Installing and running ezimerchant professional from a network share on multiple PC's
Note: This whitepaper is for information purposes only and should only be used by experienced Network Administrators. ezimerchant cannot provide support for any network installations.
It is possible to install ezimerchant Professional on a network share and then run it from this network share on multiple PC's.
Scenario:
Customer wishes to maintain their website from multiple PC's on a local network.
Requirements:
- ezimerchant Professional V4.0 or above
- Each computer needs full access to a network share mapped to a common
drive letter. For example: X:
In this example I am going to map a network share like this: X: -> \\ourserver\ezimerchant - Before starting make sure ezimerchant has been uninstalled from all machines
Installing on First Machine:
On one of the PC's start the installation process. When you get to the 'Choose Destination Location' click browse...
Select the mapped drive (X:) and then edit the installation directory and make it x:\ezimercpro then click the OK button.
Ensure the Destination folder look like this...
Now continue through the installation as per normal. After the installation is finished, you should have a new ezimerchant professional shortcut on your desktop. Check the properties of this shortcut to ensure that its pointing to the correct location...
You should now be able to run ezimerchant Professional. When you create a new site you will notice the website database path becomes x:\ezimercpro\websites\online store 1\
Installing on Additional Machines:
On each additional PC you wish to run ezimerchant on it is not necessary to install the software. All that you need to do is create a shortcut on the desktop to x:\ezimercpro\ezimercpro.exe
The first time you run ezimerchant on these machines you may be prompted for the ezimerchant transaction server name - if you are asked for this information enter:- secure.ezimerchant.com and click OK.
ezimerchant should now be running and when you create your website the path should be the same as demonstrated below...
Important Notes:
- ezimerchant Professional is not designed to be run in a network environment, its database can easily be corrupted and therefore regular backups must be kept to insure against dataloss.
- Only a single user should run ezimerchant at a time. Although the above method will allow it to run from multiple machines, it can only be run on one of them at any time.
Images:
It is important that ALL the images you insert into ezimerchant are sourced from the same network drive. We recommend you create a folder in x: called 'siteimages' and store all your sites images in this folder...
When inserting images the path should look like this...
eziHTML Editor
On each of the 'additional' machines you will need to add the eziHTML editor application into ezimerchant's HTML editor list. To do this click on the 'Add New Pages to your Web Site' option and then click the 'Edit Page' button. To add the editor, click 'Add New Editor'...
Click Browse...
Navigate to x:\ezimercpro and then select the eziHTML file and click 'Open'...
Check the path setting and then click OK...
You should now see the eziHTML editor in the list...
Repeat this on all 'additional' PC's.
ezimailer
ezimailer (the ezimerchant bulk emailer application) will not function on the additional machines unless you manually copy over some files from the original machine you installed ezimerchant from.
On that machine, browse to c:\program files\common files\ and copy the entire 'On Technology' folder to the same location on each of the 'additional' machines. Then manually run the ezimailer.exe application which resides inside this folder once on each of the machines. This will register the program with widows and should allow you to send bulk emails from any of the machines.