Getting Started - 4 Basic Steps To Set Up Your Website
You have your new website in front of you and you're ready to get started. Where to start is sometimes a daunting task. This site was put together to help teach you how to be a self sufficient web master for your online business. I'm sure that by the time you browse through the tutorials and see how easy things really are, you'll be armed with just enough information to make you just a little bit dangerous! Follow these first 4 steps below and you will be ready to forge on ahead with confidence.
Log into your storeadmin with the username and password sent in the New Account Information email.
http://www.yourdomain.com/storeadmin (change yourdomain to your own domain)
STEP 1 - The first thing you might want to do is edit your main page and add some content. This is helpful for a few reasons. First, it will get you familiar with the built in editor and how that works and it will give your new visitors something to read so they know you're here and that yours is a working website. Follow this tutorial - "How To Edit An Existing Page" and you will be able to add a little content to your main page. The really hard part will be figuring out what to say to your viewers.
What to consider adding to your main page might be a paragraph about you or what you have to offer (what kind of products you sell). Keep in mind to choose your wording carefully and use keywords that you want a search engine to pick up so that they index your site. Without actual content and keywords, the search engines will not index your site.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - Meta Title, Meta Description and Meta Keywords are all relevant to search engine optimization. Use the areas provided throughout the storeadmin when adding pages, categories and products to add all the Meta information. Search engines crawl your site and compare written content to the Meta Description and Meta Keywords.
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STEP 2 - Now you will want to check and update your site settings so that all your website's important information is exactly as you want it. Click on Site Settings on the lower right hand side in your storeadmin. Here is where your website's information is located such as company name which will display in the top status bar and copyright info of your website, email address that your contact page will use and so on. Below are the explanations of each of these settings. When you are finished here and if you have changed any of these settings, click Update before you exit this area.
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Company: Enter your company name, which will appear as a header on your site if you do not have a logo. If you prefer to upload a logo (image) for the header are of your site, follow this tutorial on "Adding A Logo To A Template"
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Admin Email: Enter the administration email address you wish to use to be notified about site processes, inventory quantities, wholesale setup, etc. This will be the email address that your contact page will use.
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Site Message: Enter a web site message to be displayed on all pages of your website pages, if desired. Generally this is used for links to top-site lists etc that will (should) appear under your menu on your site.
Note: This feature only works if there is a %SITE_MESSAGE% placeholder code added to your template. Add something in the message box and click update. Then check to see if anything shows up on your site. If not, add the placeholder code to your template or contact your designer to add it for you.
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Email Link: If you wish to use the email a friend pop up, enter the text you wish to display in that link.
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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - Meta Title, Meta Description and Meta Keywords are all relevant to search engine optimization. Use the areas provided throughout the storeadmin when adding pages, categories and products to add all the Meta information. Search engines crawl your site and compare written content to the Meta Description and Meta Keywords.
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Meta Title: To configure a default Meta Title for your site that is different than your company name, enter that page title here.
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Meta Description: To configure a meta tag description for your site, enter it here. A short description that will appear under the Meta Title in a search engine listing is what you would add here.
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Meta Keywords: To configure meta tag keywords for your site, enter them here. Keywords should be words that you pull from your page content, category description or product description depending on where you are adding keywords at the time.
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STEP 3 - The next thing you will want to do is change the "Category Link" menu titles to category names of your own. There is a tutorial called "Add A New Category" that you can follow which will explain how to add a new category for your products to go into. To change the existing sample category names, there is an edit link next to each category already there. Click on that, change Category Link to a name of your own and click update.
Perhaps you will be wanting to create subcategories. Someone with Necklaces for sale may want subcategories under Necklaces such as Beaded, Pearl, Silver etc. To set up subcategories, follow this tutorial called "Add A Sub-Category". If you will not need subcategories, go on to the next step in setting up your site.
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STEP 4 - Now that you have a little content on your site's main page as well as your categories all ready to go, you will want to add products to those categories (or subcategories). There is a tutorial called "Add New Product" that you can follow to get your first product entered.
Note About Images:For your product photos, you will need one larger image 400 to 600 pixels and for the thumbnail you will need a smaller version of that image 150 to 200 pixels. You will need to make those photos on your own before uploading. Here is a program to use to resize if you don't have one. PIXEL RESIZER If you prefer other photo editing software, that's fine too!
Note: If you were to let Pappa-Pak resize your images for you using the Image Height and Image Width settings found in the Catalog Setup area, the program doesn't actually resize the image in MB, it just resizes them in dimension only. This means that a customer would have to wait for your large image to fully load in order to see what you have to offer. Some people (dialup access for example) might not want to stick around to find out if the wait time is too long. This is why it is best to make an actual thumbnail and larger image yourself before uploading to your site.
How Big Should Thumbnails and Large Images be?
We recommend for thumbnail images to be 150 or 200 pixels wide. This is the small version of your larger image. Generally size large images at 500 to 600 pixels wide. If you notice that your image is too wide for your web site layout, then you will need to resize it down until you figure out just the right width. If your images are larger than 600 pixels wide they might not fit in the pop up window so your customers will not see the entire image, just a portion of it. Image size is very important!
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Now you should be off to a good start and you should be more familiar with how Pappa-Pak works. There are several more tutorials that you can follow to accomplish everything you need to know about putting your website together. If you do not find what you are looking for here on our tutorial site, try our knowledge base. If you are unsure of anything or need additional help, please visit our support ticket area and submit a ticket. We will either point you in the direction of specific instructions or give you instructions in an answer to your ticket.
** Check out the tutorials on the left, listed under "Pappa-Pak". These tutorials show you how to maintain every aspect of your new site.
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