Africa
Imports is not a tech support company, so we cannot offer
advanced help with your web site, but we do want you to be able
to succeed with your site easily. Here are some frequently
asked questions that we have answered to make creating your own
web site easy and effective.
After
purchasing a website you will receive an email letting you know
what information we need. Please read and answer all the
questions in detail so we can personalized your website to fit
your company best. To see what information will be
requested in the email choose the website you purchased below:
- Basic Website Questions
- PayPal Website Questions
- Shopping Cart Website Questions
Once you reply with all the information needed please allow
between 24 to 48 hours for your site to
be completed. Once your site has been finished, you will
receive an e-mail with your login information. Once you can view
your website you can email us back any changes you might feel is
necessary within a reasonable time period otherwise we will
consider the initial set up of your website complete. Once the
initial set up is complete there are no further changes made
on your website so it is important to give us all the
information immediately during the initial set up process.
How do I edit the non-shopping
cart section of my website?
There are two ways
to make changes: The first option is to use your cpanel; the
second option is to use an html editing program.
Option
1:
Step
1:Open your internet
browser and enter the following URL (replacing the word
companyname with your domain)
http://companyname.yourafricanmarket.com/cpanel
Enter your username
and password and click OK.
Step
2:Click on the icon
“file manager” and another window will pop up (so
make sure if you have pop ups blocked on your internet you
allow access by your own web site). Then click "Go".
Step
3:Now you should see a
list of folders. Click on the folder named
“public_html”
Step
4:Now you will see
folders and page names listed in the center chart area. There are 5 pages on your website when
we set it up. Index.html is the homepage; af clothing.html is
your African clothing page; pc.html is your health and beauty
page; art.html is your African art page; and contact us.html is
your company information page
Choose which page
you want to work on by clicking on the name of the
page.
Step
5:Once you have
selected the page you want to edit click on the icon at the top of the screen labeled
"HTML Editor".
Step 6: A window will popup as shown below,
just click "Edit" to continue to the editor.
Step
7:Another screen will open up and you will see your
webpage as you see it on the website but visible outlines of
the tables made and more. From here you can add or edit the
text of the page you are changing as well as add/remove images
and make other changes. Watch
the youtube video to learn how to add images, create links and
more.
Step
8:Once you have finished making changes and it looks
the way you want click 'save'.
Step
9:Always check the
changes you have made by loading the page you changed in
another window. If you do not see the changes right away, wait
a minute and refresh your screen.
Option
2:
There are many html
editors available, both commercial offerings and free open
source software. Generally commercial software will be better
supported and have more functionality. Examples of commercial
software are Adobe Dreamweaver and Microsoft Frontpage. The
downside to commercial website editing software is that it can
be expensive. Free open source software, though it does not
come with support and may not be as functional as some
commercial software is free and easy to try out. One software
package that we have used that has worked reasonably well is
called Amaya. You can find out more about this program and
download it here.
You can find the
five pages of your website when you login at the ftp site (to
login using MS Internet explorer go to
ftp://companyname.yourafricanmarket.com and in the tool bar
click 'file' then 'login as'; then enter your username and
password) Click on the public_html folder. There you will see
'index' (which is the homepage), 'coinfo' (which is your
information page), 'af clothing.html', 'pc.html', and
'art.html' (which are your category pages). Copy these files to
your computer then open those pages in your HTML editor to
update them.
If you wish to add
pictures to an html page you must copy the picture files to the
'images' folder which you can find at the ftp site, in the
section 'public_html/images'. You can then add the images using
the url images/imagename.jpg
*IMPORTANT
NOTE*Make sure you keep a back up of your files to
protect yourself in case something happens to your live pages.
The shopping cart
makes running your website simple. You can begin adding
products immediately without any knowledge of code or
programming using the administration section of the shopping
cart.
The
first step is to login to the administration section of your
shopping cart:
Step 1: Sign in to your shopping cart by
going to http://yourdomain/shop/admin (replace yourdomain with
your domain name i.e. something.yourafricanmarket.com) and when
prompted enter your username and password.
Step
2:Click on "catalog"
in the menu on the left hand side of the screen. Next
click on the link that appears below the "catalog" link labeled
"categories/products'"
Step 3:
From
here you can see the three categories we set up for you. To create
more click on the "new category" button located under the other categories.
Type in
the name of the category on the right hand side in the blank
box, (an images is asked for but is not required) and click
"save".
Step 4:
To add a product to a category (say..'African
clothing') you need to open the category, you can do this by locating
at the top right hand corner of the page "Go to" and a
drop down menu that says 'top'. Use the drop down to select the
category you want. Once selected you can now see the products
inside that category you selected. From here you can click on
the "new product" button. (You will also notice that there is
also the category button, which allows you to create
cub-categories in the main category you are in to help you
organize your products.)
Step
5:Put in the date,
name of product, price (do NOT use a dollar sign), description,
weight, and picture for the item you are adding. Click save.
Instructions for this can be found in the tutorials listed
at the bottom of the page.
The shared secure
server for your site is:
https://secure140.websitewelcome.com/~name (replace the word
name with the user name you use to login to the cpanel). You can
also email us to put this on your cart at website@hosting.africaimports.com
At
this time Africa Imports does not offer personal SSL
certificates. If you need your own personal ssl certificate
i.e. https://companyname.com you will need to get website
hosting with another provider. The hosting plans that we sell
are not capable of having a private SSL certificate.
You can make your
monthly payments in whatever way is easiest for you. We can
charge your card automatically each month; you can e-mail us
with a payment; you can make one larger payment to cover three
months or one year at a time; or you can send a check in the
mail.
Right now you can
pay for the whole year in one payment of $59.50 and save
$11.90. Otherwise the cost is $5.95 per month, after the
initial purchase and setup price of $99.00.
If you decide you do
not want to have yourafricanmarket included in the name of your
site you must purchase a domain name. There is a $20 fee for
changing your domain after your site is created to transfer the
files. If you have a shopping cart website you will loose any products
added, so it is best to make a firm decision on the name of your
domain before you purchase the website.
You can go to godaddy, Network Solutions or any other
domain name registrar and purchase a domain name. After you
have purchased your domain name you need to set your domains
dns servers to ns279.websitewelcome.com and
ns280.websitewelcome.com Let us know once this is done by
emailing us at website@hosting.africaimports.com
and we will then change your website over to the new domain
name.
Once your
website is set up we will e-mail you all the information you
need to access your website. If for any reason you didn't receive
the email (make sure to check your spam folder) please email us
at website@hosting.africaimports.comto get the email resent to you.
If
you decide your website is not for you, please call us at
800-500-6120 ext. 237 (Erin) or email us
at website@hosting.africaimports.com
to
cancel your website.
Can I use the
photos on africaimports.com for my website?
The orders will come
to you. You will interact with your customers, collect any
payments (at retail price) and ship any merchandise to them. If
you do not have any inventory of our items let us do the work by
calling us (paying wholesale price) with the orders to have them
drop-shipped to your customers. We will do all the packing and shipping
with only your company information for an additional $5.00 drop-shipping charge.
How
do I get rid of error messages on my shopping
cart?
There are many
reasons that error messages may appear. There are two common
reasons that are easy to fix.
One: you might have
installed buySAFE. buySAFE doesn't work currently so we do not
reccomend installing it. Uninstalling buySAFE from your
shopping cart should get rid of the error messages. If you want
to secure your shopping cart to be compatible with buySAFE you
will need your own personal ssl which is currently not an
option we offer with our hosting.
Two: Use
Search-Engine Safe URLs was activated on your shopping cart. To
fix this go to the admin section of your shopping cart, click
the "configuration" link on the left, click on "My store"
(listed below "configuration"), look in the center of the
screen for "Use Search-Engine Safe URLs (still in
development)", click on this, click the edit button, select
false and click the update button.
How do
I get the pictures in my shopping cart to not look distorted?
If your images look
distorted you will need to resize the pictures and re-upload
them to your shopping cart. You can do this by using and image
editing program like MS paint (which is on any Windows based
computer) or Adobe Photoshop.
Your images will look best if they are sized to be
close to square. The shopping cart system automatically
stretches or squeezes an image to fit a square area which is
why the images appear distorted.
How long will
it take to have my site up and running after I purchase it?
As
soon as you give us the answers to the questions that we need
to complete your website, your site can be completed and online
in about two business days.
Promoting
your site is one of the biggest hurdles to becoming a success.
There are many ways to advertise your site. Below are a few of
the most common options.
Google and Yahoo
have paid search term systems where you can pay to put
advertising on their search result pages. Google also has a
program called "AdSense" which you can use to advertise on
others sites who are a part of their adsense program.
Check out the google
paid advertising options here.
Check out the Yahoo paid advertising options here.
You can also promote your site by talking to everyone you
know about it. Print your website address on your business
cards, add it to your store signage, tell your customers that
you have a website and how to get there.
There are many more options for promoting your site than we
can list here but if you try searching on the internet you will
find numerous sources of information on how to get customers to
your site.
Can I
carry products that are not from Africa Imports?
This is your
personal website so you can add any products from anywhere that
you wish. If you will be reselling our products, you can use
any pictures, descriptions, and price suggestions from our
website that you want. If you use products of your own you will
have to add your own pictures and descriptions.
How do I
set up email accounts?
First you have to
sign into your cpanel (companyname.yourafricanmarket.com/cpanel) using the username
and password you were given. Click on the icon that says email
accounts (circled in red below).
Click
on add/remove/manage accounts.
Click
add account.
From
here you will set up your new email account with a password.
Once created, you can access your mail by going back to where
you created your account and you will see it listed. Click on
more/webmail to the right of the email account in the blue writing. And choose your webmail program
you want to use.
How
do I create colors and sizes for products in my shopping
cart?
When you login
your shopping cart, click on catalogs and select products attributes.Here
you will see option names and it's values that we have already
set up for the existing product we added to your shopping
cart.
If your option name or value already exists (such
as color or scent):
Check to see if the option value already has been
created (you will have to look through all ID option values.
For example, if you want to add the color purple to an item you
can see that ID 9 is already the option value purple, so you do
not have to add it again. But if you want to add a new value
that does not already exist enter it by choosing the option
name from the drop down box (located below the option values)
and enter the value in the en: (English) box. Click insert.
Once your value exists, you can then
match the product you created to the value just select your
item, option name, and value from the drop down box under the
subhead product attributes (at the bottom of the page). The
value price had already been set for the actual product, so
leave the price at blank. Then click
insert. You must match the
value to the product for as many values need for each product.
If you are trying to add another option name:
If you don't see the option you'd like to select
for your product, you will have to create the option.
Under product options enter the option you would
like to add in the en: (English) box. Click insert. For instance
if an item you created had different flavors or a color and a size option you
could put Color/Size.
Then under option value select the option name you
just created in the drop down box and enter the value into the
en: (English) box, leaving the other two boxes (de and es)
blank. Do this step as many times as you have values to
enter.
Once your option exists, you can then select your
item, option name, and value from the drop down box under the
subhead product attributes (at the bottom of the page). Then
click insert.
How Do
I...? All the basic install questions regularly asked.
Where
do I get my pay pal API signature? You
can get your API signature from PayPal.com
Once logged in to your PayPal account, click "Profile". From
your Profile page, click "API Access" in the left column under
"Account Information". Next click "Request API
Credentials". On the following page, make sure "Request API
signature" is selected then click the "Agree and Submit"
button at the bottom. You'll get the API information on the next page.
How do I change the Privacy Notice, Shipping and returns and Conditions of use pages on the shopping cart?
1. Open the admin section of the shopping cart.
2. Click on the Tools button on the lower left.
3. Click on the Define Languages link.
4. The "shipping.asp" link towards the bottom of the screen is the shipping info page. Click on this.
5. The lines at the end of the file you opened will be as follows:
define('TEXT_INFORMATION', 'If you are unhappy with your purchase for any reason at all, you can return your item(s) for a full refund or exchange: whichever you choose.
All returns must be undamaged and returned within 30 days of your purchase for a complete refund. There is no refund of shipping costs or returned merchandise.');
The section in single quotes that starts with 'If you are unhappy... and ends with ...returned merchandise.' is the section that you want to change. Make sure to leave the single quotes there with your new text contained between them.
The privacy notice is privacy.php and can be edited in the same way as the shipping.asp page. Just look for the single quoted section that matches what you see when you are on your site.
Conditions and use is conditions.php
contact us is contact_us.php
240 South Main Street, Unit A,
South Hackensack, NJ 07606 Fax us toll
free at (866)-457-1910.
Business
Hours: 9 AM to 7 PM EST Mon-Fri, and 9 AM to 3 PM on Saturday
EST.
Same Day
Shipping - Order Before 12PM EST To Ship Your Order Today!
(US Mail orders will be shipped the same day before
11:30am)
Our office and warehouse are partially solar powered.
100% Guarantee
You are guaranteed to be 100%
satisfied with anything that you order. If you are not
happy for any reason at all (or even no reason at all), you can
return it for your choice of either a full refund or exchange. Click
here to print out our return policy.
Our office and warehouse are partially solar powered.
