Getting Started
Welcome to RedCart! Before you start digging in, we thought it would be nice to give you a birds eye view of the four main components that you’ll be working with:
1) The Galleries
This is the main component that your customers interact with to view photos, choose favorites, and place orders. If you’ve played around with the demos, you already have some familiarity with this piece.
2) The Admin
This is the back-end system that you’ll use to configure the look and feel of your galleries, create new products and pricing, and change about a bazillion other settings to fine tune and customize the system for your unique business.
3) RedCart Desktop
RedCart Desktop is the uploader that you’ll use to upload new files to the system. This includes resizing and uploading photos for new galleries, uploading .mp3 files for music playlists, uploading product images and more. This is an Adobe AIR application that you download and install on your local machine.
4) The Order Fulfillment Script
The Order Fulfillment Script runs inside Adobe Photoshop and makes it super easy to process new orders and prepare them to send to any lab. When new orders come in, the script magically finds all of the high res images from the order on your hard drive, resizes and crops them exactly how the customer cropped them in the cart, and saves the output to a folder all ready to go for your lab. Using this script is completely optional.
Looks great! Now how do I get started?
The very first step can differ slightly depending on your license plan, so make sure to check your welcome email for exact instructions on how to begin. If you’re on the Self-Hosted path, your cart will need to be installed on your server before you can start digging in. If you’re hosting the cart with us, the very first step is to point your sub-domain to our server. If you’re not comfortable pointing your sub-domain to our server on your own, just log a support ticket, include a link to your domain’s control panel along with a username and password, and we’ll be happy to take care of this for you. After you’ve completed the first steps, head over to the Quick Start Guide to get started.
RedCart University
RedCart University is a collection of how-to videos that will teach you the fundamentals of the RedCart system. While there are many features available that aren’t covered in the videos, watching the videos should give you a solid foundation for building your photography business online. To get the most out of these videos, we recommend viewing them in the sequence order listed below.
This video discusses the two basic product ordering flows: 1) Image Based Products and 2) All Other Products (“The Store” Products). Be sure to watch this video to get a general understanding of how products work before you start configuring your products.
2) RedCart Pricing – Key Concepts
This video demonstrates the key concepts that drive all pricing in RedCart. These concepts are the foundation to RedCart’s powerful pricing engine that enables you to keep it simple or get wild and crazy with your products and pricing. This is a must watch video tutorial!
In this video we discuss the differences between public and private products and how to take advantage of this powerful feature!
4) Creating a Store Product with Add Ons
This is an in-depth and detailed look at how to create a store product with add-ons. In this video we’ll be creating a Post Card style product with add-ons from start to finish.
5) Image Lists & Image Collections
In this video we discuss the differences between Image Lists and Image Collections for store products. We also demonstrate how to create image collection items for an example post card product.
This video discusses how to configure, sell, and fulfill Image File Downloads in RedCart. As far as we know, this is the only digital download solution that:
1) Gives you more control over the files that you deliver.
2) Reduces gallery generation and upload time.
3) Reduces and saves TONS of disk space on the server!
7) Sending & Scheduling Emails – Part 1
In this video we introduce RedCart’s new Gallery Based Email Template and Email Scheduling framework which is one of the most powerful and overlooked features in RedCart version 4!
8) Sending & Scheduling Emails – Part 2
In this video we show how to create and schedule an Abandoned Cart email, Early Bird Discount Reminders, one-time email promos, and adding custom HTML to your email templates. Make sure that you watch Part 1 of this video first!
This video discusses how to automate parts of the RedCart order fulfillment process using the Order Fulfillment Script for Photoshop. The Order Fulfillment Script automates the finding, resizing, cropping, and color tone conversions of files from RedCart orders.
This video walks through the new “Smart Tour” feature that was added to RedCart 4.1 and shows how to customize and manage your tour items. It’s like having a new virtual hand-holding assistant!
Password Protecting Sub Galleries
This video discusses how to password protect your sub galleries for school photography and any other situation where you might need to generate a lot of mini galleries in one shot.
The Knowledgebase
Searching the Knowledgebase is the perfect place to start if you have a common question that might have been answered before. The Quick Start Guide mentioned at the top of this page is actually just a collection of KB articles that you can also find by visiting the Knowledgebase.
RedCart Users Group
The RedCart Users Group on Facebook is a great community and resource for bouncing questions off other RedCart users at any time of the day or night. What are you waiting for? Join the group!
Log a Support Ticket
So you’ve watched the videos, searched the Knowledgebase, joined the Users Group on Facebook and you still can’t get your question answered? No problem! Log into your account in our support center to log a new support ticket and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.
