Manufacturers

Before entering the first product(s) into your catalog, you need to enter their manufacturer name first. You will do that on this page. If the product's manufacturer has already been entered before then don't enter it a second time. It is probably best to enter all of the manufacturers that you are sure of carrying their products before entering any products on the Products Page.

Now let's look at the page for setting up the manufacturers. There are 4 columns in the table. Let go through each one:

Manufacturers - This is a list of manufacturers currently in your catalog. There is an entry at the bottom of this column for entering the name of the new manufacturer.

Location - This controls how the product's name will be displayed with the manufacturer's name. For example: entering a "1" will force the product's name to "Microsoft Office 2000". In this location, the manufacturer's name (or in this case, developer's) is placed in front of the product name. Entering a "0" will force it not to use the manufacturer's name, ex. "Office 2000". And entering a "2" will put the manufacturer's name at the end in ()s, ex. "Office 2000 (Microsoft)". To summarize:

• 0 disables the manufacturer's name.
• 1 manufacturer_name product_name.
• 2 product_name (manufacturer_name).

Which location should you use? If the product is more commonly known by just its product name in such cases as movies, music CDs, video games, computer games, etc, use '0' to disable the manufacturer's name. Rarely do people refer to movies as 'Warner Bros. The Perfect Storm'. If the product is more commonly known or referred to with its manufacturer's name such as is the case with computer hardware and computer productivity software, then use "1" or "2", whichever suits the product.

Image - Images are optional but recommended. This column indicates the path on the server that the image for the manufacturer is located. A green dot to the left indicates the image is present at the location specified. A red dot indicates that the image is not found. In other words, a green dot means that the image will show up in your catalog. All manufacturer images should be kept similar in size. Something around 85 pixels by 60 pixels should be fine. But sometimes the manufacturer's logo might look better if the image is larger. Of course, always keep the same proportions when resizing an image. The image should be cropped first to remove all unwanted surroundings. Images are automatically resized if the width of the image is larger than specified in the "Images" page of the "Configuration" section.

Action - This column indicates the actions that are available. There are two: edit and delete. When editing, you can change the name of the manufacturer, location, and image. Be very careful when deleting a manufacturer! Deleting a manufacturer will effectively delete all products associated with it.

To enter a new manufacturer follow these steps:

1. Type in the name of the manufacturer at the bottom of the manufacturers column.
2. Type in the preferred name location for this manufacturer at the bottom of the location column.
3. Upload an image by clicking on the browse button and selecting an image from your hard drive. It should be a JPEG (.jpg) or a GIF (.gif) type image.
4. Finally click on the button labeled insert at the end of the row.

You should now see your new manufacturer entry in the table.