AShop - a free webshop system with affiliate marketing support

Written by Andreas Rimheden <rimheden@afyra.com>

Requirements: PHP 4 and MySQL

Unpack the zip-file/tarball on your webserver or upload them
to your webserver once they are unpacked.

Edit the file config.inc and change the variables to suit your
webservers setup. The variables and their meaning is as
follows...

$ashopname: The title of your webshop
$ashopphone: The phonenumber to your company
$ashopemail: The email address to your company
$ashopaddress: The postal address to your company
$ashopurl: The URL to your webshop

$databasename: The name of your MySQL database
$databaseuser: The user name you use to connect to MySQL
$databasepasswd: The password you use to connect to MySQL

$orderrecipient: The email of the person that is to receive
                 orders from your webshop
$ordersubject: The subject line of the order mail that person
               receives when someone has placed an order
$timezoneoffset: An offset value to correct the time stored with
                 an order in case your webserver is located in
                 another timezone than your office

$affiliateinfo: Message about your affiliate program
$affiliaterecipient: email to the person that is to recieve
                     requests to join your affiliate program

To set up your database tables correctly you need to run the script
dbinit.php which is done by calling it from your webbrowser. If
the URL to your webshop is: www.myniceshop.com you call the script
by typing in: www.myniceshop.com/dbinit.php into your browser.
Once this is done you should delete the file dbinit.php.

As soon as the dbinit.php-script has been run without errors your
AShop system is ready to be used, except for the fact that you
have no products registered in your database. To do this you use the
scripts in the "admin"-directory with your web browser. 

Type: www.myniceshop.com/admin into your browser (of course you need to 
replace "www.myniceshop.com" with the URL of your shop). You now have
the option to add a new category or a new product. Select by clicking
the links. AShop uses two levels of categories: top categories and
sub categories. Products can only be added to a sub category so to
be able to add a product you first need at least one top category
with at least one sub category beneath it. 

The forms you fill in to add your categories and products are pretty 
self explanatory so there is probably no need to explain them further.

To use the affiliate marketing system you need to provide links on your
website to the scripts "affiliate/signupform.php" - where you send webmasters
to signup with your affiliate program - and "affiliate/login.php" - where 
webmasters already signed up login to get their link code and check their
statistics/earnings. Every new visitor of your webshop that is referred using
an affiliate link code are registered in your database as referred by the
corresponding affiliate so that you can reward him/her as you see fit. 
