PrivateArea

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PrivateArea is a module developed by Custom Scriptz for Zen Cart where Manufacturers (often called Designers by Scrapbooking Stores) will have it's own area where they can individually manage Products, Coupons, Sales, Special prices and more, withow accessing other Manufacturers stuff.

This module is free?

  • No, this module isn't free and it's for sale at our scripts store.

This module is supported by Zen Cart Team?

  • No, we support this module.

This module will overwrite any of my files?

  • No, this module does not overwrite any core files from Zen Cart.

System Requirements

Zen Cart v1.3.8a or newer
ionCube Loaders
PHP 5 or newer
MySQL 5

Features

In PrivateArea, we refer to Manufacturers as Providers, so when we say that, you know who I'm talking about.

  • Providers can manage their own inventory (products/category)
  • Providers can create Coupon discounts to their own products
  • Providers can send Coupons to their customers via email
  • Providers can run Sales and create Specials Prices for their own products
  • Providers can edit their own products images (only available with Image Handler for PrivateArea)
  • Providers can run their own Sales Report (only available with Sales Report + Payroll)
  • Providers cannot access other providers products/category
  • Statistics panel on the index page - Best-Selling Products, Last Sold Products and Last Free Products Sold

and much more...

If you want to see a demo go to http://customscriptz.com/demo

Installation Instructions

  • Create a backup of your database and files.
  • Go to the Administration Area of your Store then access: Configuration -> Website Maintenance -> Down for Maintenance: ON/OFF -> Set to True.
  • Extract the zip file content that you downloaded from our Customers Area to a temp dir on your computer.
  • Inside the dir that you extracted the zip contents, you will notice one dir called "uploads" and one file called "README" that brought you to this page.
  • Open the dir "uploads/privatearea/includes" and rename the file called "dist-configure.php" to "configure.php".
  • Now, right click on "configure.php" and open it with Notepad (we recommend using Notepad++). Don't open it with Word or Wordpad as this will mess with all the strings.
  • Around line 13 and 14 you will notice 2 defines: 
  define('STORE_DIR', '/shop/');
  define('ADMIN_DIR', '/shop/admin/');
  • Where you see "shop", change it to your where your store is installed (sometimes called store/boutique/zencart). If your store is on the root of your domain: http://www.example.com/ instead of "http://www.example.com/shop" delete the name "shop" and leave the trailing slash. Same goes to the second setting. eg.: 
  define('STORE_DIR', '/');
  define('ADMIN_DIR', '/admin/');
  • If your store dir or admin has a differente name change it accordly. eg.: 
  define('STORE_DIR', '/store/');
  define('ADMIN_DIR', '/store/myshopadmincp/');
  • Save and close this file.
  • If you have your own styles from your "admin" panel, copy the following files: cssjsmenuhover.css, index.css, menu.css, nde-basic.css, stylesheet.css and stylesheet_print.css from "/admin/includes/" to "/privatearea/includes/". If you don't want to use the admin style when you access the login page for the first time, the PrivateArea default style will be used.
  • If you want to change the default logo, overwrite the file "/privatearea/images/logo.gif" with your own.
  • Now, upload all the contents of the dir "uploads" to the root of your store. Don't upload the "uploads" dir, but what's inside of it. There are no overwrites.
  • After uploading all files, go to "http://www.example.com/shop/privatearea/", you should see a notice saying that PrivateArea was installed. Now you can proceed with the tutorial below where you will set your environment. Don't hesitate to open a ticket at our support if you need any help.
  • Go to the Administration Area of your Shop then access: Configuration -> Website Maintenance -> Down for Maintenance: ON/OFF -> Set to False.

Upgrade Instructions

  1. Create a backup of your database and files.
  2. Go to the Administration Area of your Shop then access: Configuration -> Website Maintenance -> Down for Maintenance: ON/OFF -> Set to True.
  3. Extract the zip file content that you downloaded from our Customers Area to a temp dir on your computer.
  4. Now, upload all the contents of the dir "uploads" to the root of your store. Don't upload the "uploads" dir, but what's inside of it. If you did not changed anything on the files you are safe to overwrite everthing, otherwise, backup the privatearea dir so you can roll back the changes.
  5. After uploading all files, go to "http://www.example.com/shop/privatearea/", you should see a notice saying that PrivateArea was updated.
  6. Go to the Administration Area of your Shop then access: Configuration -> Website Maintenance -> Down for Maintenance: ON/OFF -> Set to False.

Tutorial

Admin Panel

  1. Go to your store Admin -> Tools -> Providers. If you already have Manufacturers on your store, you will see all your Manufacturers on this page, it's ok, because PrivateArea is connected with the Manufacturers data. Keep in mind that Catalog -> Manufacturers are the same as Tools -> Providers. Deleting a provider will also delete the manufacturer and vice versa.
  2. Before you start creating/editing Providers, you must create a category separately for each provider. What's mostly stores do is: Create one main category called "*Designers*" or "*Hidden*" (with the *, so it will be shown on the top of the categories) on the Top dirs and set this category do disable, and inside of this main category, create the providers category.
  3. To create a new provider, just click the "Insert" button. To edit a provider, click on their name and click the "Edit" button on the right panel - also you can click the green (E) icon.
  4. Enter all required details about it. If you are editing a provider, you don't need to enter the password fields again. You can't have 2 providers with the same Name, Email or Login.

Note: Don't use special characters such as ", &, %, # etc or spaces in login and password fields

  1. To save the provider click the "Save" button.
  2. After you insert a new provider you will be redirected to the permissions page. For the first time you access the permissions page, all providers will have full access to PrivateArea panel. If you want to disallow some acess, just uncheck what you want and save.
  3. Also when you insert a new provider or edit one with no login name, him/her will receive a email message with his login and password and the URL where they can access their own private area. There is no validation for the email field, so if you mistype the email address, the provider will receive nothing and you will need to send his details by hand. They can change their own password later on.
  4. Sample message that's sent to the provider with their login details: 
	Congratulations $provider_name$, you are now officially a part of our team!
	
	Your new login details to access your own privdate area:
	Username: $provider_login_name$
	Password: $provider_password$
	
	You can log in here:
	http://www.example.com/shop/privatearea
	
	Best regards,
	$store_name$ Team
  1. As you can guess, if your manufacturers was accessing your admin panel to manage their stuff, them they will not have to do it anymore.

The next step is NOT necessary if your store has just been installed or you don't have any admin besides you.

  1. After creating your provider's login you can go to your store Tools -> Admin Settings and delete all logins that are not admins. DON'T delete the manufacturers, just the logins from this page. Also, don't delete yourself. You must keep at least one administrator account.

Products on Queue

If you want products that are added to your store to be on a queue before they go live you can activated the Products on Queue setting. This is usefull if you want to review products to check for mistakes before they go to live on your store.

  • How do I enable Products to be on Queue?
  • Go to Configuration -> PrivateArea -> Set Put Products on Queue to True.
  • How this works?
  • After you enable to have products on queue, every new product will be on a queue so you can check if you will release it or not. The product will not be available untill you release it. After the provider has been inserted the product the store owner will receive a email that one new product has been added. After the store owner release/activate the product, the provider will be notified and the product will go live on your store.
  • Where can I check all products that are on queue?
  • Go to Tools -> Products on Queue.
  • Can I manually put a product on queue from the admin side?
  • No.


Settings

Configuration -> PrivateArea

  • Mostly settings are self-explanatory and has a description when you click on it. Just click the setting and look at the right panel to know what is it for.

FAQ


  • I'm a provider (user of PrivateArea), do I have support from Custom Scriptz?
  • Right now, you have no support from us. If you found a bug or have a suggestion, contact your shop administrator and him/her will forward your message to us or you in behave of him/her you can contact us.


  • How can I change the login page?
  • At the root of the PrivateArea dir exist 2 files: "custom_footer.htm.new" and "custom_header.htm.new". Rename it to "custom_footer.htm" and "custom_header.htm". Open custom_header.htm with any HTML editor and edit his contents. Same with custom_footer.htm, upload it back to your site.


  • I want you to make the module [put here the module name] available to my providers, can you do that?
  • Maybe, depends on how the module has been developed and how much are you willing to pay for us to integrate it on PrivateArea for you. By default no modules are integrated with PrivateArea, but you can buy at our store when you order PrivateArea.


  • Can I modify the source code?
  • Yes you can, as soon as you keep the credits from Zen Cart and Custom Scriptz.


  • In my store sometimes I have 1 product that has 2 manufactures, how can I work around with this?
  • There is no workaround for this, you must set the product to 1 manufacturer/provider only.


  • After installing PrivateArea and Sales Report + Payroll does not have the full options. Why?
  • You must log out from the PrivateArea before you can see all options on Sales Report + Payroll from Admin Area.

Change Log

Version 1.0

Initial release

Version 1.1

Included permissions panel - Now store admins can set per user permissions
Fixed minor bugs

Version 1.2

PrivateArea now have it's own Configuration Panel at Admin -> Configuration -> PrivateArea
Products Queue, now the Store can choose to have a queue before the product goes live
Fixed bugs at SaleMaker and Special Page
Deleted Products Price Manager
Added buttons to the Categories/Products Page
Panel Status, now you can set your provider panel on or off at any time
Removed the Move button for a little till we got this fully working

Version 1.3

Fixed Coupon Restrict Page
Fixed issues when moving the default theme and logo
Custom Zen is now PrivateArea

For Bugs, Suggestions and Requests, go to http://customscriptz.com

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