How To Correctly Edit Files in osCommerce
Files you need to change must be downloaded to your PC via FTP for editing. Before you start to edit that file create a copy of it, which will be your unedited backup if it all goes wrong. In fact it is always best to keep a complete set of all of your osCommerce files, unedited, in case you need to restore your website or search for a text string in osCommerce.
File should only be edited using a Plain Text Editor, such as Notepad, Text Pad, or PS Pad. DO NOT use Word or Wordpad to edit files – they are NOT plain text editors.
How do you find out where things are in osCommerce? Well, if you have a complete copy of osCommerce on your PC and have Text Pad installed on your PC then you can use its “Find In Files” feature to search the entire folder in which you keep your osCommerce backup for any text or code. For instance, you could search for “Put here your Privacy Notice information.” and the results will tell you that the text you are looking for is in includes/languages/english/privacy.php
For many of the files in osCommerce there are two files with the same name. The first file is in the root of your hosting and contains the PHP coding. The second file is in the includes/languages/[your language]/ folder and contains the text found on pages such as Privacy, Conditions, Shipping etc.
The dreaded “Parse Error”, or “What did I do wrong?”. You probably wrote some text into a file with an apostrophy in it. In PHP an apostrophy is an escape character which tells the programme the PHP has ended – so anything that comes after it is an error. So you have to tell PHP to ignore an apostrophy used in text. Below is how you do that:
Let’s is wrong and will cause a parse error.
Let\’s is right and will not cause an error.
You will notice, for instance, that in the default privacy page you have the following text (note the postrophy at the start and end): ‘Put here your Privacy Notice information.’
If you change it to: ‘Let’s put some Privacy Notice information here.’ then it will cause an error. But using: ‘Let\’s put some Privacy Notice information here.’ will not cause an error.
When you FTP the edited file back to your website make sure that you upload it to the correct place. Uploading it to the wrong place will result in an error.
Many people believe that the “Backup” facility in osCommerce backs up their whole site. It doesn’t. It only backs up the database.
Very true! Makes a cahnge to see someone spell it out like that.