- Installation on Windows
VP-ASP Shopping cart is one of the most comprehensive e-commerce solutions available anywhere and for any price. It allows you to build an Internet shop that can sell 1 product or tens of thousands of products. VP-ASP is ready to use and comes with extensive customer facilities for browsing, searching and ordering products. The back end administration allows the merchant to alter and manipulate products, run reports, bulk mail, track and display orders.
Installation should only take 5 minutes.
When you receive VP-ASP it will be in the form of a zip file. You will need a utility such as WinZip to uncompress the one file into 200+ files. All are files stored in a single folder. This document includes details for Windows both on your local PC and on Windows web hosting company.
VP-ASP for Windows databases are Microsoft Access, Microsoft SQL Server. If you are using MYSQL you will have purchased or installed the UNIX/MYSQL version of VP-ASP. Only the deluxe version of VP-ASP for Windows includes all three database support options.
Developer's guide | http://www.vpasp.com/virtprog/vpasp500developer.zip |
Merchant's Guide | http://www.vpasp.com/virtprog.vpasp500merchant.zip |
Option Package Guide | http://www.vpasp.com/virtprog/vpasp500optiondesign.zip |
Add-ons Guide | http://www.vpasp.com/virtprog/vpasp500addonsdesign.zip |
Technical specifications | http://www.vpasp.com/virtprog/vpasptechnical.htm |
Customer Sites | http://www.vpasp.com/demos/vpaspsites |
Forum | http://www.vpasp.com/virtprog/vpaspforum |
Additional Help | http://www.vpasp.com/virtprog/helpdesk |
First determine what Windows operating system you have. Then determine if you have the appropriate Microsoft prerequisites.
Windows 95/98 | If you have Windows 95/98 VP-ASP requires that you have the free Microsoft product called Personal Web Server (PWS). If you do not have PWS installed, then you must install it. It comes either free on your Windows CDROM or it can be downloaded from the web. Please see http://www.vpasp.com/virtprog/info/faq_pws.htm |
Windows NT/2K/XP Professional | VP-ASP requires that you have Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS). This is available on the NT or XP CD-ROM. |
Windows ME/XP Home | Unfortunately Microsoft has not made available any software that can run ASP on these operating systems. To evaluate VP-ASP you will need to use VP-ASP on your web hosting company. |
- Unzip the files to a folder on your hard drive
- Tell IIS or PWS that this is a virtual directory. See Windows 95/98/NT PWS or Windows XP set-up for the proper way to do this if you have never done it before
VP-ASP is installed
1. Start your browser
2. Type http://127.0.0.1/shopping or http://localhost/shopping
The 127.0.0.1 is Microsoft's magic number meaning my own personal PC. Shopping is the virtual directory that you created. If you have installed VP-ASP on a web server that has an actual domain name the 127.0.0.1 will be replaced by your normal domain name. If you are using Windows 95/98 and are unsure how to create a virtual directory go to www.vpasp.com/virtprog/info/faq_pws
For Windows XP Profession go to www.vpasp.com/virtprog/info/faq_xpsetup.htm
- You should now see the default VP-ASP home page
- Click on the shop button and you should see the demo shop categories.
The most common problems are these:
1. Instead of seeing the shop categories, a program tries to load.
This is caused by an incorrect setting of your virtual directory. Please see
http://www.vpasp.com/virtprog/info/faq_helpme.htm
2. On Windows NT/XP an error occurs trying to write to the supplied VP-ASP Access database.
This is because the correct permissions have not been set that allow people from a browser to update the database. Use our diagnostic tool diag_dbtest.asp to test the database and then see our help file at http://www.vpasp.com/virtprog/info/faq_databasesetup.htm
3. VP-ASP does not store any cookies on the customers PC but it does require the browser to have cookies enabled. If cookies are not enabled in the browser no products are added to the shopping cart and the cart empty message appears.
4. The Database cannot be opened, You get errors such as
ADODB.Recordset error '800a0e7d' The application requested an operation on an object with a reference to a closed or invalid Connection object.
- Create a folder on your web host. Copy the files from your PC to your web hosting company using your normal FTP tools. such as CuteFTP or WSFTP.
- Copy the supplied Access database, shopping500.mdb, to a special directory your web host supplies. It cannot be in the same folder as the rest of VP-ASP. Most web hosting companies supply a special database directory since normal directories on a web host are read only.
- You must edit shop$config.asp to tell VP-ASP where the database is located. See www.vpasp.com/virtprog/info/faq_databasesetup.htm
- To use VP-ASP and see demo shop, use your browser and type www.yoursite.com/shopping. The shopping is the folder you copied the VP-ASP files into on your web host.
- Now run our supplied diagnostic tool, diag_dbtest.asp. Make sure the database can be read and written.
SQL Server is a complex Microsoft software product. From the VP-ASP point of view it is very simple to use. The steps in using SQL Server are:
Create the SQL Server database. This can be done using SQL Server's Query analyzer or it may have been created for you by your web hosting company