Setting Up Your Store

X-Cart:General Settings

You can adjust the overall configuration of your store using the 'General settings' section of X-Cart Admin area ( Settings menu->General settings).

All the configuration settings in this section are divided into subsections. You can use the 'General settings' section menu to switch between the different subsections.

The links in the upper portion of the 'General settings' section menu provide access to the settings which allow you to control X-Cart's general functionality. The links in the lower portion of the 'General settings' section menu provide access to settings which allow you to control options of specific X-Cart modules.

Here's a list of subsections available via the 'General settings' section menu:

• Appearance Options allows you to adjust preferences that affect the overall appearance of your store.
• 3D-Secure Transaction options allows you to enable Cardinal Centinel® payment authentication platform support in your store.
• Company options allows you to provide your company details and contact information (name, address, phone/fax numbers, email addresses, etc). Your company name, address and phone/fax numbers will be displayed on the storefront and included into customer email notifications. Email addresses of specific departments of your store will be used by X-Cart to send administrator and provider notifications. Company address will be used in real-time shipping rate calculations.

• Contact us form options allows you to configure the 'Contact us' form. You can define, which of the 'Contact us' form fields should be active (visible to customers), and completion of which fields should be required (mandatory). If necessary, you can also add your own (custom) fields to the 'Contact us' form.
• Email options allows you to define options that affect sending of email notifications and newsletters.
• Email notifications options allows you to define, which of the available email notifications should be sent to the customers, administrator(s), provider(s), users department and orders department of your store.
• General options allows you to adjust the general configuration of your store.
• Logging options allows you to define what kind of logs you wish to be kept in your store.
• Product search options allows you to define, which fields should be included into the Product search form in the Customer area, and set default values for these fields.
• Security options allows you to adjust options that affect your store security (options that affect encryption methods used in your store, HTTPS options, etc).
• SEO options allows you to adjust options that can improve your site's ranking with search engines.
• Shipping options allows you to adjust options that affect the calculation of shipping rates in your store.

• User Profiles options allows you to configure your store's user profile forms. You can define which of the user profile fields should be active (included into the user profile forms), and completion of which fields should be required (mandatory). If necessary, you can also add your own (custom) fields for use in user profiles.

Information on specific subsections of the 'General settings/Modules options' section comes with descriptions of specific X-Cart module

X-Cart:Appearance Options

The 'General settings/Appearance options' page allows you to adjust preferences that affect the overall appearance of your store.

Pagination options

• Products per page: The maximum number of products which can be displayed on a category page in Customer area (Remember that pages with a lot of products take longer to load).

• Products per page (admin): The maximum number of products which can be displayed on a Search results page in Admin/Provider area.

• Orders per page (admin): The maximum number of orders which can be displayed on a Search results page in Admin/Provider area.

• Users per page (admin): The maximum number of users which can be displayed on a Search results page in Admin area.

• Maximum navigation pages: The maximum number of pages which can be displayed in a navigation bar.

• Select the order in which products should be displayed within a category: The order in which products are sorted within a category.

Possible values: SKU, Product, Default, Price.

 Note: The SKU option is only available when the 'Display product code (SKU) in the products list' option is enabled.

Sorting by SKU arranges products in a category so their SKU numbers increase towards the page bottom (in case of alphanumeric SKUs, the alphabetic part is also sorted from A to Z); sorting by Product arranges products so their names are set out alphabetically; selecting the Default order arranges products so their positions within a category are defined by the POS. field values set for specific products; sorting by Price arranges products in the order of increasing price.

• Display subcategories list in multiple columns: This option allows you to specify how subcategories must be displayed within a category. If this option is enabled, the subcategories are displayed in multiple columns. If this option is disabled, the subcategories are displayed as a list (one below another).

• Show the number of products in categories: If enabled, your customers can see the number of products in each category.

• Show quantity in stock: If enabled, your customers can see the quantity in stock for each product.

• Show quantity selector as input textbox: If enabled, the quantity selector is displayed as an input textbox. If the option is disabled, the quantity selector is displayed as a selectbox.

• Maximum number of selections in quantity selectbox: The maximum number of items a customer can see in the quantity selectbox for each product (This number corresponds to the largest number of product items which a customer can add to the shopping cart at a time).

• Enable 'Buy Now' button in the products list: If enabled, a 'Buy Now' button is added below each product description in the Products list. Customers can use this button to add a product to the shopping cart directly from the Products list without going to the Product details page.

• Display products list in multiple columns (1-3) (leave empty to use standard format): The number of columns (1-3) in which products are arranged in the Products list.

• Display only featured products list in multicolumn format: If enabled, multicolumn format is used only for featured products. This option has priority over the option 'Display products list in multiple columns (1-3)', so if you want products in the Products list to be arranged in multiple columns, be sure to unselect the 'Display only featured products list in multicolumn format' check box.

• The section 'Send to friend' on the Product details page is enabled: If enabled, your customers can see the 'Send to friend' section on the Product details page of each product and use this section to send information about the product to their friends.

• Display product code (SKU) in the products list: If enabled, your customers can see the SKU of each product in the Products list.

• Maximum thumbnail width and Maximum thumbnail height: The maximum width and height of thumbnail images of products and categories.

• Maximum product image width and Maximum product image height: The maximum width and height of product images displayed on Product details pages.

• Select date format: Format that is used for displaying date in all the places in your store where date is displayed.

• Select time format: Format that is used for displaying time in all the places in your store where time is displayed.

• Time difference between shop location and host server location (hours): The time offset between shop location (the location of the store administrative staff responsible for handling orders) and the location of the host server on which X-Cart is installed (a difference in hours expressed as a positive or a negative value; is calculated by subtracting of server time relative to GMT from shop location time relative to GMT). Setting this option allows the store administrative staff to control placement of orders by customers in real time.

• Display detailed cart totals information: Specifies whether product options must be displayed as a product link title on all checkout pages, on the last checkout page only or never.

• Allow to update product quantity on the checkout pages: If enabled, your customers can edit the quantity of product items in their shopping cart after the beginning of checkout.

• Display costs for all the shipping methods: If enabled, an expected shipping cost is displayed next to the name of each shipping method in the 'Delivery method' list on checkout.

• Print order invoices on separate pages: If enabled, each order invoice is printed on a separate page when you print multiple invoices. You can unselect this check box to be able to print multiple invoices on the same page.

• Restore the language of the interface after editing multilingual data: If enabled, the original language of the store back end is automatically restored as soon as administrator finishes editing multilingual data (like international product descriptions) and leaves for some other place in the store interface. If this check box is unselected, administrator has to reset the interface language manually using the language selector.

• Select active language from: This option controls the way the active language is selected in the customer area. Select from drop-down select box, single-line select box (text), and single-line select box (icon).

• Enable printable version of categories and products pages in customer area: If enabled, a printer-friendly version of category and product pages is available to your customers.

• Input and display format for floating comma numbers: Allowed format for input and display of floating comma numbers.

• Display template variables in the debug pop-up window: If enabled, smarty template variables will be displayed in the debug pop-up window.

• Display estimated template compile time: If enabled, the estimated time of template compilation is displayed.

X-Cart:3D-Secure Transaction options

X-Cart:Company Options

Company name: The name of your store.

The value entered into this field replaces the dummy text 'Your Company Name' everywhere in your store:

• in the 'Shop name' element of the page title in all your store's pages;
• in the phrase "Welcome to Your Company Name" appearing on the main site page;
• in the breadcrumb navigation bar (location.tpl).

It also appears as the name of your company in order invoices.

 Note: If you wish, you can specify a different company name to be used as the store site title. Refer to X-Cart:FAQs#How to change my site title appearing in the customer front-end? page.

 Note: When the lbl_site_title variable is defined as the store site title, its value is used:

 

• in the 'Shop name' element of the page title in all your store's pages;

• in the phrase "Welcome to Your Company Name" appearing on the main site page;
• in the breadcrumb navigation bar;

whereas the value of the 'Company name' field still appears on other pages and in your store's invoices.

Company website: The address (URL) of your company website. The value of this field is included into the signature in email notifications.

Year when the store started its operation: The time since when your company is in business. The value of this field is used as the initial year in all the drop-down boxes used for year selection; for example, in the field for selecting the time period when searching for users or orders, in the field for specifying the validity period for a discount coupon, etc.

Company phone: The phone number which your customers should use to contact your company. The value of this field is displayed in the site header in the Customer area and is included into the signature in email notifications.

Company phone 2: The alternative phone number. The value of this field is displayed in the site header in the Customer area.

Company fax: The company fax number. The value of this field is included into the signature in email notifications.

The address specified in the 'Company location address' section on the 'General settings/Company options' page is used for real-time shipping calculation:

- In X-Cart GOLD, this address is used as the origin address for all orders.

- In X-Cart PRO, this address is used a) as the origin address for the orders shipped from providers that do not have a seller address specified in their user profile; b) as the default origin address when testing the store's ability to receive real-time shipping rates.

Company address: The street address of your company.

Company city: The city where your company is located.

Company state: The state where your company is located.

Company zip/postal code: The zip/postal code of the area where your company is located.

Company country: The country where your company is located.

X-Cart can track different types of events that occur in your online store and send notifications about these events to the members of your store staff. The 'Company emails' section allows you to specify the email addresses to which the notifications will be sent.

By default, all the fields in this section contain the email address that was specified during the X-Cart installation. And all the notifications are sent to this address. If the store staff responsible for processing the notifications consists of more than one person who have separate email addresses, or you simply want to use different email addresses for different types of notifications, you need to enter a different address for each type of notifications.

X-Cart allows you to specify 4 company email addresses:

Site administrator email address: for notifications about incorrect and potentially unsafe GET and POST requests to the site, SQL and login errors, notifications sent by the built-in Maintenance Agent.

Users department email address: for notifications about newly created, modified and deleted user profiles.

Orders department email address: for notifications about placed orders and changed order statuses, product quantity warnings etc.

Help/Support department email address: for messages submitted through the Contact Us form.

The exact set of notifications that you will receive at the company email addresses can be readjusted in the 'General settings/Email notifications options' section of the Admin area. For details, study section 'Email Notifications Options' of this manual.

Some spam filters may block an email message if the domain part of the address in the From header does not correspond to the domain that the message was sent from. The email address that you specify here will be automatically put into the From header of all email messages you send from the store. It allows you not to affect the address in the Reply-To header and ensures that your outgoing email messages will not be blocked because of mismatching domains.

Example: If your store domain is www.store.com but the default email address has a different domain part, specify the address This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it and all the outgoing messages will have it in the From header.

X-Cart:Contact Us Form Options

X-Cart provides a form that allows users to submit messages to the store's Help/Support department - the so-called 'Contact us' form.

 Note: The email address for your store's Help/Support department can be specified in the 'General settings/Company options' section.

This form is available to customers (X-Cart GOLD and PRO), providers (X-Cart PRO) and partners (X-Cart GOLD and PRO using X-Affiliate add-on module) via the Help menu.

The 'General settings/Contact us form options' page allows you to configure the set of fields that should be included into the 'Contact us' form for each type of users.

You can define, which of the 'Contact us' form fields should be active (visible to the user), and completion of which fields should be required (mandatory). Required fields will be marked by a red asterisk (*) sign so the user knows they are mandatory for completion; a special validation routine will ensure that all the required fields are completed by the user before the form is submitted.

To configure the 'Contact us' form field set:

1. Select the check boxes in the 'Active' column opposite the names of the fields you want to be available for completion.
2. Select the check boxes in the 'Required' column opposite the names of the fields you want to be mandatory for completion.
3. Click the Save button below the list of 'Contact us' form fields to apply the changes.

Adding custom fields to the 'Contact us' form

If the field set for the 'Contact us' form provided by X-Cart does not meet all of your needs, you can add your own fields to the 'Contact us' form.

To add a custom field to the 'Contact us' form:

1. Scroll down to the 'Additional fields' section of the 'General settings/Contact us form options' page.
2. Use the input box in the FIELD NAME column of the 'Add new field' subsection to enter a name for the field you wish to add.
3. Use the drop-down box in the TYPE column of the 'Add new field' subsection to select a type of field that needs to be added (Text, Check box or Selectbox)
4. If you have chosen the Selectbox type, provide variants for the selectbox (use the ';' symbol as a delimiter).
5. (Optional) Use the field in the POS. column to enter a position number of the field being created relative to the other additional fields (if any).
6. Click the Add/Update button at the bottom of the form to save the changes. The new field should be added to the list of fields in the 'Additional information' section.
7. Select the 'Active' and (optionally) 'Required' check box(es) opposite the newly added field.
8. Click the Save button below the list of 'Contact us' form fields to apply the changes.

Departments titles are language variables:

• Marketing / publicity - lbl_marketing_publicity
• Webdesign - lbl_web_design
• Sales - lbl_sales_department
• Partners - lbl_partners

So to rename the departments you should edit these language variables (via 'Languages' in the admin area).

If you want to add/remove departments, you should edit template 'skin1/help/contactus.tpl' (for 4.0.x, 4.1.x) or 'skin1/customer/help/contactus.tpl' (for 4.2.x).

<td nowrap="nowrap">
<select id="department" name="department">

<option value="All" selected="selected">{$lng.lbl_all}</option>
<option value="Partners">{$lng.lbl_partners}</option>

<option value="Marketing / publicity">{$lng.lbl_marketing_publicity}</option>
<option value="Webdesign">{$lng.lbl_web_design}</option>

<option value="Sales">{$lng.lbl_sales_department}</option>
</select>
</td>

For ex., to remove "Partners", delete this line

<option value="Partners">{$lng.lbl_partners}</option>

To add a new department e.g. "Management", append a similar link to this code:

<option value="Management">Management</option>

Also you can add a language variable for the new department in section 'Languages' ('Add new entry'), e.g. lbl_management. In this case, the new code line in contactus.tpl will be:

<option value="Partners">{$lng.lbl_management}</option>

X-Cart:Email Options

Select all the notifications that you wish to be sent to the store administrator:

• Notify the site administrator by email if unallowed request to site occurs: If selected, the store administrator gets an email notification if the system detects a potentially harmful GET or POST request to the store site (which may be a sign of a hacker attack).

• Notify the site administrator about SQL errors in the store by email: If selected, the store administrator gets notifications about any SQL errors that occur in the store.

• Login error notification to site administrator: If selected, the store administrator gets an email notification if somebody tries to log in to the store as administrator with a password that does not match the actual administrator password.

Select all the notifications which you want to be sent to the orders department of your store:

• Enable email notifications for orders department/providers about initially placed orders: If selected, a notification is sent to the store orders department/providers when an order gets initially placed. An order is considered initially placed when a customer goes to an online payment processor to pay for the order using an online payment method and the order gets the status 'I' (Not finished) - the transaction is neither failed nor successful yet.

• Enable email notifications to the orders department about placed orders: If selected, an email notification is sent to the orders department of your store when an order gets placed.

• 'Order is processed' notification to orders department: If selected, a notification is sent to the orders department of your store when an order gets processed.

• Low limit warning to orders department: If selected, a low limit warning message is sent to the orders department when the quantity in stock of any of the products reaches the 'low limit'.

Select all the notifications which you want to be sent to the users department of your store:

• 'Profile is created' notification to users department: If selected, a notification is sent to the users department when a new user profile gets created.

• 'Profile is modified' notification to users department: If selected, a notification is sent to the users department when a user profile gets modified.

• 'Profile is deleted' notification to users department: If selected, a notification is sent to the users department when a user profile gets deleted.

Select all the notifications which you want to be sent to the store provider(s):

• Send email notifications about placed orders to providers who uploaded the purchased products (in addition to the orders department): If selected, when an order gets placed, notifications are sent not only to the orders department, but also to individual providers who own the products included into the order.

• 'Order is processed' notification to provider: If selected, a notification is sent to the provider when an order gets processed.

• Low limit warning to provider: If selected, a notification is sent to the provider when the quantity in stock of any of his products reaches the 'low limit'.

Select all the customer notifications which you want to be sent:

• 'Order is queued/pre-authorized' notification to customer: If selected, a customer gets a notification when his or her order gets queued (the status 'Q') or pre-authorized. The look and content of such email notifications is defined by these templates:

• Enable email notifications for customers about initially placed orders: If selected, a customer gets a notification when his or her order becomes initially placed. An order is considered initially placed when a customer goes to an online payment processor to pay for an order using an online payment method and the order gets pre-placed with the status 'I' (Not finished), which means that the transaction is neither failed nor successful yet.

• 'Order is processed' notification to customer: If selected, a customer gets a notification when his or her order gets processed (the status 'P').

• 'Order is completed' notification to customer: If selected, a customer gets a notification when his or her order gets completed (the status 'C').

• 'Order is declined' notification to customer: If selected, a customer gets a notification when his or her order gets declined (the status 'D').

• 'Profile is created' notification to profile owner: If selected, an owner of a user profile gets a notification when his or her user profile gets created.

• 'Profile is modified' notification to profile owner: If selected, an owner of a user profile gets a notification when his or her user profile gets modified.

• 'Profile is deleted' notification to profile owner: If selected, an owner of a user profile gets a notification when his or her user profile gets deleted.

When an order fails (is declined by payment gateway), the inventory stays not decreased, but the administrator receives the low limit notification email entitled "Product #1 quantity decreased!" Don't understand, why?

Let's say, you have 3 items in stock and the low limit is 2.

1. Let's say, a customer adds 1 item to cart, then goes to checkout.
2. When the customer clicks on Submit button at the last checkout page, a new order is created with status "Not finished", and the product's quantity in stock is decreased by 1.
   The product quantity in stock is decreased in order to prevent the situation when 2 customers simultaneously purchase the last item of the same product in the store.
3. The low limit notification email is sent to the store administrator.
4. If the order fails (for example, due to the customer's credit card being declined by the payment gateway), the order status is changed to "Failed", and the quantity is increased back to its original value.

For more information about order statuses please refer to: Statuses of orders paid for by online payment methods.

X-Cart:General Options

The 'General settings/General options' page allows you to adjust the general configuration of your store.

• Check this to close your shop temporarily: This option allows you to close the storefront when performing maintenance tasks on your store or making changes to your store's settings/configuration. When this option is selected, no one can access the Customer area of your store without a special key.

You can also see if your shop is open or closed at the top of each page in the Admin area:

 Important: You should understand that making changes on a live store without closing the storefront may cause temporary inconsistencies in the store's functioning, which may lead to undesirable consequences. For example, if you change the store's tax or shipping settings while some customers are checking out, these customers may get wrong order totals.

While the store is closed, visitors attempting to view any page in the Customer area see X-Cart's 'shop closed' page (shop_closed.html). If you wish to use a different HTML page as your 'shop closed' page, edit the $shop_closed_file variable in the config.php file of your X-Cart installation.

• Key for access to a temporarily closed shop: This field allows you to enter a key that you or the other store staff will be able to use for access to the Customer area while the store is closed. For example, if your store's Customer area home page URL is httр://example.com/xcart/home.php and the key is '123', the Customer area can be accessed by pointing the browser to httр://example.com/xcart/home.php?shopkey=123.

 Important: For security reasons, the key must never be the same as the master, FTP or MySQL password.

• If ticked, the categories list always shows root categories: If selected, root categories are shown in the Categories menu of the Customer area regardless of what category level a customer is currently viewing. You can unselect this check box, so the categories list will always show categories available for browsing on the current level.
• Enable default password warning: If selected, a JavaScript warning is displayed to the store users who log in to the store with a password that coincides with the login name. The warning is supposed to be an irritating message that reminds the users of the necessity to change their password.
• Disable anonymous checkout: If selected, checkout is disabled for customers who are not registered/not logged in.
• Enable sign-up for membership: If selected, customers are allowed to sign up for memberships, and administrator moderates the signup process (reviews each customer's application and decides whether the membership should be granted). As a result, customers become members of this or that group only with administrator's approval. You can uncheck this box if you wish to disable membership sign-up for customers (You will still be able to add them to membership groups besides the default group, but it will be outside of the view of your customers).
• Use counties: If selected, use of counties in your store is enabled.
• Use JavaScript version for state and county selector: If selected, a JavaScript version of the state and county selector is enabled for all the forms where users are required to provide a billing/shipping address. You can leave this check box unselected if you do not wish to use the JavaScript version.

How it works with JavaScript version: The JavaScript version of X-Cart's state and county selector provides a mechanism that makes the process of specifying the state/county components of an address more user-friendly.

When a user selects a country from the 'Country' drop-down box in any address form, the JavaScript mechanism ensures that the 'State' drop-down box, from which the user is supposed to select a state, shows not all the states available in the store, but only the states of the country selected from the 'Country' drop-down box. Similarly, in stores that use counties, the list of counties displayed in the 'County' drop-down box includes not all the counties defined in the store, but just the counties of the state selected from the 'State' drop-down box. Please note that the situation described is true only for 1) countries that have their 'has states' check box selected and some states defined; 2) states that have some counties defined. If the user selects a country whose 'has states' box is selected, but for which no states are defined, an input box is provided for the 'State' field, so the customer can type in the name of his or her state manually. If the user selects a country whose 'has states' check box is not selected or a state that does not have any counties defined, the 'State' and 'County' fields are disabled, respectively.

How it works with non-JavaScript version: The 'State' drop-down box provides a list of all the states available in your store (the format of each entry in the list will be 'Country code: State name'). The 'County' drop-down box provides a list of all the counties available in your store in the format 'State name: County name'. Please note that 'has states' check boxes do not affect X-Cart's non-JavaScript state and county selector in any way.

• Redirect customer to cart: If selected, your customers are redirected to the shopping cart page every time they add a product to the shopping cart.
• Return the customer to the dynamic part of the store if the option 'Redirect customer to cart' is disabled and the customer got to the cart page from the HTML-catalog: If selected, a customer who adds a product to the shopping cart from a static HTML catalog page is redirected to the dynamic part of the store. If unselected, the customer is redirected back to the static part of the store.

 Note: Using this option makes sense only when the option 'Redirect customer to cart' is disabled.

Reason why you may want to enable this option: Assuming the option 'Redirect customer to cart' is disabled, customers do not get onto their personal cart page after adding a product to cart. When a customer cannot go to the cart page, the only way for him or her to find out how many product items are currently contained in the shopping cart is by looking at the product items counter in the 'Your cart' menu box. As the number of product items displayed in the 'Your cart' menu box can be updated only in a dynamic store, it makes sense to redirect customers to the dynamic part so they can see the updated number of items in their shopping cart.

Reason why you may want to disable this option: Load on the server where your store is installed can be reduced by having customer activity related to browsing categories and products relocated to the static part of your store (thus relieving the PHP and MySQL).

• Allow searching by individual words of a search phrase: If selected, store users (including customers) can specify whether the results returned by a product search should match 'All words', 'Any word' or the 'Exact phrase' of the search pattern. You might want to disable this option if you wish to reduce load on your MySQL server. With this option disabled, search results will include only exact matches of the search pattern.

• Default country: The country used as the country of residence of the default customer and displayed by default in the 'Country' field of user registration/user profile forms.
• Default zipcode: The zip/postal code used as the zip/postal code of the default customer.
• Default state: The state used as the state of residence of the default customer.
• Default city: The city used as the city of residence of the default customer.
• When a customer isn't logged in, it is presumed that he is from the default country: If selected, the location defined by the values of the 'Default country/zipcode/state/city' fields is regarded as the place of residence of any anonymous customer. As a result, customers can get an estimate of shipping and tax costs for their orders even when they are not registered or not logged in. (For an anonymous customer, a shipping cost is calculated based on the shipping rate defined for the destination zone that includes the default customer location and the shipping method selected by the customer from the list of methods available for the default customer location; an applied tax is calculated based on the destination zone that includes the default customer location).

 Note: Shipping rate estimates are displayed to anonymous customers only when the 'Fast lane checkout' module is disabled.

• Primary currency symbol: The symbol to be used for the primary currency.
• Primary currency display format: The location of the primary currency symbol relative to the amount: before the amount, after the amount, with or without a space between the currency symbol and the amount.
• Alternative currency symbol (empty to disable). Note that credit card charges are made using primary currency: The symbol to be used for the alternative currency. If specified, all the prices in your store will be displayed twice: first in the currency defined as primary, then in the currency defined as alternative.

 Note: If you specify an alternative currency symbol, be sure to set an alternative currency exchange rate further in this section.

If you do not wish to use an alternative currency, leave the 'Alternative currency symbol' field blank.

• Alternative currency display format: The location of the alternative currency symbol relative to the amount: before the amount, after the amount, with or without a space between the currency symbol and the amount.

• Alternative currency exchange rate: The conversion rate to be used by X-Cart to convert prices defined in the primary currency to the alternative currency.
• Weight symbol: The symbol to be used for units of weight (like lbs, kg, etc.)
• Grams in the unit of weight defined by the weight symbol: The number of grams in the unit of weight used in your store (X-Cart needs this value to be able to convert weights expressed in the units of weight specified in the 'Weight symbol' field to the units of weight used by specific shipping services like U.S.P.S, FedEx, etc).

• Minimum allowed order subtotal: The minimum subtotal amount with which an order is accepted by your store (Customers are not allowed to place orders with a subtotal smaller than this value).
• Maximum allowed order subtotal (0 means no maximum limit): The maximum subtotal amount with which an order is accepted by your store (Customers are not allowed to place orders with a subtotal greater than this value).
• Maximum allowed total quantity of products in an order (0 means no maximum limit): The maximum number of product items a customer is allowed to order at a time (regardless of product titles). For example, if you set this value to 5, and a customer of yours attempts to order three books and three CDs, he or she will not be allowed to place the order.

• Disable inventory tracking: If selected, tracking of the number of product items in stock is disabled. You might want to disable inventory tracking only if the number of items in stock is unlimited for all the products in your store.
• Disable products which are out of stock: If selected, products which are out of stock are not shown to customers.

• Do not ask customers to enter CC information while getting registered: If selected, customers are not offered to provide their credit card information at the time of registration (The 'Credit card information' section in the user registration form is disabled).

 Note: Enabling this option is strongly recommended.

• Enable 'Issue Number' and 'Valid from' fields in the CC info form: If selected, 'Issue No.' and 'Valid from' fields are included into the 'Credit card information' section.
• Display CVV2 input box at the last stage of checkout if Manual CC processing is used: If selected, an input box for CVV2 is included into the 'Credit card information' section when manual credit card processing is used.
• Enable Credit Card info validation: If selected, a special validation routine performs a preliminary check of compliance of the credit card number, CVV2 and expiration date provided by a customer with several different formatting rules.
• Number of days in advance that you want a reminder to be sent to the Orders department email address about an order in Pre-authorized status for which the authorization period is going to expire: This setting allows you 1) to set up X-Cart to send email notifications to your store's Orders department about orders for which the authorization period is going to expire soon and 2) to specify the number of days before the end of the authorization period that you wish such notifications to be sent. If you do not wish notifications of this kind to be sent, set this value to "0" (zero).

• Enable debugging console: If selected, X-Cart's debugging console is enabled. X-Cart's debugging console is a tool that can show the hierarchy of templates on any of the store pages and, when Webmaster mode is enabled, can help you find specific templates. You can enable this option when customizing the look and feel of your store; be sure to disable the debugging console as soon as you finish editing the store templates.
• Enable tracking statistics: If selected, X-Cart gathers tracking statistics for your store ('Top paths through site', 'Top page views' and 'Shopping cart conversion funnel' sections are added to the 'Statistics' section of the Admin area of your store).
• Parse Smarty tags in the content of embedded static pages: If selected, you can use Smarty tags in your embedded static pages. As a result, static pages using Smarty tags are treated not just as plain HTML pages, but as templates.
• The full path to Perl interpreter executable (e.g. WIN32: 'd:\perl\bin\perl.exe'; UNIX: '/usr/bin/perl' or leave this field empty): A full path to the Perl binary; set this value to be able to perform X-Cart upgrades on Windows operating systems.
• Preferred HTTPS module (if not found the first available module will be used): The HTTPS module that you wish to use for sending HTTPS queries (Net::SSLeay, CURL, libCURL, Open SSL executable, HTTPS-cli executable). Make sure the desired module is installed on the server.

If the module selected to be preferred is unavailable, X-Cart uses the first available HTTPS module that it can find.

• HTTPS proxy: If you are using Curl or LibCurl, enter the HTTPS proxy data in the required format. Some parts may be omitted, the following variants are possible:

username:password@host:port

username:password@host

username@host

username@host:port

host:port

host

If no proxy should be used, leave the field empty.

• Allow provider users to edit their Seller Address: This option is available only in X-Cart PRO. Using this option, you as a store administrator can allow/forbid your store's providers to access the Seller Address section in their user profile and edit its contents. If this option is enabled, your store's providers will be able to define the address from which their products will be shipped by themselves; they will also be able to edit this address at any time. If this option is disabled, only you (and other store administrators, if any) will be able to define and edit provider seller addresses.
• Key for launch of the cron.php script: This field allows you to set a key that you will use to launch cron.php from the command line. cron.php is X-Cart's script that launches execution of periodic tasks. The key is needed to prevent unauthorized access to this script. The key must be an alphanumeric code no less than 6 characters in length. After the value entered into this field is saved, X-Cart will automatically generate a command that you will be able to use to launch cron.php from the command line. This command will be displayed below the 'Key for launch of the cron.php script' field like the following:

 Command for launch of the cron.php script:
php /home/user/public_html/xcart/cron.php --key=XXXXXXXXXXXXX

• Run the script that launches execution of periodic tasks once per N user sessions (Set to 0 or leave empty if you do not wish to use this script): This setting allows you to set up X-Cart to automatically launch the script cron.php once per a predetermined number of user sessions (The desired number of user sessions can be entered into this field).

• Use speed-up tool for Javascript: Select this check box to speed up JavaScript.
• Use speed-up tool for CSS: Select this check box to speed up CSS.
• Edit the file /<x-cart_directory>/eshop/.htaccess to insert the following lines: Include this code into your .htaccess file to allow optimization tools to work.

When you select to speed up JavaScript and CSS, the respective files are cached, which takes more space on your file system.

Please note that when you enable the optimized mode, all your JavaScript and CSS files are combined into a single temporary file, which makes editing the code impossible. So if you need to customize the code, do it before enabling CSS and JavaScript optimization tools. You can also switch the optimization off, customize the code and switch the optimization back on. This way the edited files will be cached again.

X-Cart:Logging Options

• XSS injection attempts - details of XSS injection attempts, if any.

 Note: Every time X-Cart is launched, it checks whether there have been any changes in the X-Cart environment: PHP settings or PHP extensions. The results of this check are written to the error log, which can become very large, if the environment is changed significantly.

To adjust your store's logging options, do the following:

1. On the 'General settings/Logging options' page, specify what X-Cart must do about each type of events:

The drop-down box opposite each event type provides four options: do nothing, log only, email only and log and email. Adjust the values of all the drop-down boxes so they define what action must be performed by the system with regard to each specific event type:

• do nothing stands for "do not write information about events of this type to the log file and do not send notifications about such events by email",
• log only stands for "write information about events of this type to the log file",
• email only stands for "send notifications about events of this type by email",
• log and email stands for "write information about events of this type to the log file and send notifications about such events by email".

2. If you have enabled email notifications for any event types, specify the email addresses to which log notifications must be sent:

Into the field 'Notification email addresses (use ',' to separate multiple email addresses)', enter a list of email addresses separated by commas.

3. Click the Save button to save the changes.

X-Cart:Product Search Options

The 'General settings/Security options' page allows you to adjust options that affect your store security (options that affect encryption methods used in your store, HTTPS options, etc) and to test the encryption of data by PGP/GnuPG.

• Order emails encryption method: Method that you wish to be used for encrypting order emails.
• Comma separated list of file extensions disallowed for uploading: A comma separated list of disallowed file extensions (For example, php, pl, cgi, asp, exe, com, bat, pif). Uploading onto the server of files with these extensions will not be possible.
• Check if payment gateway response is coming from the IP's specified here (enter a comma separated list): A comma separated list of IP addresses from which payment gateway responses can be accepted.

 Important!
We strongly recommend you to add a comma separated list of IP addresses from which payment gateway responses can be accepted for the Web-based payment methods on this page. For more information about possible payment gateway IPs contact the payment gateway support.
Web-based means a customer is redirected to the payment gateway site, where he or she can enter the credit card data. After the payment is completed, the customer is redirected back to the store. Web-based payment methods can use special callback queries to the store to inform about the transaction status on the side of the payment gateway. Malicious users can try to fake these callback queries to manipulate information about the order status in the store. That is why it is necessary to complete the list of IP addresses, from which callback queries to the store are allowed.

• Enable merchant key based blowfish encryption method: Enabling this option enables Merchant key-based Blowfish encryption for order details. As soon as you select the check box and click the Save button, you are redirected to a page where you are offered to create a Merchant key - a password which is used by X-Cart to encrypt and decrypt order details using Blowfish encryption method. After you create a Merchant key, all the order details in your store are re-encrypted using this new key.

 Important: You will be supposed to enter your Merchant key as a password every time you try to access order details. Make sure you keep your Merchant key in a secure place. If you forget your Merchant key, all the order details stored in your database will be lost, as you will not be able to decrypt them. Please also be aware that the 'Blowfish encryption method is enabled' option cannot be disabled without a valid Merchant key.

• Check MD5 of compiled templates for better store protection at a shared hosting: If selected, a special routine checks if MD5 checksums of the compiled templates of pages served to a user's web browser match the authentic checksums for these templates. If the sums for a certain compiled template do not match, the template is discarded and compiled anew. Compiled templates whose MD5 checksum does not match the authentic one are considered potentially harmful: the detected checksum mismatch indicates that the PHP code of such templates has been altered and may possibly contain malicious code.

 Note: Enabling this option is recommended if your X-Cart is installed at a shared (public) hosting.

PCI DSS compliance options

• Number of failed login attempts after which a user account must be suspended: The number of login attempts that a user is allowed to make using an incorrect password before X-Cart automatically suspends their account. For compliance with PCI Data Security Standard, set this value to 6.
• Lockout duration in minutes (Leave empty if you do not want to automatically re-enable automatically suspended users): The time period for which a user must remain suspended after having been automatically suspended by the system after a number of failed login attempts. For compliance with PCI Data Security Standard, set this value to 30 minutes or leave the field empty.
• Number of days of inactivity after which an administrator account must be suspended (Set to 0 or leave empty if you do not wish to suspend unused administrator accounts): The number of days that an administrator account may remain inactive before getting automatically suspended by X-Cart. For compliance with PCI Data Security Standard, set this value to 90 days.
• Use password strength check: This option allows you to enable password strength check for passwords created by the users of your store. If this option is enabled, every time a user creates a new password for their account, X-Cart will perform a check to ensure that this password contains both numeric and alphabetic symbols and is no less than 7 symbols in length. If this option is disabled, no such check will be performed. For compliance with PCI Data Security Standard, enable this option.
• Number of days after which non-customer users must be requested to change their password: The number of days since the user's most recent login after which X-Cart must request the user to change their password. This setting is relevant only for non-customer users (administrators, providers). For compliance with PCI Data Security Standard, set this value to 90 days.
• Do not allow a user to submit a new password that is the same as any of the last four passwords they have used: This option helps you ensure that users who are requested to change their password will change their password to something new (not a password they have already used). For compliance with PCI Data Security Standard, enable this option.

HTTPS options

• Use HTTPS for users' login and registration: If selected, existing users log in to the store and new users get registered using HTTPS.
• Use secure login form on a separate page (HTTPS): If selected, your store's authorization pages will provide links to special secure login pages allowing users to log in to the store using HTTPS.
• Do not redirect customers from HTTPS to HTTP: If selected, customers use HTTPS all the time while using your store. You can unselect this check box if you want to enable redirection of customers to HTTP for pages where security is not required.

PGP options

• Home path: Path to PGP home directory (a directory where PGP configuration file and keyrings are stored).

 Note: All the files in PGP home directory must be owned by the user under which PGP is running (usually Web server) and must have UNIX 0600 permissions. The directory itself must have 0700 permissions.

• PGP binary path: Path to PGP executable.
• PGP user id: Your user ID (an ASCII string used to identify a user).
• PGP public key: Public key that will be used to encrypt your data (After you paste your public key into this field and click the Save button, the key will be added to your public keyring).
• Use PGP version 6: Selecting this check box enables you to use PGP version 6.

GnuPG options

• Home path: Path to GnuPG home directory.
• GnuPG binary path: Path to GnuPG executable.
• GnuPG user id: Your user ID.
• GnuPG public key: Public key that will be used to encrypt your data.

P3P options

This section allows you to define your store's privacy policy. P3P enabled web browsers will use the information provided in this section to decide how to interact with your store site. For example, Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 can compare your store's privacy policy with the user's stored preferences to decide whether or not to allow cookies from your store site.

• P3P compact policy data: Your store's compact privacy policy (will be included in the HTTP header).
• P3P policy reference file url (leave empty if not used): URL of your store's P3P policy reference file.

 Note: More information about P3P is available at W3C P3P site (http://www.w3.org/P3P/).

Test data encryption

This section allows you to test whether PGP/GnuPG encryption is working correctly. For details, see X-Cart:PGP/GnuPG page.

X-Cart:SEO Options

The 'General settings/SEO options' page provides a set of options that you can use to optimize your store site for search engines.

 Note: This section of the 'General settings/SEO options' page offers a brief explanation of Clean URLs and provides instructions on how this functionality can be enabled in your store.

Clean URL options

• Enable Clean URLs (requires Apache web server with mod_rewrite module enabled): This option enables the Clean URLs functionality at your store. Important: Additional steps are required; for details, see the Note on the usage of clean URLs on the 'General settings/SEO options' page.
• Maximum number of URLs that can be stored in the Clean URLs history for one page: The maximum number of previously entered clean URL values that your store must be able to keep for any object (product, category, manufacturer or embedded static page). When the Clean URL history of an object contains the number of clean URL values specified by this option, saving another clean URL value to the Clean URL history of this object removes from the history the clean URL value that was added earliest. If you do not wish to limit the number of clean URL values that can be stored, leave this field empty or set its value to '0' (zero).
• Redirect dynamic PHP URLs to the corresponding Clean URLs: This option allows you to specify whether a visitor who requests a page in your store using a dynamic URL must be redirected to the clean URL of that page. If this option is enabled, the visitor will be redirected to the clean URL of that page with the "HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently" HTTP status code. If this option is disabled, the dynamic page will be served (no redirection will occur).
• Clean URL extension for category pages: The extension to be used for the clean URLs of all your store's category pages.
• Clean URL extension for product pages: The extension to be used for the clean URLs of all your store's product pages.
• Clean URL extension for manufacturer pages: The extension to be used for the clean URLs of all your store's manufacturer pages.
• Clean URL extension for static pages: The extension to be used for the clean URLs of all your store's embedded static pages.

General options

• Default site 'Title' tag: Enter the default text to be used in the title tag of all the site pages.
• Site META description: The description to be used in the description meta tag of pages that do not have a meta description of their own and are not using any other meta description (Maximum 500 characters).
• Site META keywords: The keywords to be used in the keywords meta tag of pages that do not have meta keywords of their own and are not using any other meta keywords (Maximum 500 characters).
• Page title format: The format of page titles to be used for all the pages in your store.
• Maximum length of page title element (leave 0 or empty if not applicable): The maximum number of characters to be displayed in a page title. If the actual number of characters in the page title is greater than the number set by this option, the title is truncated. Please note that the truncation does not split words. For example, if this option is set to 50, and the fiftieth character happens to be in the middle of a word, X-Cart moves back to the nearest space character after the end of the last full word before the fiftieth character and cuts off everything that goes after the end of this word beginning with the space character. This mechanism ensures that page titles do not include partial words.
• Use canonical URLs for storefront pages: This option helps to improve the standing of every single storefront page with Google, Yahoo! and other search engines by clearing up returned search results for the store. See http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html for details.

X-Cart:Shipping Options

General shipping options

• DISABLE SHIPPING: If selected, a customer is not offered to select a shipping method during checkout, and shipping cost is not calculated.
• Enable all shipping methods even if a customer is not logged in: If selected, all available shipping methods are shown not only to customers who are logged in, but also to anonymous customers.
• Do not calculate shipping rates for products with defined shipping freight: If selected, shipping rates for products with a defined shipping freight are not calculated.
• Do not require selection of delivery method for products with free shipping: If selected, a list of shipping methods is not displayed on checkout to customers whose order contains only ESD products (Egoods) or products with free shipping.
• List of shipping methods available for an order that contains (in addition to products with non-free shipping) some products with free shipping should be defined based on the weight of the entire order (weight of the products with free shipping included): One of the parameters defining whether a certain shipping method should be entered into the list of shipping methods available for an order is weight: the shipping method is displayed as available only if the weight of the order does not exceed the weight limit defined for this shipping method. The option 'List of shipping methods available for an order...' defines whether the weight of the products with free shipping contained in an order should be taken into account when calculating the weight of the order. If this option is selected, the weight of the order is calculated as a sum of weights of both the products with non-free shipping and the products with free shipping contained in it. If this option is unselected, the weight of the order is calculated as the sum of weights of just the products with non-free shipping (the weight of the products with free shipping is excluded).

 Note: This option works only when the option 'Do not require selection of delivery method for products with free shipping' is disabled.

Example:

You have two shipping methods:

A customer's order contains two products: Product X and Product Y, each weighing 1 lb. Product X has free shipping.

If the option 'List of shipping methods available for an order...' in your store is selected, on checkout the customer is offered just one shipping method - Method 2. That is because the total weight of the order is calculated as 2 lbs, and 2 lbs do not fit in the weight limit for Method 1.

If the option 'List of shipping methods available for an order...' is unselected, the customer is offered two shipping methods - both Method 1 and Method 2. That is because the total weight of the order is calculated as 1 lb (the weight of Product X is not taken into account), and the weight of 1 lb fits in the weight limit for both the methods.

• Use product dimensions for shipping rates calculation: This setting allows you to specify whether you wish product dimensions to be used for shipping rates calculation. If this option is enabled, calculation of shipping rates will be performed with the consideration of product dimensions, not just weight. If this option is disabled, the calculation of shipping rates will be performed based on product weight only; product dimensions will be ignored.

 Note: The option 'Use product dimensions for shipping rates calculation' is relevant only for real-time shipping calculation.

Real-time shipping options

• Enable real-time shipping calculation: If selected, your customers will see an estimation of shipping cost for orders before they are placed. These shipping rates will be received directly from the shipping carriers. Consult the 'Real-time Shipping Calculators' section for more information.

 Note: If you choose to enable real-time shipping calculation, be sure to provide the actual address of your company (the location from which product items will be shipped) in General settings/Company options.

• Use Intershipper calculation service: If selected, UPS, USPS and FedEX real-time shipping rates will be obtained by your store via Intershipper.

 Note: If you choose not to enable Intershipper support, X-Cart will use its own integrated modules to obtain shipping rates from UPS, USPS and FedEX.

Dimensions of the shipping box for small items (for real-time shipping)

This section allows you to set the length, width and height of the shipping box that you will use to ship orders containing only small items (Small items are products for which the option 'Use the dimensions of this product for shipping cost calculation' on the 'Product details' page is disabled).

 Note: The settings in this section need to be adjusted only if the options 'Enable real-time shipping calculation' and 'Use product dimensions for shipping rates calculation' are enabled in your store.

Intershipper account details

This section allows you to provide your InterShipper account details.

U.S.P.S account details

This section allows you to provide your U.S.P.S. account details.

CanadaPost account details

This section allows you to provide your CanadaPost account details.

DHL/Airborne account details

This section allows you to provide your DHL/Airborne account details.

FedEx options

This section allows you to provide your FedEx account details.

Test Realtime Shipping Rates Calculation

This section allows you to test real-rime shipping rate calculation.

X-Cart:User Profiles Options