Appendix B:  Customization

In this section:

Appendix B:  EDatCat Shortcuts

Within the templates, you may include any HTML, JavaScript, or other coding you desire.  When you open any of the templates in a text editor, you will notice several custom tags and form functions.   These elements are your "toolbox" and will help you create high-powered templates quickly and easily.  Called shortcuts, these tools allow you to present any data you desire on your web pages.   These shortcuts make it much easier to update your online content.

For example, you may have a featured product you want to display at your store entrance.  Rather than opening your template and editing the html everytime you change this featured item, you simply change it in your admin section by adding the catalog number of the item inthe Featured Products section.  On your mainpage template, you place the shortcut %%feature1%%.  This will call the featured item and display it on your template.

Another example is if you want to welcome your customers by name after they log in.  All you have to is place html code similar to the following on your login-success template:

<p align="left"><strong>Welcome %%firstname%%!</strong></p>
<p align="left>We're glad that you returned to %%catname%%.  what would you like to do now?</p>

<ul>
  <li>%%viewacct%%</li>
  <li>%%viewwish%%</li>
  <li>%%orderstat%%>/li>
  <li>%%shopping%%!</li>
</ul>

If your business is named "Johnny's Apples", and the customer's name is Maggie, this code would produce the following message on the login-success template:

Welcome, Maggie!

We're glad that you returned to Johnny's Apples.   What would you like to do now?

The bulleted list, of course, would contain links to the various pages.

EDatCat uses the "Shortcuts" to quickly embed links and text within your templates.  The Shortcuts CAN ONLY BE USED WITHIN YOUR EDATCAT TEMPLATES.   Because these Shortcuts refer to routines and subroutines within the EDatCat program, they must be used on pages generated by the program...otherwise, they will not be recognized. 

Some of these shortcuts are generated contextually.  In other words, if you are using the Shortcut for the drop-down list of subcategories, this list will contain the subcategories specific to the category the user is browsing.   When the user changes categories, the list of subcategories changes acordingly.   The same goes for the featured products within a category, category title, additional product options, etc.

Click here for a printable list and description of EDatCat Shortcuts.

As you can see by the list (linked above), these shortcuts provide you with a huge amount of flexibility in creating high-powered templates while reducing the time you spend on creating them.  In addition to these Shortcuts, EDatCat also provides you with a set of tools for building your own forms and links.  These tools are called "Functions".

NEXT-  Part Three: Functions