This document introduces the essential concepts of Avactis tags – the technology designed for creating an online storefront and integrating it into an existing website.
The document outlines the basic concepts of tags and is only meant to help you familiarize yourself with the technology. For help with creating a new online storefront or integrating a storefront into a website, please consult "Avactis Online Storefront Creation and Integration" where you will find detailed explanations of tag usage rules.
What are Avactis Tags?
To understand Avactis tags you should know that each product in Avactis Shopping Cart has a number of properties called product attributes. For instance, the following attributes are used to describe the bouquet shown below: Name, Price, and Description.
When you create an ecommerce storefront, for each product you add to the catalog you enter its attributes. Products can be added to the catalog in the Admin Area of Avactis Shopping Cart (this is explained in detail in Admin Area documentation).
Avactis Shopping Cart is designed to easily integrate an online store into an existing website, no matter how complex the site might be. Using the special tags mechanism you are able to organize previously entered information on the online storefront just the way you want.
Avactis tags are php functions which display product attributes and even entire blocks of an online storefront.
For example, you can display the product name for product with ID=7 by including the tag <?php ProductName(7); ?> on any website page; the name "Lavender Essence" will then appear on the page*.
If you include the tag <?php NavigationBar(); ?> , the Navigation Bar block will be displayed on the page (Navigation Bar is an online storefront component that lets you navigate between the categories of a catalog).
Using this method for displaying product attributes and online storefront components (also called store blocks) you can easily customize the appearance of your storefront to any design. Product descriptions and attributes (text, images, etc) can be rendered in any font, color or size and can be placed anywhere on the site.
Ecommerce storefront components can be placed in any location and in any arrangement you like. In addition, you can use templates (located in a special folder) to change the design of any internet storefront component.
*No programming skills are necessary!*
Please Note!
The first line of the php page where tags are stored must contain the call to the shopping cart software specifying the absolute software installation path.
Example:
<?php include ('/root/html/avactis-system/store.php'); ?>
For more details about initialization calls, please see "Avactis Online Storefront Creation and Integration."
Types of Avactis Tags
To allow effective construction and operation of a fully functional online storefront, Avactis Shopping Cart software provides several types of tags. In addition to displaying product attributes, tags let you display entire blocks of information such as a navigation bar, a shopping cart with the currently added orders, the checkout process, and so on.
Please see below for a general description of each tag type.
Info Tags
Avactis info tags are the most basic kind of tag. Info tags display product attributes, category attributes, links and so on. They usually display only one link, attribute or image at a time.
For example, info tag <?php ProductName(); ?> displays just the product name, while <?php CategoryName(); ?> displays just the category name.
Info tags are global tags: they can be added to any PHP site page. A page is allowed to have any number of info tags, for any number of products.
The figure below provides an example of how some info tags are used.
Avactis Shopping Cart provides over 70 individual info tags. If you find that the predefined products attributes do not adequately describe a particular type of product, in the Admin Area you can create custom attributes to suit a certain product type. After a new attribute is created, a new unique info tag is assigned to it automatically. You can use these new info tags the same way as system info tags.
The full list of info tags can be found in Avactis Tag Library.
Store Block Tags
Info tags display only one piece of information at a time – an attribute, a link, an image, etc. To display a store block, which can contain several tags together, a storeblock tag (block tag) is used.
Store block tags are versatile tools for building an online store quickly and easily. The difference between store block tags and info tags is that a store block tag calls a template (an html page) where any number of tags can be used, including both block tags and info tags. By adjusting a block tag's settings you can use the same tag with different products, on any site page. There is no need to create a separate block tag for every product in the catalog.
Examples of store block tags, <?php NavigationBar(); ?> and <?php ProductInfo(); ?>, are described in detail below.
Please Note!
Prior to working with block tags, the online store must be properly configured. For details please see "Avactis Online Storefront Creation and Integration."
The NavigationBar tag displays the Navigation Bar which lets customers navigate the catalog and its categories. During navigation, the appearance of the current category can be highlighted so as to stand out from all other categories.
For instance, in the example below, the currently selected category, Anniversary, has a distinctive text color and background color. All of these properties are user-defined via the templates specified for the NavigationBar tag. Templates are usual HTML pages which let you modify the design of the corresponding storefront component navigate – in this case the Navigation Bar – in a number of ways (e.g. by adding new fonts, pictures and so forth).
Store block tag ProductInfo invokes the template which displays product information (see Figure below). The template for this store block tag contains several info tags which display the product name, its description, price and so on. By modifying the template for the ProductInfo tag you can change and improve your website's design to your requirements.
The full list of store block tags and their descriptions is given in Avactis Tag Library.
Avactis Local Tags
Info tags and store block tags can be used on any website page – they are both global tags. With these tags you can customize the look and feel of your site's design.
A different type of tag is a local tag. Local tags are used only inside templates and are auxiliary tags.
Local tags are an integral part of templates and cannot be deleted. They ensure a reliable connection between templates and the online store software.
To make it easier to use local tags when creating an online store, you can take advantage of the templates provided with Avactis Shopping Cart software.
