Any existing web can easily interface to VP-ASP. VP-ASP is designed not only as a shopping cart but also as an extremely powerful web site generator. FrontPage and Dreamweaver are totally separate products. We recommend that you first play with VP-ASP independently of other software.. Once you understand all the things that VP-ASP does for you automatically, you will find that for your shop at least you may need to create little or no separate HTML files.
What VP-ASP can do automatically?
Link from your site to VP-ASP facilities
Link from Your Site to VP-ASP Shopping Cart
VP-ASP includes numerous hyperlinks that allow you to link from your existing site and use VP-ASP facilities. Most are described in the Developer's Guide but a summary is provided below.
Link back to your pages
By including your page name or URL in the extended description field of the product, VP-ASP can automatically generate a hyperlink back to your own page.
Simplest Link from your site to VP-ASP
By just including a simple link anywhere in the existing web to routine shopdisplaycategories.asp, all the shopping facilities and product displays are automatic. No further interface is required.
<a href="shopdisplaycategories.asp">Display Categories</a>
All the features of your existing web are still there but shopping component is now part of your web.
Add To Cart
The second method of interfacing to your existing web is slightly more complex. A specific hyperlink is added anywhere in your existing web to routine shopaddtocart.asp. This will allow adding one specific product to the cart from anywhere in the existing web. Two parameters are required: Productid and Quantity as shown below. The productid comes from the products database (catalogid field).
<a href="shopaddtocart.asp?productid=1&quantity=1">Click to Order</a>
Displaying one product details
To display the details for one product. The first hyperlink requires the VP-ASP option Package.
<a href="shopexd.asp?id=99">Display Specific product</a>
or
<a href="shopquery.asp?catalogid=99">Display Specific product</a>
Displaying Products for a category
To display products for a category the following hyperlink can be used
<a href="shopdisplayproducts.asp?id=2">Display travel Products</a>
Displaying Products in a Subcategory
To display products for a subcategory the following hyperlink can be used
<a href="shopdisplayproducts.asp?id=2&">Products in subcategory 3</a>
Displaying Products by name
To display products for a category the following hyperlink can be used
<a href="shopdisplayproducts.asp?Product=abcdef">Products that start with the letters abcdef</a>
The product name must be in URL format. This typically means that spaces and other special characters cannot be included without changing. For example to display
My stuff would look like the following where the space is replaced by a plus sign
<a href="shopdisplayproducts.asp?Product=my+stuff">Display stuff</a>
Displaying Products by any Criteria
To display products by any field in the products table, either create a form with the field names or use a hyperlink. See supplied file shopsamplelinks..htm for examples of both. Suppose you want to display all shirts with prices less than $50.
Using a hyperlink
<a href="shopquery.asp?cprice=50&cname=shirt">Display stuff</a>
Using a form
When using a form, the submit button must be called shopquery
<form method="POST" action="shopquery.asp">
Name<input type="text" name="cname" size="30"><br>
Manufacturer<input type="text" name="mfg" size="30"><br>
Price<input type="text" name="cprice" size="30"><br>
<input type="submit" value="Display" name="Shopquery">
<input type="reset" value="Reset" name="resetbutton"></p>
</form>
Search for products by Keyword
The normal shopsearch.asp facility can be used by hyperlink using the following method
<a href="shopsearch.asp?search=YES&keyword=abc,def,jkl">Search for keywords</a>
Tell A friend
Tell a friend can be used to tell a friend about your web site or about a specific product.
shoptellafriend.asp
shoptellafriend.asp?id=66
Where 66 is the catalog id of a specific product.
Display your images and HTML pages
By simply putting the name of your images or your HTML pages associated with a product, VP-ASP can automatically display the images, both thumbnail and large. It can also automatically link back to individual product description pages from VP-ASP generated pages.
Automatic HTML generation
VP-ASP, with the Option Package, can automatically display detailed HTML pages on a product by product basis by merging an HTML template with information from the database. If you have 1000 products, instead of creating 1000 detailed HTML pages, create one template and VP-ASP can generate the 1000 pages dynamically when needed. For flexibility different templates can be used for different sets of products or categories of products.
HTML templates can be created with FrontPage, Dream Weaver or your favorite editor.
Now this is productivity.
Static HTML generation
Create plain HTML from the entire products pages using a template. Regenerate entire database in seconds. Can be used to optimize search engine indexing of your site.
Merge any template with any Table
Almost unlimited uses. Take any database table with any HTML template and merge the two. Uses are for content management only limited by your imagination.
Service Payments
Use the VP-ASP Shopping cart to collect payments from your customers using or Project payment facility. Can automatically send and collect payments to your own customers to pay for web development, site building or any service at all.