MDS BLOG

Have you just uploaded a new template in your joomla site and you just cant get it to appear even after choosing it as the default template?, well how did i solve that problem?. It’s very easy, just get to your template directory in your sever and give it a write permission  777. Actually thats how i was able to solve my own problem.

Dont panic about that next time , just remember it may be a folder permission problem and so please try the above mentioned solution.

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After installing an oscommerce store, the next thing you want to do is work yourself through the backend to get familar with it, one of the things that would strike your mind is how to set up a payment system that would recieve money from your customers with ease. Majority of online entreprenuers would go for paypal payment system because that is one of the easiest payment gateways to set up.

I have decided to talk about this a little bit because not so long ago, i was consulted by a client on how to set up a payment system in oscommerce with paypal. The good news is that oscommerce already has paypal payment module built into it and all you need to do is configure it in the store admin.

Before you do that, you must make sure you have set up a paypal account and then come back and configure your paypal account in  the oscommerce store admin. Because we would not like to touch on others that are not so relevant, lets walk you through how to do it  with paypal.

LET’S GO HERE:

• Go to your admin
• Click on ‘Modules’ folder
• Click on ‘payment’
• on the list on the right find ‘PayPal Website Payments Standard’
• Click on it and top right , click on ‘edit’ .
• Then set the button to true if you want to accept payment by paypal website standard and then enter your paypal account email address and click on ‘update’ . There you are finished, all you need to do is test it and see if it works, try to buy an item as a customer and see if it works, once it leads you to your paypal page, then you are on the right path.

Hope this helps.

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Hello all,

I know there are lots of topics that needs updating here in this our blog that has not been updated but please bear with me as i have too many projects on my hand.

Recently a client of mine asked me some questions regarding a payment module problem in Prestashop and i felt i should share it.

PROBLEM: When a client  wants to pay by Bank wire, an error page is generated with the message “INTERNAL SERVER ERROR.”

SOLUTION: This is basically a folder/file permission problem, just go to your Module folder and give it the permission 755 and also make sure that the files inside the bankwire folder are set to 644.

So lets summarize it,  Module folder = 755 , Bankwire folder inside the Module folder = 755,  Files inside the bankwire folder =644.

Your problem should be solved after you do these and you can apply this  to  other such errors relating to payment Modules.

Hope this helps.

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I had a  joomla site i was developing for a client recently but by the time i decided to extend it in a sophisticated way as i always do with my sites, but to my surprise i couldn’t upload any module as it keeps producing errors like “Please enter a package directory”.  Actually this gave me a little headache because i could not imagine having a site i can’t module up the way i like but after looking around , i finally solved the problem.

Now lets follow up the errors associated with these one after the other.

ELIMINATING THE FTP ERRORS THAT APPEARS WHEN YOU TRY TO INSTALL A MODULE.

• Go to Admin control panel
• Go to” Site” on the top menu
• Go to “global configuration”
• Click on “Server”  on the top menu
• Scroll down and get to “FTP SETTINGS”
• Juts enter your normal FTP settings by your host and then save.

This will elimate those FTP errors you get in red colours when trying to upload a module. It will also help to solve most error problems you get  around the site related to FTP.

UPLOADING AND INSTALLING  YOUR EXTENSION FILES SUCCESSFULLY;

There are two approaches to this.

1. Just download the extension you want to install, unzip the files

Open up your ftp program or root folder in your server and then create a folder and call it any name, then upload the files you want to install to that folder, then go back to your install/uninstall under extensions menu and then use the option  “install from directory” Change the directory url to your latest folder where your inteded files are stored i.e  /home/user/public_html/your new folder

Then click on install and you are done.

2 The second approach which is the simplest one is to simply dowload the extension, then do not unzip it or if unzipped, use a zip program to zip up the folder and then use the “Upload package file” option to upload  and install the  extension.

Afterwards you can click on module option and then configure and enable the actual module installed.

If you are having problems with these please let me know by leaving a comment here.

 Hope this helps out.

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Thank you guys for all the support i have been recieving since i started putting up this blog, i have tried to make sure that i cover those little problems that might appear to be simple but at the same time poses a big problen for the everyday internet user and designer.

Remember we covered the issue of installing a php script and setting up your site. Now there is a major problem that comes with editing the files associated with these scripts. Because of the fact that there are so many files associated with these scripts to edit, the best thing to do is to take it gradually.

Let us start by answering some common questions:

How do i identify a file that needs editing?

Normally , you do not go about editing a file that does not need editing, while browsing through pages, the page that needs editing would usually have it’s page extension on the browser like home.html, home.asp, home.php, all you need to do is go to the server and look for this particular file, sometimes it could be a file that is inside a folder like admin/includes/home.php.

Please look for the files according to the folder where they belong and sometimes  you might find that some of the files had been integrated into the other, in this case you would have to read through the whole lines find the actual file to edit, now one of my best tricks is to use the source code view on your browser, this would normally present the whole files as one and then you would know where to find what you need. A good script would normally leave comments to aid the editing.

How do i know which code to edit ?

This is a little bit tough, in this case you must be atleast half or basically knowledgeable in the language used on the page you want to edit, i would advice you to back up the files you want to edit and then if there is any mistake, you can quickly replace the file to the status quo.

If you read through the codes very well, you should be able to know which lines you need to edit. lets say you want to change an image in a page from “Mike.jpg” to “Mike.gif”, all you need to do is look around the codes in the page where you feel the image is, then change it accordingly. The same goes for the html or php codes, usually you see a similarity between what you are looking for and the codes in the page.

The best advice is to look for an expert in this field.

What is the relevance of the header and footer php files ?

Most php scripts like forum scripts, cms scripts etc  would normally have a file header.php, header.tpl , footer.php,footer.tpl. This provides users the ease to add and remove contents to the head and foot of the sites. As usuaul it is better to always backup the files before they edited.

These two files are very important because in a site, most people would like to change the looks of the head and the foot site regularly and this can be done through these two files.

What about the CSS files?

Coming soon!

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I know most of you using Oscommerce ecommerce script might have experienced this problem where your front page looks jaggered up with errors after you have edited the front page text of oscommerce from the admin file manager. Apart from having different bugs and fixes discussed  in the oscommerce forum about this particular issue.

However , there is only one simple fix according to experience and that is;

• Never be tempted to edit the includes/languages/english/index.php  file from the Oscommerce file manager, edit it directly from your server or notepad. This is the file where you would edit your front page text.

Hope this helps

Thanks

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I never thought it would be that simple but if you are using Cpanel, this is simply the  steps to take.

• Simply Log into your Cpanel
• Go to MYSQL database icon inside the cpanel as if you are trying to create a new database.
• When the page opens find the form where you can add a new user.
• Simply add the same exact username to the database you want to change the password and then just enter any new password you wish to use.
• And there you go you are almost done.
• Finally go to your config file and change the database password to the new one and you are done. If you dont do this last part, it will fail because it cannot connect to the database.

NOTE: Please make sure that you can find this configuration file of your site before you go through the process just to avoid complications.

Goodluck

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Alright we are here again. I got an email from one of my client saying he would like to change the welcome email sent out by OSCOMMERCE store when a customer registers at his store. Actually it took me sometime to find the the file where i can do this but it has been finally cracked as usual. Here is how to go about it.

• Go to your Oscommerce backend or admin
• Go to tools
• Go to file manager
• Go to the includes folder
• Go to language folder
• Go to English or any folder containing the language your site uses.
• Open the file create_account.php
• Find this line:define(‘EMAIL_TEXT’, ‘You can now take part in the <b>various services</b> we have to offer you. Some of these services include:’ . “\n\n” . ‘<li><b>Permanent Cart</b> – Any products added to your online cart remain there until you remove them, or check them out.’ . “\n” . ‘<li><b>Address Book</b> – We can now deliver your products to another address other than yours! This is perfect to send birthday gifts direct to the birthday-person themselves.’ . “\n” . ‘<li><b>Order History</b> – View your history of purchases that you have made with us.’ . “\n” . ‘<li><b>Products Reviews</b> – Share your opinions on products with our other customers.’ . “\n\n”);
  define(‘EMAIL_CONTACT’, ‘For help with any of our online services, please email the store-owner: ‘ . STORE_OWNER_EMAIL_ADDRESS . ‘.’ . “\n\n”);
  define(‘EMAIL_WARNING’, ‘<b>Note:</b> This email address was given to us by one of our customers. If you did not signup to be a member, please send an email to ‘ . STORE_OWNER_EMAIL_ADDRESS . ‘.’ . “\n”);
  ?>
• Start editing the text, please if you dont know php, it is better to change only the words and stay inside any code or quotation lines or otherwise you will get an error.
• Summary of the file to open = /includes/languages/english/create_account.php

Hope this helps out.

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