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When you’re all done learning as much as I know (and I’m learning more all the time and will be sure to include it here as time permits) and can teach you about implementing Mals cart, please come back and take a minute to email me and let me  how I can improve this site to better meet your needs.

These pages are being presented as a service to the newer users of Mals service, and are not in any way connected with or subsidized by Mals e-com. Consider these pages to be an extension of Mals Help & FAQ pages and an attempt to make it just a wee bit easier to understand for beginning users. These pages ain’t too nice, but then again, they don’t need to be. One of these days I’ll get around to figuring out how to categorize this info so you won’t have to look so hard for what you want to know.

(Fine print)
Use of the code on these pages is at the users own risk. I will not be responsible for mistakes or errors caused by cutting and pasting with text or wysiwyg editors, nor any other use of this example code.. My recommendation is to learn HTML and use a text editor such as notepad for all cutting & pasting efforts and to paste directly into html views. When deleting code & links outside of tables or cells, be sure to delete from within html view to make sure you’ve deleted the “hidden” fields which the wysiwyg editors WON’T do when deleting from page view

If you are going to use Mals service, you are sooner or later going to have to bite the bullet and learn some html…!
To ease your pain and suffering and to help prevent premature baldness from “hair tearing out”, please plan to learn a little bit sooner. WYSIWYG editors are great but are not the magical answer (sorry Bill & others). For easy to understand tutorials on html, please visit the htmlgoodies website and tell Joe that Ron sent you. The items you should concentrate on are forms, tables and links.

On these pages we will “attempt” to explain and present examples of the usage of the various tags and fields necessary to successfully accomplish adding e-commerce to your website with Mals cart. If information is needed about something I haven’t covered here, please visit the forum. I do not have the time nor resources to answer your questions by email. Additional topics will be added as time becomes available and I learn a bit more about them.
If anyone cares to assist with this endeavor and author a topic, please contact me on the forum.

Due to the great flexibility Mal has built into the cart program, there are many ways to accomplish the results you need to see in the cart. The examples presented here are not the only way nor the final solution for each tag. They are simply those that work for me and give me the results I’m after.
If you visit here often, be sure to occasionally refresh your browser in order to update the older pages in your browser cache as changes, additions, etc are published daily……., or at the very least, monthly.

Very basic Basics
(This page and the buy now hyperlinks page consist of the absolute minimum you’ll need to know to add Mals cart to your site)

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Use any of these links for checkout by changing the wording (“Review Cart” to “Checkout”) or
reference a checkout image as described below.

i.e.    …4567″>Checkout</A>

Review Basket with a hyperlink
<A HREF=”http://www.aitsafe.com/cf/review.cfm?userid=1234567″> Review Cart </A><A HREF=”http://www.aitsafe.com/cf/review.cfm?userid=1234567″> Checkout </A>

NO SPACES are allowed within the hyperlink !!
Review Cart
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“Review Basket” hyperlink with image
<A HREF=”http://ww3.aitsafe.com/cf/review.cfm?userid=1234567″>
<img src=”images/ReviewBasketani.gif” width=”130″ height=”24″ border=”0″ alt=”Review Basket”</a>

Change the userid and the path & attributes to fit your image parameters
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“Review Basket” with a form*Note: all field values should be lowercase to be recognized with the many server OS’s & applications used on the internet when using forms. This is directly traceable to the unix operating system where “VALUE” and “value” can be interpreted as having two different meanings. It is not as critical now-a-days, but, it’s safer to do it this way. Popular convention is to have FIELDS in uppercase and “values” in lowercase. Makes it easier to read also.

<FORM METHOD=”post” ACTION=”http://www.aitsafe.com/cf/review.cfm”>
<INPUT TYPE=”hidden” NAME=”userid” VALUE=”1234567″>
<INPUT TYPE=”submit” VALUE=”review Cart”>
</FORM>

Spaces are permitted within form fields (html view), but not within hyperlinks within the form fields

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“Review Basket” form with image button
<FORM METHOD=”post” action=”http://www.aitsafe.com/cf/review.cfm”>
<INPUT TYPE=”hidden” NAME=”userid” VALUE=”1234567″>
<INPUT TYPE=”image” src=”images/ReviewBasketani.gif” width=”130″ height=”24″ border=”0″ alt=”Review Basket” value=”submit”>
</FORM>
Change the userid and the path & attributes to fit your image parameters

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Return Links
OK now.! We all want our customers to come back & do some more shopping after they’ve put one of your indispensable products in the cart, Sooo…… we have to provide a link to return from the shopping cart to where they were which is called a “Continue Shopping” button located in the cart. DO NOT USE http:// in the link, and remember; No Spaces. The link can return to the same page, your home page or any other page on your site or even  somebody else’s website.. If you do not have a return link, you WILL NOT have a continue shopping button in the cart!!, and Remember, NO http://
Note: Every product  or form must have a return link associated with it  to enable a continue shopping button to show up in the cart.
It looks like this &return=www.yoursite.com/yourpage.htm

and the full link looks like this
<A HREF=”http://www.aitsafe.com/cf/review.cfm?userid=1234567&return=
www.yoursite.com/yourpage.htm”>Review Cart</A>

and for Forms
<FORM METHOD=”post” action=”http://www.aitsafe.com/cf/review.cfm”>
<INPUT TYPE=”hidden” NAME=”userid” VALUE=”1234567″>
<INPUT TYPE=”hidden” NAME=”return” VALUE=”www.yoursite.com/yourpage.htm”>
<INPUT TYPE=”submit” VALUE=”Review Cart”>
</FORM>

IMAGE BUTTONS

By default the cart uses ordinary HTML form buttons for navigation. You can use your own images instead. Simply upload your buttons to the same directory on your website as your header logo and call them button1.gif, button2.gif, etc. The table below describes each one and where it is used.

Name Size – pixels Description
button1.gif 300 wide x 25 high Recalculate | Go to Payments
button2.gif 150 wide x 25 high Continue shopping
button3.gif 150 wide x 25 high Continue
button4.gif 150 wide x 25 high Submit order

You can find more information in your admin>cart setup>Button Styles & Behavior

Note that you have to use images of the correct size and they must be .gif file format. The “Recalculate | Go to Payments” is really two buttons combined into a single image. The cart uses an image map to identify which one is clicked on.
As with all other remote images, these can only be used on non-SSL pages.
Now that you know all you need to know about the Review Cart, Checkout and return links, and a bit about using image buttons in the cart (if you’ve been paying attention), continue on to the Buy Now Link page to learn how to get your products into Mals cart and become an expert in online commerce.
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