Custom Pages

Note:

Custom Pages is a deprecated tool, included mainly for legacy compatibility. The preferred method for customizing your ShopSite store is with Custom Templates, a more robust and powerful tool. Because Custom Pages is no longer being updated, newer ShopSite features may not be available in pages created with the Custom Pages tool.

The Custom Pages feature (previously called "Smart Tags") allows you to create some or all of the pages for your store in another application, and put links to your ShopSite databases in those pages. With this feature, you can use your HTML authoring tool-of-choice and have full control over your store's page layouts - and even use advanced features like frames - while using ShopSite's databases, shopping cart, and order processing features.

Custom pages and standard pages (created with the ShopSite browser interface) have very little overlap:

Custom pages and standard pages are listed separately. You add and modify standard pages by clicking the Pages button on the main ShopSite screen. You add and modify custom pages from the Custom Pages area under Merchandising.

You must use Smart Tags to have a product appear on a custom page; you cannot assign a product to a custom page through the standard interface.

You cannot link a standard page to a custom page. At least, not in the usual way, but there is to do it.

Getting Started with Custom Pages

Using Custom Pages in your store requires 6 steps:

Add products to your store, either by using ShopSite's browser interface or by creating a products database and uploading it. (You don't have to do this first, but you must do it before step 6.)

Optionally, create standard pages using the browser interface. Most Web designers that use the Custom Pages feature create all of the store's pages as custom pages.

Create your store's custom pages using the HTML authoring application of your choice.

Insert Smart Tags in your store's custom pages wherever you want to display product information, page links, [Add to Cart] buttons or [View Cart] buttons.

Use ShopSite's Custom Page Upload feature to upload your store's custom pages to the ShopSite server. Or use to upload several pages at once. Custom pages are stored in the smarthtml subdirectory of your store's output directory; if you use FTP to upload the files, put them there.

Note:

The Custom Page Upload feature automatically puts custom page files in the smarthtml directory under the store’s output directory. ShopSite will look there and in any subdirectories for custom pages when publishing the store. If you use FTP to upload custom pages, you can put the page files in subdirectories under the smarthtml directory. When Publishing the store, ShopSite will look in subdirectories and process any files that it finds and copy the same directory structure to the store output directory.

Publish your store to update it with your custom pages and the latest information from the products and pages databases. Note that the Publish tab does not pop up when you upload custom pages. You can still click its location, even when it is hidden, and ShopSite will update your store. You can also go to the Utilities section of ShopSite and click the Publish button.

When ShopSite publishes your store, it converts the Smart Tags on your custom pages to real HTML tags containing the information from the products and pages databases. It puts the processed pages in the store's output directory.

See the Smart Tags Specification for a list of Smart Tags and their descriptions.

Maintaining Custom Pages

After you have added custom pages to your store, you can edit and delete them from within ShopSite.

To change a custom page, select it from the list on the Custom Pages screen and click the Edit Page button. ShopSite creates a screen containing the raw HTML of the custom page. Make any changes needed and click the Save Changes button. Publish your store.

You can, of course, make changes to the original custom page file on your own computer, and then use the Upload File button to upload the page again. As long as you use the same page name, the new version of the file will replace the existing version.

To delete a custom page, select it from the list on the Custom Pages screen and click the Delete Page button.

Linking to Custom Pages

Unprocessed custom pages are stored in your store's smarthtml directory. However, when you publish your store, ShopSite puts the processed custom pages in your store's output directory, along with any normal ShopSite pages. Thus, links to custom pages from normal ShopSite pages should have this form:

<a href="custompagename.html">Link to custom page</a>