's browser does not support cookies, the information about the customer is retained on the merchant server. Either way continuity is maintained with your customers.
Access to shopping features is through extensions to the HTML language that is used to compose your site's Web presentation. These extensions are called tags. Hence the name of the underlying software that runs the product is called Tag Activated Markup Enhancer or TAME™. Since TAME™ is an extension of HTML, it can be used in conjunction with your new or existing HTML pages to create catalog pages where your customers can make purchases. The TAME™ tags in the document are converted into HTML by the TAME™ cgi program and the resulting HTML page is then sent back to the browser. Through the use of TAME™ you eliminate the need to create and maintain CGI-scripts to manage the selection, purchase and tracking of customers at your site. The following is an example of the generic TAME™ format.
<tame>
tag: ...HTML-ARGUMENT-AREA...
</tame>
The short hand version of this is:
<tame tag: ...HTML-ARGUMENT-AREA... >
Using this format is acceptable for basic TAME™ code, but it is better to use the <tame> ... </tame> format.
You can also use { } in place of the <tame ...> format, i.e.,
{tag: ...HTML-ARGUMENT-AREA....}
However, for document consistency we will use the <tame>. . . </tame> format for all examples.
The TAME™ interpreter can handle HTML markup tags inside the markup area of a TAME™ tag. For example:
<tame> ^link: catalog.tam <img src=mypic.gif> </tame>
This is a unique feature of TAME™; HTML does not allow markup areas inside other HTML areas.
Basically the differences between TAME™ pages and HTML pages are the different extension (*.tam instead of *.htm), the inclusion of TAME™ markups which the shopping system expands and implements, and the fact that TAME™ pages must be served through the TAME™ cgi program.
To distinguish a tamepage first change the extension name to .tam so TAME™ will know to look for it’s markups and expand them. This also allows you to build in the same directory as live HTML pages if that is appropriate.
Once the extension the follow tame information in bold should be added to your page. See the glossary for the syntax of each new tag.
<html>
<head>
<tame tamehead: revision>
<title> . . . </title>
</head><body . . .>
HTML-AREA
<tame page_end>
</body>
</html>
Unlike HTML pages, TAME™ pages must be served through the cgi directory and TAME™ program selected during the installation process. On most web servers this requires /cgi-bin/tame/ (or the equivalent) in the document URL that accesses the page. This process expands all the TAME™ markups as the pages are presented to the customer.
Note: Some servers, such as IIS, allow you to assign an interpretive program to particular extensions such as the .tam extension. These servers can be set up to work without /cgi-bin/tame/ in the path.
To point to a TAME™ pages from a HTML page you must include the cgi-bin/tame directory in the path. For example:
<a href=..../cgi-bin/TAME/SHOP/FILE.tam>hot text</a>
Once you have the customer in a TAME™ page you can point to a non-tame page using standard HTML href tags, BUT you will loose the cart!
Document level syntax is based on the use of any number of single TAME™ tags in your HTML documents. These single tags can have arguments after the tag and modifiers before them. When a document level tag takes an argument(s), it always ends in a colon (:). The argument area is in HTML syntax and is generally called the HTML-ARGUMENT-AREA. Modifiers are placed before the tag and require a semicolon (;) only if the modifier has its own arguments. The document level form of the syntax is easy to learn and use, here is an example:
<tame> ^buy: itemnumber </tame>
This will place a buy button with appropriate connections to the shopping cart on your page.
The full TAME™ language supports multiple TAME™ tags in the same command. In addition, it contains mechanisms for logic and flow control, and a variety of argument formats. However, sufficient document level singular tags have been supplied to handle most any need of a common shoppin gsystem. The advanced language use is generally reserved for those that want to use TAME™ to program their own custom applications.
Note: For an in-depth
discussion of this subject see Databases
and Database Access
The product database provides the information for a buy button. In its simplest form the product database is an ASCII file called product.tdb and is saved in the shop directory. The first row of this file is the field definition row. It must start with a semicolon (;) and contain the following key words "item", "price" and "descrip". In the rows that follow, the first three columns must be the item, the price and the description of the product. In addition, each record or line must end with a <enter>.
Additional fields can be added to the field definition row with the associated information included in each record. The records in this file are white space delimited; therefore, any information with embedded spaces should be enclosed in square brackets [ ]. If information is not available for one of the defined fields, then empty square brackets can be used as a place holder.
Note: Some column names
are reserved for special features of the software. For more
information on these reserve words see the Variables
section
Once the data is in a product.tdb file, presenting the data to the customer can be accomplished by the used of these basic commands:
These commands automatically search the product.tdb file in the shop directory and display information about the item or items selected.
Providing the customer with the ability to buy an item can be accomplished using:
The buy button sends the consumer to the
shopping system and presents the shopping cart panel by
referencing the item codes in the product file. The cart panel
automatically presents the item, price and description associated
with the item in the buy button. More information about this
topic is available in the buy button section.
To set up your shopping system you will use the Administration Screens. Access to the Mall Administration Screens is available through:
http://yourdomain/yourcgi-bin/tame/examples/
Then select "Shop & Mall Browser Administration".
These screen assist you in opening malls and shops, setting up system defaults and closing shops.
The screens are user friendly and
descriptive. For detailed help see the Administration Screens section
By completing the following steps your existing pages can be converted into catalog pages ready to accept customer purchases.
All hyperlinks from
page to page within the shopping area must be converted
from a HTML hyperlink
<a href=PAGE.html>HOT-TEXT/IMAGE</a>
to a TAME™ link
<
tame> ^link: DOCUMENT-LOCATION
HTML-ARGUMENT-AREA</tame>
By doing this TAME™ can maintain the consumer's
identity and cart as he navigates through your shop.
The pages must be copied to new pages with the extensions changed from .HTML or .HTM to .TAM. This identifies the pages as TAME™ pages and also ensure that your current shop can remain open during the retrofit process.
Once these steps are completed your system is ready for a test run and publication on the web. Details on completing this process are provided throughout the rest of this manual.
created: 3/13/97
updated: 10/2/97 Katherine C. Davis