PHP-eSeller is a shopping cart in PHP which is administered by a set of password protected web pages. Creating products, testing the IPN system, defining the buttons and other tasks are all performed via these pages.
The following sections describe the main features of each page.
This page is used to set up all the global settings for the application.
Full URL of installation folder : Enter in the complete
url of the folder where the script is installed. Normally this will be a folder
called 'eseller', 'shop' or 'store' at the root of the web site, so the url will be http://
Remember that Unix or Linux operating systems are case sensitive and you must enter the full URL.
The default location where your digital files will be placed : Enter in the folder location where your downloadable files are located on your web server. Whenever you create a new file item, this default location will be copied into the text box.
The folder location will be of form : /
Do not try to use a http: url web address as it will not work.
Site title : A suitable site title which will be displayed for the main index pages.
Meta description (optional) - sets the meta description tags for the main index pages. Individual meta description tags can be set for each product.
Currency : Choose the currency for your products. All products will have the same currency.
Email subject : When an item is purchased, this line is the subject of the email.
Email text for digital products : When a digital item is purchased, this line is the body text of the email.
The email has to send the login details to the purchaser. To include these items in the email you should include something like the following :
To download your file(s), enter the following into your browser address
bar : <login_url>
The variable <login_url> defined by < and > characters will be replaced with the relevant download url when the email is sent out and should be left as is.
Email text for physical products : When an item is purchased, this line is the body text of the email.
Your site admin email : This is an address which is used
as the 'from' address when an email is sent. You should enter a valid email
address. If you leave it blank, then the 'from' address of all emails sent out will
be the same as your PayPal Email Address.
The admin email address MUST have the same domain name as the domain that your site is
hosted on otherwise the customer may not receive their email.
The width in pixels of the thumbnail images in the templates : Set to 150 pixels by default.
Your PayPal Email Address : This address must match the PayPal address that you use to login to PayPal. It is your registered PayPal address. It must be the PRIMARY PayPal email address, that is, if you have multiple email address registered on PayPal, you must use the one defined as PRIMARY.
Notify URL : This is displayed for information only, and is the url which PayPal IPN uses to post its data to.
Cancel URL : The full url address of a web page which the user will see if they cancel their attempt to purchase the item. If this is blank, then a standard page on the PayPal site will be displayed. It is an optional entry, but gives a better impression to a customer and would say something like 'You have cancelled your purchase'.
Note : we have found that the page should normally be .php and not .htm or .html although different servers appear to work differently.
Return URL : The full url address of a web page which the user will see after they have completed their purchase through the shopping cart. If this is blank, then a standard page on the PayPal site will be displayed. It is an optional entry, but gives a better impression to a customer and might say something like 'Thank your for your purchase, you will receive an email in a few minutes. If you do not, then contact us at ...'
Note : we have found that the page should normally be .php and not .htm or .html although different servers appear to work differently.
Notify URL Sandbox : This is displayed for information only, and is the url of the script which the sandbox testing server will post to. Sandbox testing is described in the associated page testing.
Sandbox seller email address (optional) : The PayPal developer system has a Sandbox testing facility. Sandbox testing is described in the associated page testing. By entering an email address that you have created in the Sandbox, you can test purchases via the Sandbox rather than via the live PayPal system.
If you wish to send out your emails using SMTP email service rather than using the standard PHP sendmail function then this is where you set up the SMTP details. With some hosts, using the standard PHP sendmail function is not always reliable, but an external SMTP service can be much more reliable.
Click on the button "Click to use SMTP" to show the set up details.
The details will vary depending on the SMTP hosting service that you use. Note that the "Debug" option allows you to display debug messages which is useful when you are setting up the details. Once you have entered in the details, click on "Email" in the main menu and do an email test.
Physical goods can have shipping added to them as defined in this page. The postage will be added to the PHP shopping cart total and will be calculated only for physical items.
First, define a list of destinations and then for each physical product, add in the cost for each of the destinations.
If the customer purchases a physical product, the customer will be presented with a list of destinations which will then add the appropriate shipping costs for the selected destination.
Change your admin user password and username. This is the username and password for you the administrator to login to the admin area.
You can change the username and password directly in the database if you have the ability to do that. However, remember that the password is stored in MD5 encrypted format within the database.
The Username is an email address.
The product List page is where you create or edit an existing product.
Physical Item : Tick to identify this product as a physical item. The processing of physical items is slightly different to digital goods as obviously, there is no need for the user to login to the download area and there are no files to download.
Product item number : Enter in a suitable item code such as 'chapter01'. This entry is in fact the PayPal item_number.
Product item name : A short description of the item. This entry is in fact the PayPal item_name.
Payment Gross : Value to two decimal places
For digital products, entering 0.00 will make it a free item. The add to cart button will be replaced with the free button image when the item is displayed in the cart lists. Clicking on the free button will allow anyone to immediately download the files that have been attached to the product.
Free products are applicable to digital goods because physical goods have nothing to download. For physical goods, entering 0.00 does not display the free button image.
At the moment, this is only available on the "store" version of the shopping cart system.
Note that free item that is downloaded is actually the item located on your web server where you place your clip files and will be the clip url. This is because the clip files are accessible to the public and the free item also has to be accessible to the public.
The customer can download the item by right clicking on the audio element on the web page and selecting "Save Audio As".
Free products for digital items will NOT work if you create the buttons by hand, but it should not be an issue because you would simply place a normal href link for a free item if you are creating buttons by hand.
Item title : Provides a title for the product. This will be displayed as the product title in the shopping cart displays.
Item Description (Brief) : Enter in a description of the item. The detail that you enter here depends on the layout that you are using. You may want to use this entry as just a line of description and then have a more detailed description in the following box.
Item Description (Detailed) : Enter in a detailed description of the item. If you enter text into this box, then a 'more...' link will be displayed. If the box is empty, the 'more....' link will not be displayed.
Note : Within the two editor boxes of item description, you can enter any html code that you want. If you click on the 'Source' button in the editor, this will show the display as html where you enter the raw html code. The editor that is used is the ckeditor which has many features.
Image : The full url of a graphic image which will be displayed in the cart displays. Use a graphic no bigger than 150 x 150 pixels.
Make public : Checking this box will make the item display in the store front pages. This facility is useful if you want to create test items but do not want them to appear to the public.
Sort order : When displaying the products through the dynamic shopping cart system, this allows the products to be displayed in different sort order where 0 is the 'top' order.
Web Page title : When displaying the products through the template driven dynamic shopping cart system, this allows a web page title to be defined, and is displayed when the full details of the product is displayed.
Web Page Meta description : When displaying the products through the template driven dynamic shopping cart system, this allows a meta description to be defined, and is displayed when the full details of the product is displayed.
mp3 clip Full url : An optional mp3 clip which will be displayed on templates that support
this feature. The mp3 clip can be located anywhere on the server in a publicly accessible folder. Enter the full http url
of the file (e.g. http://
Make sure that the mp3 clips are located in a publicly accessible folder on your web server.
Item Owner : This may be used to identify who owns this product. When a purchase is made, the transaction list will also list the owner.
Edit File Downloads link : This link takes you to the 'edit downloads' page where you can enter the file details for this product. You enter the file name, the number of download retries allowed and the number of days to expire. You may have as many files as you wish for a product item.
The default location for your digital files is defined in the Global Set up page, but there is nothing stopping you from changing that location at anytime provided that the folder actually exists on the server.
The digital files are normally protected with an htaccess file to stop anyone directly accessing the files with the url.
You do have to work out the location of the folder on the server. Refer to faqs page
Lists all the completed transactions, those from PayPal and from the test facilities.
You may delete transactions from this list and that will remove the values from the sales totals page and also from the sales graph showing sales / month. This is useful if you are testing and have test transactions appearing in your sales totals.
If a product is refunded, the list of transactions is correctly modified to place a negative value for that transaction.
There are two ipn tests which may be performed on a product item : local test and Sandbox test. See testing page.
Use my local test IPN page
To perform a local test go to the IPN test page and select the product you wish to test. This will take you to another page which displays all the input fields which must be filled out to run this test. Most of them are filled out automatically for you from the product information list. The only one entry that you have to enter in yourself is the payer email address. This should be a valid email address which acts as the purchaser.
The test by-passes the IPN system but does test all other elements of the application.
You may wish to test what happens when you change other entries on the page such as the gross payment.
Use my test via the Sandbox.
Refer to the associated page testing for more information.
To perform a test using PayPal's developer system rather than the live PayPal system, go to the IPN test page and select the product you wish to test. This will take you to another page where there will be a buy now button for this product.
You need to login to the developer network before you actually do the test.
Pressing this button will take you to the PayPal developer site where you then continue as though it were a live sell.
In this system, the sandbox test only checks single item purchases and not multiple cart purchases.
To use this test you must have set up an account at the PayPal developer
site - http://
Choose the product from the list.
Select email format as either HTML or plain text.
Enter in the subject line for the email.
Enter in the body text for the email.
Pressing Submit will send an email to each of the purchasers of the selected product who are in the table saleshistory.
Within the Product List, there is a "Complementary Sell" link which is used to sell an item to a customer but where the customer does not actually pay for the item.
You may either make a complementary sell to one email address or send to multiple email addresses. The second method might be used for situations such as upgrading a software product where you want to send out an upgrade to all customers who purchased a particular item.
Filling in the details will send an email to the given email address or addresses. The email will contain a password as for normally purchased items. The customer can then log in and download the item in the same way as a normal purchaser.
This is where you manage categories and subcategories.
You can define as many categories as you wish and have as many subcategories of the main categories.
You can also set a sort order for the categories and subcategories. This is used in the template driven dynamic shopping cart displays and allows the menu items to be sorted.
The recommended method of backing up your database is described in the following article.
The recommended method of restoring the database is described in the following article.
You will also need to back up your web files by copying them to a safe place on your computer.
Pricing : PHP-eSeller costs $55 U.S. Dollars.
Purchase PageDemo : View an on-line demo illustrating the admin pages. Demos are live and you may purchase test items for $0.01 in value.
Demo Page