Miva-Merchant

Features and Benefits

• Secure web administration module to easily maintain catalog remotely
• Look-and-feel controls to customize storefront integration
• Category based index to organize products
• User definable product attributes to support varying product details
• Upsell system to promote and increase sales of related products
• Plug-in script integration to extend applications's functionality
• Basket maintenance and expiration to manage customers' shopping experience
• Secure order processing to protect sensitive information
• Email order notification to initiate order fulfillment
• Accounting reports to track sales and income
• Simple navigation and catalog-wide searchability to locate products quickly
• Fully Scriptable, XML compatible source code included
• Complete online documentation to assist the catalog administrator

Pricing and Ordering
Miva Merchant is available at special pricing through the Turn Key Package Miva Merchant Virtual Server.

Upgrading Miva Merchant
Miva Merchant 2.22 became available on September 11, 2000.

Because of the many bug fixes and enhanced features contained in this new version of Miva Merchant, you should strongly consider upgrading as soon as possible. See instructions below for:

Upgrading from v2.0
If you already have Miva Merchant 2.0 installed, follow these directions to install the latest version.

• Connect to your Virtual Server via Telnet or SSH. Change to your mivastore directory and unpack the new Miva Merchant distribution.

  % cd ~/www/htdocs/mivastore
  % tar xvf /usr/local/contrib/mvmerchant.tar
  

  NOTE: If your miva store is installed in a different directory, change to that directory instead of ~/www/htdocs/mivastore.

• Visit the following URL and follow the instructions contained on that page. Your current configuration should be okay if your v2.0 store was already working correctly.

  http://YOUR-DOMAIN.NAME/mivastore/upgrade.mv

• If you will be using the new UPS Shipping Module, you will need to add the following line to your Miva configuration file (~/etc/miva.conf).

  <COMMERCE-LIB METHOD = "UPSRSS" LIBRARY = "/usr/local/etc/httpd/miva/lib/upsrss.so>

• Verify that the upgrade was successful by visiting the following URL.

  http://YOUR-DOMAIN.NAME/mivastore/admin.mv

• 
  

  Upgrading from v1.x
  If you have Miva Merchant 1.x installed, follow these directions to install the latest version.

• Connect to your Virtual Server via Telnet or SSH and issue the command that matches your Virtual Server O/S.

  FreeBSD
  % /usr/local/bin/mvmerchant1-upgrade
  
  
  BSD/OS
  % /usr/local/contrib/mvmerchant-upgrade
  

  NOTE: If your Virtual Server was ordered after December 1, 1999, you are likely running FreeBSD. To find out which O/S your Virtual Server is running, use the uname command: % uname

• This should create a ~/www/htdocs/Merchant2/ directory on your Virtual Server and instruct you to begin configuring your Miva store by running a script like this:

  http://YOUR-DOMAIN.NAME/Merchant2/setup.mv

• The setup requires you to register and individually activate your new license. To do this, on the registration form, click on the link "Activate Upgrade License". Alternatively, you may do this by going to the following URL:

  http://www.miva.com/upgrade/merchant/2.0/

• After registration, click the "Install" button. You should now be at a screen where you can enter your site configuration. The default settings are acceptable for all the options except for those involving the Secure Server. Choose the second option that Miva suggests (i.e. do NOT choose "None", unless you do not want to offer secure transaction support). NOTE: your Mail Server can be "smtp.YOURDOMAIN.NAME".

• After site configuration, click the "Install" button. Now, you will be required to add an administrative user.

After the administrative user is created, Miva Merchant will complete its installation. However, before your new store will look and function like your old v1.x store, you must import the data into the new database. To do this:

1. Access the administrative interface using a URL like:

   http://YOUR-DOMAIN.NAME/Merchant2/admin.mv

2. Login and click on the expandable "Store" menu. Click on "Add Store".

3. Enter just the basic store configuration information required.

4. Once the store has been added to your menu list, expand its menu, then its "Utilities" menu, and finally its "Import Data" menu. Documentation on this Import utility can be found in the Miva Merchant User Manual in the Miva Product Documentation.

5. Finally, choose "Miva Merchant v1.x Store Import" and follow the prompts to import your old store data into your new store.

6. After you have thoroughly examined your new store and its new features, you can go live by simply renaming its directory to the name of your old store directory. Of course, this will require you to rename the old store directory first to something like mivastore.old.