AgoraCart Free User Forums

Hi all,

I am new to this forum (and e-marketing in general) and would like to install and use AgoraCart. My hosting site (3ix) recommends AgoraCart, and there is a script they provide to install it (via cPanel). I have not run that script, however, because I'm not sure what will be required of me during and after installation, and I'd like to be prepared in advance.

Soooo.... with that being said, I have a few questions that I'm hoping you'll have the time and inclination to answer. If there's a FAQ somewhere, or a thread that someone else has already posted that answers this, PLEASE just point me to it.

1. Once I have installed AgoraCart, what is the net effect that it will have on my website? In other words, what am I REALLY installing?

2. I see that I need a "payment gateway" to actually process transactions (which I had thought that AgoraCart was, initially). We are going to be low-volume for several months, and I'm not looking to pay high $$ for this service up-front... any recommendations?

3. Does AgoraCart provide me with an API that my web pages call in order to add items, or is there a control that is used (I guess this ties into question 1 above).

4. If I were looking for a step-by-step guide for total n00bs, where would I go?

Thank you SO much for your help, and I'm sure I'll have follow-on questions, but I have to get there in order to know that I even have more questions.

Cheers,
Derrick

AgoraCart is a shopping cart system.
It is not connected to any pages on your website,
unless you connect to it using links or form inputs to the cart.

Yes, a payment gateway is needed to process the payments.
PayPal comes with the default AgoraCart installation.
If you want to accept credit cards, you will need to either have a
business account with PayPal or obtain a merchant account and
utilize one of the gateways available with AgoraCart based on
what gateways work with your merchant account processing account.

Products typically get inputted into AgoraCart's database and the
product display is created dynamically based on the products in the database.
There isn't much in a step to step, just read the instructions
along the way during installation and print pages as necessary.

I would suggest not installing Agora from the cpanel,
depending on the webhost, there could be errors or you could be
getting an out of date version, depending on the version of cpanel
that they have. It is better to download the install file available on
the "Download" page on the agoracart.com site.

BTW, there is some documentation that comes with the cart install
and is located in the 'store52/protected/DOCS' directory.


_________________
God Bless!
Bonnie - AgoraCart Moderator

Get a Gold Membership

Hi Bonnie,

Thank you for your reply. I guess the best approach for me to take now is to just install it and see what happens (and what loose ends I need to tie up).

I am slightly confused by your suggestion regarding using the AgoraCart installer rather than the cPanel. Does the installer "hook" the pages themselves (I was of the impression that they don't), or is this a server installation kind of thing? Again, I'm not sure what is really being installed (that's item #1 on my original post), so I'm kind of lost as to what will happen when I launch the installer. I'm sure this will all make sense to me once it's behind me, but it doesn't look intuitive at this point. Sorry for being such a newbie but, well, I am.

Cheers,
Derrick

Derrick,
AgoraCart is a perl script. Not a "server" thing...
I say to use the installer file from the AgoraCart.com site because the cpanel install doesn't always work properly... So using the installer file from AgoraCart.com will give you the best chance at proper install.


_________________
God Bless!
Bonnie - AgoraCart Moderator

Get a Gold Membership