Creating a Custom Gift Certificate

Screen: ShopSite > Merchandising > Custom Templates

Creating a Custom Gift Certificate Template

Custom Gift Certificate Templates give you the ability to design the appearance of the Gift Certificate ordering form, as well as how a digital or printed gift certificate looks.

To Create a Gift Certificate Template:

A gift certificate template is a combination of HTML and ShopSite custom template tags. You can use any text or HTML editor to create a gift certificate template.

1. Get Acquainted with ShopSite

Knowing how ShopSite works from both a customer and merchant perspective will help you understand how custom templates work. It is an especially good idea to become familiar with the Gift Certificate configuration settings and the default Gift Certificate order form. Purchased certificates can be delivered electronically or physically, and the Gift Certificate Template includes a section to layout the appearance of each.

2. Study the Examples

Look over the custom template specification to see the tags that are available. It will be one of your primary references while creating templates, or you can use the short version once you have the hang of it.

You may also want to look at the default gift certificate template (you can copy it into your custom templates using the Copy ShopSite Template button) and see how it works.

3. Create Your Template

You can use nearly any text editor or HTML editor to create your template. If you are using a WYSIWYG editor, enter the custom template tags as plain text. Some HTML editors may complain about formatting, since a Gift Certificate template can contain the equivalent of three complete HTML pages.

Save your template with a descriptive name and in a location where you will be able to find it. Custom templates do not require any file extension, although your editor may.

4. Upload Your Template

Once your template is ready for testing, upload it to your store by going to the Merchandising > Custom Templates screen, finding the Gift Certificate Templates section, and clicking on the Upload Template button. Enter the local path or Browse... for your template file. You may optionally indicate a different filename for the template on the server, then click Upload File.

You can also use FTP to upload the template to the correct directory. Keep these points in mind:

Transfer the files using ASCII mode transfer, so that the line break characters get converted from the operating system of your computer to the operating system that ShopSite is running on. Do no just copy the files over a network or via floppy.

To make the template available to a single store, copy it to the /templates/gc directory under the store's data directory. Create the directories if they don't already exist.

To make the template available to all stores in a mall, copy it to the /templates/gc directory under the ShopSite shopping cart (sc) directory.

5. Test Your Template

Once you have uploaded the template, you should test it by selecting it as the template in the Merchandising > Gift Certificates > Configuration screen. You will probably not want to test the template on a live store, in case something doesn't work the way you expected it to. Be sure to test all the Gift Certificate features, including ordering both a digital and physical certificate, to make sure they work properly.

Enter values for all the fields used by the template.

Go to the store and view the certificate order page in a browser. Verify that all the elements are there and that the layout looks the way you planned.

View the order page using other browsers that customers might use, to make sure the page looks okay in all browsers.

Delete the values for some of the fields used by the template, then reload the search page and make sure it still looks okay.

Check the HTML of the output page by running it through an HTML validator, such as http://www.htmlhelp.com/tools/validator or http://validator.w3.org.

View the source of the output page. If the ShopSite parser did not recognize a tag, or if a database field was empty, it replaced the custom template tag with an HTML comment tag containing information about the problem, like this:
Order both a digital and physical gift certificate and check to make sure they appear the way they are supposed to (you can view the printed certificate from the order screen in the merchant Back Office.

Make any necessary changes and test the template again, then tell the merchant that it is available. The merchant should be able to select the template from the Preferences > Search Settings > Search Layout screen.

ShopSite Help and Resource Center
Last updated: August 25, 2004
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