3. Products Management

fmProducts - Products and Attributes Sections.

This chapter describes how to manage osCommerce products, descriptions, upload osCommerce product images, add new or remove osCommerce products, manage attributes and a lot of other actions. The following topics of osCommerce product management are covered:

OsCommerce Product Management with Store Manager for osCommerce is very simple. You have all the necessary tools for adding osCommerce products and you have no limitation of their number, number of their categories and subcategories.

1. Products Section

From osCommerce products' toolbar and context menu, you can perform the following basic operations:

1. Refresh data forces osCommerce product list update. It is useful when you're changing connection or have any doubts e.g. whether the latest data were displayed or not.

2. Add new product calls blank Edit Product form, which is used to create a new product. The description "Edit Product" dialogue pages see below.

3. To edit product you can double click on it or use "Edit Product" button. It calls Edit Product form for product you've selected. Please check the options below.

4. You can Remove Product from Current Category or Delete Selected Product from your store . Pay attention that you won't be able to undo this option.

5. You can Clear selected product(s) attributes

from one or several osCommerce products simultaneously. To confirm this operation click "Yes".

6. You can use Mass Product Changer option to modify some options for several products simultaneously. For more information on this issue Please see Additional (Optional) Features chapter.

7. To Adjust columns width use icon.

2. Product Attributes Section

Basic Operations (Add, Edit, Delete)

In osCommerce product attributes section you may find options similar to Basic product operations (add, edit, delete). You can perform the actions mentioned by means of Product attributes toolbar:

1. Add new product attribute calls blank Edit attribute form, which is used to create a new attribute. How to edit attribute dialogue pages description see below.

2. To edit attribute you can double click on it or use edit attribute button. It calls edit attribute form.

First of all you can "Enable drop list editing"

If you want to add any Attribute parameter value to the dropdown list click on it, press [Insert] button and type in new option or value. Please note, inserted Option/Value name in a dropdown can be whether deleted or edited. Just double-click on it or press [Enter] button.

An attribute is basically a specific value of some option. So Option is the first attribute parameter to be set.

  • Every option has its own values. You cannot set a value, unless you chose an option. Store Manager has some default Options and their Values that you may use.
  • "Prefix" option sets price modification if any are required. It can be "+" : if this osCommerce product attribute is selected, some extra charge (specified in "Price" field) will be added to basic osCommerce product price;
  • "-" prefix will subtract the amount specified in "Price" field from the basicosCommerce product price. If you don't need to make any price changes, simply leave the prefix field blank.
  • "Price" option has a calculator in a dropdown for your convenience. If prefix value is left blank, the amount you specified here would be subtracted from regular price of selected product.
  • Also you can set "Max days" and "Max count" parameters to limit this attribute.

3. You can delete selected attribute using this button

. Note, that you won't be able to undo this action, unless you've made d-base backup. 4. To adjust columns width use icon or enable column auto width option.

Copy And Paste Attributes Using Clipboard

You can copy selected attribute (s) to the Clipboard

and Paste it (them) to any other product or to multiple products. In case you have multiple stores you can Paste this attribute to any product at the other store (after you change the connection in Tools -> Quick connection switch). Please note that you need to use special icons on Attributes toolbar.

Extended Attribute Editor

Extended attribute editor allows you to make changes to all product attributes simultaneously:

Check specific attributes, you would like to be applied to this product. Attribute and value names cannot be edited in this window, since all possible combinations are listed. To edit other features double click on its cell.

At the bottom of Product Attributes page you can find standard Up and Down buttons. Such Attribute order feature is not available in standard osCommerce store, so you need to install a contribution in order to have this option. You can find Attribute order update here. If you've already installed it, click on Attributes Editor button. You can move selected attributes using [Up] and [Down] buttons in Extended Attributes window that will appear.

Attributes of Downloadable Products

This option is useful if you have some products your customers will have to download (some software, games etc.) By default this option is disabled. To enable it, please open Advanced -> Store Configuration and find "Enable Download" field. Make sure it's value is set on "true". Click on accept changes and then refresh. Go back to your Categories and Products page and click Refresh data button. You can find out here how to setup downloadable product in osCommerce.

You may need to restart Store Manager in case the changes do not show any effect.

Downloadable attributes have 3 additional options. These are:

  • "File" option, which allows downloading resource file. There are two buttons to edit file. This one is used to browse contents of your local folders. When you press OK button on product edit form, it will be uploaded to "Downloads directory" on FTP. After local file was selected, this field would display local image path like C:\My Products\some_download.rar. Local file path will be replaced with file name some_download.rar right after upload.
  • This button is used to select some remotely-stored file. It's performed by browsing contents of FTP folder specified as "Downloads directory".
  • "Max days": sets maximum number of days when product is available for download. Let's say customer can download a product up to 31 days after purchase (see a screenshot).
  • "Max count": sets maximum number of times product can be downloaded. For example, a customer can download a product up to 5 times after purchase according to the sample settings (see a screenshot).
  • Let's take a look at the example shown above. If a customer downloads the file only 3 times before the 31-day period runs out, he won't be able to download it again. And if a customer downloads the file 5 times in 10 days, he won't be able to download it again as well.
  • Zero value in Max Days and Max Count Parameters means unlimited period of download or number of downloads.