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About to buy Powerstore 2

Thread began 9/22/2009 10:49 pm by micja3389704 | Last modified 9/24/2009 11:45 am by Eric Mittman | 3902 views | 6 replies |

micja3389704

About to buy Powerstore 2

A question or two before I begin the purchase/download. I've read through the What Do You Need to Start, did a bit of preliminary work. I wanted to know if I need to do anything else that will make our transition easier. We already have an existing html site. We want to add the shopping cart/store. We started off with oscommerce, that was a nightmare.

What I have so far: the mysql database on a linux server. Our cpanel does come with MYPHPadmin already installed--on our remote server...not on our local computer(s).

Reading through the prep materials, it sounded like I need to install PHP on our local computers as well? Or do we use what is on the remote server?

Are we able to preview the shopping cart pages right from dreamweaver? When working with oscommerce php pages in dreamweaver, it wouldn't preview. I was told I need to set up a WAMP server to preview php pages, but I have no idea how to do that.

Any help will be greatly appreciated. I look forward to learning new ways to tax my brain...

Thanks,
Michelle

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office172461

It's a good idea (not a requirement) to have a testing environment so you don't have to worry about messing up your production server. It also makes development much faster. You have to have a PHP server somewhere whether you use a local or remote. The advantages of using a local are huge and since it can be setup for free, you might as well do it right.

Here's an article that should make it easy for you:
How to set up a local testing server for Dreamweaver
144/

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terry164844

Michelle,

Let me help you a little bit to make things SOOO much easier.

First, while you can use myphpadmin, I would not advise this if you are going to spend any time in the database. Download from mysql their Mysql Query browser. However, keep in mind that the only way to use a tool outside of myphpadmin is to have a dedicated IP address for your domain.

Now, as far as testing server. It's advisable for sure, however what you can do for the sake of testing is create a subdirectly on your domain and use that as the testing environment. That way you don't need to load php, mysql etc. on your local machine. It can be difficult & easy depending on your configuration.

Anyway, I hope this helps. You will find (once you get your head our the eCart and PowerStore) that Webassist really does improve our lives for churning out ecommerce websites.

I built several of these sites for Nike using Webassist and they really deliver.

Best of Luck,

Terry

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office172461

XAMPP takes all of the pain out of setting up a local testing environment. The problem with using your production server for testing is you either have to turn on verbose error messages (security risk) or try to figure out problems without them.

Learning PHP on a production server is a scary way to go in my opinion. :)

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Eric Mittman

I agree with office172461. For security purposes it is a much better idea to have a local dev environment. In addition to having the security compromised with error reporting turned on some hosts limit the ability to enable error reporting or the type of errors that can be returned due to the security concerns. Developing locally will allow you to have complete control over these settings in a safe environment.

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micja3389704

This is a good start

I can't tell you all how much I appreciate the info. I have quite a bit to learn, and I didn't get a chance tonight to sit down and absorb the information the way I need to. I bookmarked the link (thanks) and hope to spend some study time in the next few days going over and digging into all your advice. To be honest, some of it is greek to me...I am new to the whole PHP thing...but I know I need to learn. You've been extremely helpful.

I will be back with more questions soon, and hopefully someday I can do the same for someone else that you are doing for me. Thanks!

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Eric Mittman

Learning the ins and outs of using PHP and MySQL may be difficult initially if you are not familiar with these types of things, but it is well worth the effort. Please don't hesitate to post back with any additional questions you have, as you can see there are some knowledgeable and helpful people on the forums that are glad to help out.

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