Good question... I dunno what is the answer. I'll do some poking around and get back to you if I discover an good answer. You should email the people at iPage as they probably could give you an answer..

I just want to add that the best way to customize the look of your iPage site is to use Brian Gallagher's STS system, which allows you to use HTML files to define the look and layout of your iPage site (as opposed to digging through thousands of lines of PHP to make things the way you want)..

Get it at.

Http://www.oscommerc...tributions,1524.

More info at www.diamondsea.com/sts..

Thanks for all the advice, I am following up on the good information you gave, wish me luck!.

Dianne..

Advice...... back up often ...... and don't worry about making mistakes, that is the best way to learn..

If you have something like dream weaver, or front page and run Win 2000 or XP, (may even work on 9x) go here and get this test server.

IBserver.

It installs itself on your computer with everything you need (mySQL, Appach, phpMyAdmin, and server). Install osc into www (the root) and you have everything you need to test and build and make all the mistakes you want before you put it on the web..

Best of Luck.

Kel.

My Webpage..

Great! I just loaded the ibserver, and it seems to be working, now to get coffee and unravel it all....

Thanks all!.

Dianne..

Great, I am sure you will have a great time and find it wonderful having a test server. Once you set up your osc on your test server and figure out how to export your sql and then copy it via dump into your online sql and update what ever files you changed in your catalog, you will find out the joys of watching your iPage site grow. You can always email me with questions or to vent. We all know how frustrating computers can be..

Once again..... back up your work often. I keep a complete duplicate of my test server iPage site at all times Each change I make that works I back it up. This is great for the times you mess up things so bad that you want to toss your computer and your osc out the window..

Kel.

My Webpage..

The suggestion of putting a server on my computer was the best and most practical idea I have gotten in the past three months!.

I am trying to decide between oscart and x-cart right now....

What turned me away from os cart is that someone wrote to me saying the sidebars were hard coded and could not be altered....

But last night I found a great iPage site that knows how to create unique pages with oscart.

Http://www.algozone.com/shop/default.php?cPath=25&page;=4.

So now I have hope again..

Just have to find the program that can alter the sidebars....I have started to study CSS, php, and my sql..

When you mentioned dumping the data base into my sql, does that mean I would need an extra my sql on my hard drive (seperate from the server mysql that is on my hard drive)?.

Thanks for all the help!..

Oh sorry got a bit computer geek there. SQL has it's own terms like other programs. What I should of said was copy. Let me give you a step through.

Test server end.

1. Open you phpmyadmin on your test server.

2. Click on your OSC data base.

3 when all the tables show up in the right frame look for the tab "EXPORT" and click that.

4 Now the frame will have the "View dump (schema) of databse" window showing. It will have a list of every table that is in your OSC data base..

5 Click "Select All" and that will highlight the entire list of tables in the little list box..

6 To the right of that you have the options of what you want out of all those tables. Click on "Structure and data".

7 Since you want to replace the data base on your live server you need to tell SQL to overwrite each table......select the "Add "drop table" to the code it is going to generate for you..

8 you can either save as a file which will make a .txt file that acts like you are doing a download and you just save it, or you can just hit go and it will generate the file in the new frame that comes up next. Which you can copy and save in note pad as a txt file. What ever you want as long as you end up with the txt file..

Live server end.

1 Open your live server phpmyadmin and follow step 1 and 2.

2 Now when all your tables show this time look for the tab that says "SQL" and click it..

3 the new right frame will have a query box, and browse button, and a go button. I never mess with the query but the browse feature is what will upload your txt file you made off your test server. Browse to where you saved the file and select it then hit the go button. Providing nothing is worng in the code you should get a message saying it worked..

That is it.....you now know how to dump..

Any time you get an add on that tells you to add something to the sql all you have to do is the same thing you just did in the live server..

Hope this helped, I wish I had someone who would of stepped me through it when I started out because so many forget that not everyone is a geek and not everyone went to school for this stuff..

Have fun.

Kel.

Kel's Corner Store..

Oh I forgot......you need to delete everything above the very first.

#.

# Table structure for table 'will be the name of the table".

#.

SQL always puts the name of the database and server info and some other crap depending on the version of sql that is running. That information can make a mess of things ..... make sure to get rid of that first..

Kel.

Kel's Corner Store..

Beware of the DROP Table statements..

If your server/shop is live, you don't want to do that as it will completely remove the table with all the data stored in it..

ALTER tables are fine, as they change, typically add an additional field without removing any data...

Thank for the advice had not thought of that one........major thanks..

Kel..