Adding Products

As soon as some categories have been created, you can begin adding products. In X-Cart, three methods of adding products are supported:

▪	manual creation (New products are created one by one by manually entering product information into the forms of the 'Products Management->Add product' section of the store back-end),

▪	import from a spreadsheet (Specially formatted product information is imported into the database using X-Cart's import/export functionality).

As it has already been mentioned in the chapter Categories and Subcategories, products in X-Cart-based stores are created within categories. Basically, having at least one category in your store is the only prerequisite for creating products. However, you should be aware that information associated with a product may include such details as manufacturer (name of the individual or company that produced the product - can be used for assigning the product to a manufacturer category), membership (information about the product's availability to different categories of customers) and taxes (types of taxes that need to be applied to the product). If you wish to be able to set up manufacturer/membership/taxes for each of your products at the time of creation, you need to configure the necessary manufacturers/membership levels/taxes before you begin working on product details.

If you are an X-Cart GOLD administrator/provider or an X-Cart PRO administrator:

In the 'Products Management->Add product' section, you should see a dialog box titled 'Product details'.

2.	Define the details of the new product by completing the fields of the ‘Product details’ dialog box (See: Defining product details). Be sure to click the Save button at the bottom of the ‘Product details’ dialog box to save the changes.

Tip: If the set of fields provided by the 'Product details’ dialog box does not exactly meet the needs of your business, consider using X-Cart's module 'Extra Fields' to create custom fields for it. If you are going to sell downloadable products, enable X-Cart's 'Egoods' module.

Basically, this is all: after you click on Save, the product details are entered into the store database and the product is considered successfully created. After an automatic page refresh, you should see an information box with a confirmation message.

Now, if you wish, you can define international descriptions and other additional features for the product (See: Defining additional product features).

The ‘Product details’ dialog box provides four sections: 'Product thumbnail', 'Product owner', 'Classification' and 'Details'. The instructions below explain how to complete each of these sections. After you provide all the necessary product details in all the sections, be sure to click the Save button at the bottom of the ‘Product details’ dialog box to save the changes.

This section allows you to select two images which will represent the product on the storefront: a thumbnail image and a product image. A thumbnail image is an image displayed next to the product title and short description in the Products list. A product image is an image displayed next to the product title and detailed description on the 'Product details' page.

1.	In the 'Thumbnail' section of the ‘Product details’ dialog box, click the Change image button (below the default 'No Image Available' image). A window titled 'Image selection' will appear.

Specify the location of the image file you are planning to use as the product's thumbnail (use an appropriate Browse button if the file is located on the server or on your local computer, or enter an image URL if the file is located on the Internet). X-Cart does not set physical limitations as to the size of product thumbnails which can be used; however, we recommend you keep your thumbnails relatively small. Recommended thumbnail image size is from 50x50 px to 150x150 px.

3.	Click on Apply. The desired image should appear in the ‘Product details’ dialog box instead of the 'No Image Available' image.

If you do not select a thumbnail image for the product being created, the default 'No Image Available' image will be displayed in the place of the product's thumbnail.

Note: Default 'No Image Available' images can be defined via Administration menu->Images Location.

1.	In the 'Product image' section of the ‘Product details’ dialog box, click the Change image button (below the default 'No Image Available' image). A window titled 'Image selection' will appear.

Specify the location of the image file you are planning to use as the product's product image (use an appropriate Browse button if the file is located on the server or on your local computer, or enter an image URL if the file is located on the Internet). X-Cart does not set physical limitations as to the size of product images which can be used; however, please be aware that if your product images are considerably wide, you may want to redesign the page layout for 'Product details' pages.

3.	Click on Apply. The desired image should appear in the ‘Product details’ dialog box instead of the 'No Image Available' image.

If you do not select a product image for the product being created, the thumbnail image defined for the product will be displayed in the place of the product's product image.

Note: Default 'No Image Available' images can be defined via Administration menu->Images Location.

This section of the ‘Product details’ dialog box is supposed to contain information about the product owner (the provider who created the product, or the provider on whose behalf the store admin created the product).

The contents of this section is defined automatically in X-Cart GOLD and in the Provider zone of X-Cart PRO. An X-Cart PRO administrator is supposed to specify the product owner manually by selecting a provider's name from the 'Provider' drop-down box.

This section allows you to define a category (or several categories) in which the product should be located and to set the product's availability status.

(Optional) If, in addition to the main category, you need the product to be displayed in some other category or categories, specify these categories by selecting them from the ‘Additional categories’ list (To select a single category, click on its name with your mouse; to select multiple categories, mouse-click on their names holding down the Ctrl key).

Note: If you do not see a desired product category in the category fields of the ‘Product details’ dialog box, it means that it has not been defined by the store administrator.

To set the product's availability status, select Available for sale, Hidden but available or Disabled from the ‘Availability’ box.

▪	Available for sale means that customers will be able to find the product by browsing the catalog or by using product search.

▪	Hidden, but available for sale means that the product will not be included into the product catalog. No person will be able to find it unless he or she knows an exact URL address of the product details page of this product.

This feature allows you to limit access of customers to certain products without having to set up membership levels. After you finish defining the details of a ‘hidden’ product and click the Save button, the URL address of the product's Product details page will appear below the 'Availability' box. You can use this URL to give your privileged customers direct access to the product.

▪	Disabled means that the product will not be displayed to customers (This status may be useful if, for some reason, you do not want to sell the product for a while).

This section allows you to provide essential product details. As this section is pretty big, we'll divide it into several portions for convenience.

'SKU' (Stock Keeping Unit) - a unique identification code for your product. For your convenience, X-Cart generates a unique SKU for each new product you add, so it is quite safe to leave the value of the ‘SKU’ field as is. However, if you wish to use your own system of product identification, simply remove the value generated by X-Cart and type in your own identification code for this product). SKU must not be longer than 32 characters.

Note: (For users of X-Cart PRO) Since X-Cart version 4.1.0, a product SKU must be unique per provider, which means that no two products within the product set of one provider may have the same SKU, while nothing is wrong when the same product SKU is used by two different providers.

2.	‘Product name’ - a title by which you and your customers will be able to identify the product.

Note: make sure you do not use the '<' and '>' symbols in the text fields in this form. Any characters to the right of '<' and the '>' character will not be displayed.

3.	'Search keywords' - words or phrases not contained in the product's title or descriptions by which you and your customers will be able to find the product.

4.	'Short description' - a short description of the product (will be visible to customers when they view the product in the ‘Products list’).

5.	'Detailed description' - a detailed description of the product (will be visible to customers when they view the product's ‘Product details’ page - accessible by clicking the ‘See details’ link below the thumbnail image of the product).

Note: ‘Short description’ and ‘Detailed description’ fields support HTML formatting.

1.	‘Price’ - a price that will be used as the basic price for this product. The price should be specified in the store's primary currency.

Note: The primary currency may be defined by the store administrator via the 'Primary currency symbol' field in General Settings->General options->General parameters.

‘List price’ - a price that will be used as the product's list price. List price is a promotion price which may be displayed on the storefront next to the actual price of the product. List price represents an average price of the product on the market, and the difference between the two prices is supposed to convince a prospective customer that ordering the product from your store is more economical.

If the price specified in the 'List price' field is higher than the basic price of the product, a note: 'Market price: X' will be displayed next to the real price of the product on the storefront. There will also be a note showing how many percent less a customer will have to pay if he or she buys the product at your store, for example 'Our price: Y, save 10%'.

If you do not want to use list prices, simply leave the value of the ‘List price’ field set to 0.00.

‘Quantity in stock (items)’ - a number of product items available for sale . As your customers order the product, X-Cart’s inventory tracking system will track the number of product items remaining in stock and automatically update the value in this field. This system will ensure that your customers will not be able to order more product items than you have.

Note: As soon as the last item of a product is purchased (in fact, as soon as the order is placed with the status 'Queued'), the product’s quantity in stock becomes 0 (zero), and from that moment on the product is not available for ordering. The product is marked ‘Out of stock’ and remains on the storefront, unless the store admin chooses to hide out-of-stock products from customers (Descriptions of out-of-stock products can be removed from the storefront by enabling the option ‘Disable products which are out of stock’ in the General settings->General options->Inventory options section of the Admin interface).

‘Low limit in stock’ - a number of product items remaining in stock that should be regarded as insufficient. As soon as the product’s quantity in stock reaches this limit, X-Cart’s inventory tracking system will start sending email notifications to the store orders department signalling that your stock needs to be replentished. A notification will be sent every time someone orders the product.

'Min order quantity' - a minimum number of items of the product that a customer will be allowed to order at a time. The value specified in this field will be entered as the smallest value in the quantity selectbox of the product on the storefront; a note 'you must order at least N items' will be added below the product description.

The 'Weight' field in is portion allows you to specify the weight of one product item. The weight should be specified in the units of weight supported by the store.

Note: The units of weight may be defined by the store administrator via the 'Weight symbol' field in General Settings->General options->General parameters.

This portion allows you to limit access to the product based on membership levels. If you want the product to be available to all visitors including non-members and users who are not logged in, select All from the 'Membership' selectbox. If you want the product to be available only to members of specific levels, select these levels from the 'Membership' selectbox, making sure the choice All is unselected (To select a single membership level, simply click on its name with your mouse; to select multiple levels, click on their names holding down the Ctrl key).

1.	The 'Tax exempt' field allows you to specify whether any taxes should be applied to the product or not. (Select Yes if you want this product to be tax exempt).

2.	The 'Apply taxes' field allows you to specify which taxes should be applied to the product (To select multiple taxes, press and hold down the Ctrl key while clicking your mouse).

Note: The field 'Apply taxes' is visible in the 'Product details' dialog box only if taxes have been defined by the store admin.

1.	The 'Free shipping' field allows you to specify whether shipping for this product should be free or not. (Select No if you want to charge purchasers of this product for shipping).

The 'Shipping freight' field allows you to specify a sum of money that a purchaser of the product will be supposed to pay for any expenses incurred by the store in connection with having the product insured/packaged/delivered to a location where it will be picked up by a shipping service/loaded/etc. When defined, shipping freight is included in the product's shipping cost, so the customers do not see it as a separate sum.

Note: The field 'Shipping freight' is ignored (shipping freight is not charged) if the option 'Free shipping' is set to Yes.

3.	The 'Apply global discounts' check box allows you to specify whether global discounts should be applied to the product or not (Select the check box to apply discounts).

Besides the parameters defined in the fields of the ‘Product details’ dialog box, any product in your store can have some additional features (for example, descriptions in one or more foreign languages, detailed images, product options/variants, wholesale prices, etc). Of the mentioned features, only multilanguage product descriptions can be set up in a basic X-Cart installation: all the other features are enabled by X-Cart's modules or add-ons providing respective functionality. This means that before you can set up any additional product features other than descriptions in foreign languages, you need to enable and configure the modules or add-ons which make these features possible.

The dialog boxes allowing you to set up additional features for some product are accessible via the links in the 'Product Management' section menu when this product is opened for viewing/modification.

Note: The set of links available in the 'Product Management' section menu is defined by the set of modules that are enabled.

Depending on the status of the option 'Display all dialogs for product editing on one page' in General settings->General options, these dialog boxes are displayed either on separate pages (by default) or on the same page with the 'Product details' dialog box.

If your store supports more than one languages, you need to provide names and descriptions for your products in all the languages supported by your store. A combination of a name, a set of search keywords, a short and a detailed description for any product in any language other than default is traditionally referred to as the product's international description.

1.	Open the dialog box in which you can create an international description for this product ( 'International descriptions' dialog box):

a)	(If necessary) Find the product for which the international description is intended. Open this product for modification in the 'Product Management' section.

2.	Use the 'Language' drop-down box at the top of the 'International descriptions' dialog box to select the language you want to use for the description. The buttons Apply and Delete at the bottom of the 'International descriptions' dialog box should become active.

5.	Provide a short and a detailed description for the product in the selected language ('Short description' and 'Detailed description' fields).

6.	Click the Apply button at the bottom of the 'International descriptions' dialog box. The international description should be added. You should see an information box with a confirmation message.

2.	Use the 'Language' drop-down box at the top of the 'International descriptions' dialog box to select the language of the international description you wish to edit. This should open the description in the 'International descriptions' dialog box.

4.	Click the Apply button at the bottom of the 'International descriptions' dialog box. The international description should be updated. You should see an information box with a confirmation message.

2.	Use the 'Language' drop-down box at the top of the 'International descriptions' dialog box to select the language of the international description you wish to delete. This should open the description in the 'International descriptions' dialog box.

3.	Click the Delete button at the bottom of the 'International descriptions' dialog box. The international description should be deleted. You should see an information box with a confirmation message.

For detailed information on setting up any other additional product features, refer to the descriptions of the respective modules: