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How do I add extra pages to CactuShop with my own content?
Question
I want to add extra pages to my CactuShop with my own content but retain the look & feel as well as the minibasket and menus on them. How do I do this?
Answer
The way you do this depends on which version of CactuShop you're using.
In v6, look for the 'custom pages' link on the back end home page. This lists the custom pages on your store from where you can add new ones and edit or delete existing ones. The pages are pure text so you can use HTML mark up to display images or format text.
Note that custom pages will automatically appear on the site map, but if you want links on all pages (for example a 'terms and conditions' page, you will need to manually add this link to your skin).
In older versions of CactuShop (prior to v6), the process is a bit more complex.
Firstly, your extra pages will need to be in the same folder as the rest of the CactuShop front end pages, otherwise links to the include files and other pages will point to the wrong location.
Take a copy of the about.asp page to use as a basis for your new page. Open this up in a text editor and you will see ASP code at the top and bottom, with an HTML table within the middle of the page.
If your site is multi-language, or you want the ability to change the page text from the back end of your site, you'll want to create your content as language strings. Our 'about' page has two language strings, these are called 'PageTitle_About' and 'ContentText_AboutText'. These strings have the numbers 1013 and 1014 respectively. You'll need to create two new language strings with different names such as 'PageTitle_NewPage' and 'ContentText_NewPageText'. In order to make it easier to upgrade your store in the future, we'd suggest numbering your new language strings with numbers starting at, say, 5000. That way, we won't be creating strings with clashing numbers in the foreseable future.
Once you have your two new language strings, you can modify your new script by changing the string names to those of your new strings. You will also need to find this line at the top of the script:
PageStrings = "1013, 1014"
...and change the numbers to those of your new strings, otherwise your new strings won't be pulled out from the database.
Finally, you can add a link to your new page on the skin template so that people can navigate to it.
If you aren't running a multi-language store, you may decide to avoid the hassle of creating language strings. In this case, start the same way by copying 'about.asp', but instead of creating new language strings, you can just replace the whole HTML section with your own HTML.
When replacing the HTML on the page, remember that you should only add the content you want to appear within the <BODY> tag. The skin will add the header and other HTML essentials to the page later.