Introduction
Catalog Builder Pro is a program that you can use to create an online catalog for your Web site. It makes it easy to build a database of your products and with a click of your mouse create a table-based catalog on your Web site along with linked Stacked Pages for each item in your database.
Many people have their Web sites on servers that don't provide the dynamic building of catalogs through cgi scripts or more costly alternatives like ASP pages that requires a particular Web server to work. Besides, creating dynamic database catalogs like this requires considerable technical knowledge including programming experience. Catalog Builder Pro is a program for those people who want a simple and easy way to create a catolog that they can easily update when necessary and quickly get up and running on their Web sites.
How It Works
This help file will get into more details on how to use the program in the following paragraphs. Here we'll give you a quick overview of how you'd go about using the program so that you can understand the overall idea behind Catalog Builder Pro.
Using the program you create a database file (a dBASE3 DBF file) on your local hard drive. You add data to this database file in any order you wish. You setup the program to customize the creation of an online catalog to your specific requirements. Then with one mouse click, a Web online catalog is built for you. Another mouse click and you can preview the Web pages that have been created. If you want to make any changes, you make them in the setup pages and rebuild the Web pages. When you are satisfied with the Web catalog created, you click your mouse again to upload the online catalog to your Web site. It's that simple!
If you need to make changes to your catalog you can do it quickly and easily and upload the changed catalog to your Web site at any time. Catalog Builder Pro will save you many many hours creating such a catalog using an ordinary Web page editor.
Running The Program
When you first start the program you are presented with the following screen:
You'll see the menu across the top and some check boxes displayed in the program's main window. These checkboxes are there to allow you to keep track of the tasks required to create your online catalog.
Program Setup
The first thing you'll need to do is setup the program to customize it for your specific requirements. Here you'll enter information about your company, the information you want displayed on the web page catalog, specifics on the colors you want to use for the catalog table, information on your Web site so your catalog can be ftp'ed to your site and information required to create your catalog database.
You just need to fill in all this information once, unless you want to make changes later. Here is an example of how you'd fill in the Company Info details:
The information you enter here is included in the web page when it is created so that your visitors will know how to contact you.
Work through each of the tabbed pages and fill in all the fields. When you click the "Save Setup" button at the bottom of this window, all the information you input into these fields on the various tabbed pages is saved in a file called "CatBuilder.ini" located in the directory you've installed this program.
You can make changes to any of the fields and save the information by clicking on the "Save Setup" button again. (Database Setup is a little different, so read on)
Main Catalog Page Setup
The main catalog page created on your web site is comprised of a table listing all the items in your catalog. These items are linked to individual Stacked Pages. You can setup this main catalog page:
Here you'll setup the TITLE of the page, the background color and font color to use on this page (which will also be used on your Stacked Pages) and a Main Heading. You can also input a short paragraph (max 255 characters) that will be inserted in this main catalog page before the catalog table.
Database Setup
The program allows you to create a dBASE3 database file (dbf) that you'll use to store your catalog information. You need to create this database file BEFORE you can enter your product catalog information into the program. The Database Setup page looks like this:
The catalog database file can have up to 5 fields in it that you need to define. There are two sections to this page. The "Table Headings" contain fields that will be used as headings in your online catalog table. This information is saved in the INI file referred to above when you click on the "Save Setup" button..
On the right hand side are two columns: "Field Widths" and "DBF Field Names". These fields are used to create the actual DBF file called "catalog.dbf". You need to specify the width (number of characters that can be stored) in each field and you need to assign a field name. You should work across this page, filling in the information for Field One to Field Two, etc. entering information based on the number of fields you want in your catalog.
When you have filled in all the DBF specific fields, click on the "Create New Database" to create a new "catalog.dbf" file. Click on the "Save Setup" button to save the "Table Headings" in the "CatBuilder.ini" file.
Warning: Clicking on "Create New Database" will delete all data in an existing catalog database file! Only use this feature if you need to create a new database structure.
The first field is a key field. The DBF file created uses an index file to keep your database sorted. The catalog.htm file created that contains a table-based catalog listing will display the items in your database in the order of this key field. You will use this first field to store UNIQUE items that can only be 8 characters in length. Use this field to store things like part numbers, SKU numbers, catalog numbers, whatever can be placed here that are UNIQUE to each item in your catalog. Since the field is a character field and NOT a number field, sorting will be based on strings sorted from left to right. If you want to enter numbers here, pad them with "0" (zeros) to keep them sorted properly. For example, if you want to use 1 to 200, use numbers like "001" ... "200".
When the DBF file is created a memo field is also created. Memo fields are stored in another file called "catalog.dbt". These memo fields will let you enter more information on each item in your catalog and will be displayed on the Stacked Pages created.
Now that you've got all the information in the setup window, you're ready to move to the next step: typing the data into your database file.
Setting Up Stacked Pages
Catalog Builder Pro let's you use Stacked Pages with your online catalog. Stacked Pages are individual web pages created for each item in your database and are linked to from the main catalog table. This allows you to enter more specific information on each item in your catalog.
This additional information that will be displayed on each Stacked Page created comes from the memo field in each database record. If you do not require unique information for each item, you can setup Default Text in the setup window for Stacked Pages, making it easier for you to place this information in each memo field in your database.
Whatever you save in the Default Text will be saved to your INI file and easily retrieved when you are adding records to your database.
You'll notice that you can force paragraphs by inserting <P> tags wherever you want a paragraph break in this text.
If you want to generate just a catalog table without any accompanying Stacked Pages, you can turn off the generation of Stacked Pages. Just make sure to "Save Setup" before you go and build a new online catalog.
Setting Up the FTP Feature
You'll need to setup information on how the program will ftp your web pages to your web server.
The "Remote Directory" can be the root of your web site if left blank or you can specify a directory below your root directory. In the picture above, we've chosen to use the "onlinecatalog" directory. But you can use any directory you want on your web server. This directory must exist before you try to upload your catalog to your web site.
Inputting Catalog Data
Click on Product on the menu bar and then on Catalog and another window opens up:
Here you can work with your database file to enter new database items. On the bottom of the window is a navigation bar with buttons that lets you move through your database, entering new records, or editing existing ones. You can insert new records by clicking on the "+" button and delete a record by clicking on the "-" button. Clicking the check button will save any changes you've made to a record you are working on. Clicking the "X" button will delete the record you are stationed on. Clicking the "Close" button, closes this window.
You'll see the headings above each column are the names you entered for each field when you created the database. These are not the headings that will be created in your online catalog. It will use the "Table Headings" you specified in the setup program.
Notice the KEYNAME field. This field is the one you use to enter UNIQUE information for each record in your database. The database is INDEXED on this field and the online catalog will be created in this indexed order.
In the window for "Stacked Pages Text" you'll enter information into the database memo fields. This information should be specific information for each item in your database and will be the paragraph(s) displayed on the Stacked Pages generated. If you don't require unique information for each item, you can "Insert Default Text" that you saved when you setup the Stacked Pages.
Now that you've entered all the data you want, you can go and have the program create your new web page.
Creating a Web Page
To create a web page, all you need to do is click on "Build" and then "Build Local" on the menu bar. The program will generate a main catalog web page placing all the information from your database file into a web table using the colors you've specified in the setup and placing additional information you entered in the setup program about your company. You'll be informed when the program has finished creating the web page. The length of time depends on the amount of information you have in your database. You don't need to complete all the input into the database before creating your web page. You can always add more information to the database file and build the page again.
If you chose in Setup to use Stacked Pages, a web page for each item in your catalog will be created. These Stacked Pages will be linked from the main table so that visitors to your web site can click on a key field item and open the corresponding Stacked Page. Visitors can return to the main table page from any Stacked Page.
And this is the main beauty of this program. As you need to add or update records in your database, creating your web pages is just a mouse click away!
Previewing Your Web Page
Click on "Build", "Preview" to see what you web catalog looks like. Your default web browser will be called up and the page loaded. Want to change colors? Just go into Setup, change the colors, build the pages and preview them. It's that simple. When you're ready to place this new web page on your site, you'll ...
Upload Catalog
When you're ready to place your online catalog on your web site, you'll connect to the Net and then click on "Build", "Upload Catalog" and your new web pages will be uploaded to your web site into the directory you specified in the setup. A progress meter in the status bar will indicate how the upload is progressing and you'll be notified when the upload is complete.
That's it. Voila ... an online products catalog that can be changed at any time and quickly placed on your web site.