virtualCATALOG is a stand-alone database solution for web sites. It was written with Virtual Focus Inc's virtualCART product in mind but has been used in many ways without virtualCART.

virtualCATALOG SQL allows the user to easily add or update a database of items and categories through a web browser or access a database currently online. virtualCATALOGTM SQL was designed to meet the needs of site developers and merchants who demand more advanced features without sacrificing ease-of-use, and a professional looking storefront. Balancing ease-of-use with flexibility in design, site designers can develop page and product layout templates to meet their needs. virtualCATALOGTM SQL makes handling large product databases (500+ products and more) easy and efficient.

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Unlike virtualCART which is a shopping cart service that we offer, virtualCATALOG is a database software solution for web sites. virtualCATALOG is a one time purchase while virtualCART is a subscription based service.

Many customers use virtualCATALOG to keep a database of their products and generate dynamic HTML pages based on their product database in virtualCATALOG. From these pages, the customer is able to add the product to virtualCART. This is how customers use virtualCATALOG with virtualCART. Other customers prefer to use virtualCATALOG as an easier way to update pages and search for information. Thus, this doesn't require virtualCART at all.

However, many customers use the full potential of virtualCATALOG to further enhance the shopper's experience.

1. Able to sort products and search keywords on any field.
2. Page numbering with links to other pages if found items is more than display limit.
3. auto-generate select boxes so that merchant doesn't require to know HTML code.
4. Advanced boolean searches. Ability to search on several keywords at once.
5. Ability to display a range of displayed items. e.g. viewing 21-40 of 142 products
6. Faster search and support more item records than virtualCATALOG Basic
7. Errors in item record does not affect other item records.
8. Line breaks does not cause errors in virtualCATALOG database.
9. Database is stored securely in an SQL environment, as oppose to a flat file.
10. modular type programming to allow quicker upgrade and installation of future add-ons. (If the template generation engine requires updating, only the module for that is updated, not the whole script).
11. Backward compatible with virtualCATALOG Basic's templates and flat file database.

http://www.vcart.com/vcat3/demo.html for our demo shopping store.
http://www.vcart.com/vcat3/vc_login.htm for our demo Admin area.

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Now that virtualCATALOG has been installed, you need to log into your virtualCATALOG back office. If you've followed the installation instructions correctly, there should be a vc_login.htm file in your web root directory. You can access the file through your browser by going to http://www.yourdomain.com/vc_login.htm. Once there, enter the cart ID and the default password "admin" to log into your virtualCATALOG for the first time.

We do recommend that you change this password once you've logged into your virtualCATALOG administration area. Once in there, you can add products into the database. Add a few products to get a feel of things. Once you've done that, you need to create templates. We have a whole section on our web site dedicated to getting started on virtualCATALOG. Please visit our Getting Started page

The Category field in the VirtualCATALOG is just another field that can be searched on. As long as you put keywords for each category that the product belongs to, the product will be displayed with the keyword is searched in the Category field.

e.g. Your category field could be "MENSWEAR CLOTHES COTTON COLLARED" for a shirt and whenever any of those keywords are searched upon, it will be displayed in the template.

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<form method=GET action="URL to CatalogMgr.pl">
<input type="Hidden" name="cartID" value="b-xxxx">
<input type="Hidden" name="template" value="Htx/template.htx">
<input type="Hidden" name="hdr" value="Your Search Results">
<input type="Hidden" name="SearchField" value="category">
<input type="Textbox" name="SearchFor" value="">
<input type="Submit" value="Search" name="Submit">
</form>

Don't forget to replace "URL to CatalogMgr.pl" with the actual URL and "b-xxxx" with your cart ID.

Other hidden variables you can use are displayNumber, offset, sort_on (only virtualCATALOG SQL), hdrFile, ftr and ftrFile.

Please note that if you want to use hdr, hdrFile, ftr, ftrFile, your template must contain the tags virtualCATALOG questions or respectively.

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