Bonus Chapter 2 Hosting Your Site In This Chapter Hosting at home (page) Giving your site a test Using tags on a page When you don t want to lose your site s existing look and feel, you re short on time, and you want to save on hosting costs, hosting your HTML files through your NetSuite account is a great way to go. (To host a site means to keep the files for that site on a server and make sure that server stays up and running so everyone can see your Web site.) You can use the NetSuite site-hosting feature two ways: Hosting your entire site: This keeps you from paying a third party for hosting costs since hosting is included with your NetSuite account, and it also lets you integrate your inventory and accounting at a later date. This option is for informational sites only and not for stores. Hosting your home page: This allows you to have the best of both worlds keep your familiar HTML home page (hosted in NetSuite) and create the other tabs in NetSuite for selling your items or services. This option is widely used for integrating an existing informational site or page with a NetSuite store. Being the Host with the Most To get started hosting a site or page in NetSuite, you need to do three things, which we expand on in the sections of this chapter: 1. Enable the Host HTML Files feature. 2. Upload your HTML files. 3. Set your home page type, home page, and the base URL or Web address to publish your stored HTML files (such as www.acme.com).
BC16 NetSuite For Dummies Enabling the Host HTML Files feature Enabling the Host HTML Files feature in your account creates the Web Site Hosting Files folder in your File Cabinet. This folder contains two subfolders (Live and Staging) where you can publish, store, and test your files. To enable the feature, Administrators can follow along: 1. From the Setup tab menu, choose Company Enable Features. The Enable Features page appears. 2. Click the Web Presence tab. 3. Select the Host HTML Files check box. The check box, shown in Figure BC-1, is in the Publishing section. 4. Click the Save button. The Setup Manager page appears, and the feature is enabled. Figure BC-1: Enable the Host HTML Files feature to add a folder for hosting Web pages in your File Cabinet. Once you enable the feature, a new Web Site Hosting Files menu option is added under the Setup tab s Web Site heading. This option links to the Web Site Hosting Files folder of the File Cabinet, which you can also access from the Documents tab.
Bonus Chapter 2: Hosting Your Site BC17 Uploading HTML files Using the NetSuite hosting feature is really as easy as uploading the HTML files from your hard drive, just like you add an attachment to an e-mail. You can organize the files however you like, and as long as they re in the Web Site Hosting Files folder of the File Cabinet, they re in the wings and ready to be selected for the big show. To upload files: 1. From the Setup tab menu choose Web Site Web Site Hosting Files. The Web Site Hosting Files folder of the File Cabinet opens, as shown in Figure BC-2. 2. Click the folder you want to upload files to: Live Hosting Files: Files here are immediately live on your site as long as you have the Live Hosting Files folder selected as the root folder on the Web Site Setup page and have your domain name set up. Staging Hosting Files: Files here can be used for staging with a domain different from your live domain. You can set up your staging domain from the Setup tab menu: Choose Web Site Domains. For more information, see Staging and Testing Hosted Pages. 3. To add a single file, Click the Add File button. To add many files at once, go to Step 5. The button s at the bottom of the page. When you click it, a window opens. 4. Double-click the file you want to upload. 5. To add multiple files: Create a.zip folder of your files. 6. Click the Advanced Add button. 7. Click the Browse button next to the Zip Archives to Add field. 8. Double-click your.zip folder. 9. Click Add. Multiple files from a.zip folder are automatically unzipped in the File Cabinet. That way you can see each file and download or save over them individually when you need to make changes. Don t forget to upload your images, too!
BC18 NetSuite For Dummies If you change your file organization in the File Cabinet from how they were organized on your hard drive or FTP site, be sure to update the <href> and <img> tag paths correctly in your HTML files. Figure BC-2: A new Web Site Hosting Files link and folder are added for hosting custom Web pages through NetSuite. Publishing your hosted files Before your HTML files go live on the Web, you have to tell NetSuite that you want to use those files for your Web site instead of the NetSuite-generated site pages. This is done Surprise! on the Web Site Setup page shown in Figure BC-3. To publish your files: 1. From the Setup tab menu, choose Web Site Set Up Web Site. The Web Site Setup page appears. 2. Choose the Setup tab. 3. Go to the Home Page section 4. Select Hosted Web Page for Web Site Home Page Type. 5. Select the name of the HTML page for Web Site Home Page. 6. From the Default Hosting Root drop-down list, choose your live site from the Web Site Hosting folder. You choose it from the File Cabinet. 7. Click the Save button.
Bonus Chapter 2: Hosting Your Site BC19 Figure BC-3: Settings for publishing your custom HTML pages are found in this section of the Web Site Setup page. Your HTML files are now published! Check out how your hosted site looks: From the Setup tab menu, choose Web Site Preview Web Site. Don t be fooled by the fact that this page title includes Preview. You can view it just as easily using your domain name on the Web. This page can be handy if you haven t set up your domain name yet and are using the NetSuite-generated URL. Hosting Your Home Page If you want to use your custom HTML file for your home page and use NetSuite s catalog, shopping cart, and checkout, follow the same three steps as detailed in the subsections of Being the Host with the Most. To show the NetSuite-generated header and shopping tabs, you just need to add some tags to your HTML file: In the <head></head> section of your code, add the <NLPAGEFULLHEAD> tag. In the first table of your site, add the <NLPAGETOP> tag. These two tags add your logo, the login and register links, and the tabbed heading with shopping, cart, and checkout tabs as they appear in the regular NetSuite-generated site.
BC20 NetSuite For Dummies In your NetSuite account, you can edit the look of the shopping cart and checkout pages to a limited degree. 1. From the Lists tab menu, choose Web Site Tabs. 2. Click Edit next to Shopping Cart or Checkout. 3. Edit the messages or HTML in some areas of the pages. Staging and Testing Hosted Pages If you ve done some experimental work with your HTML, make sure it looks okay before it goes live. You ll be happy to know you can stage and test your site in a browser through NetSuite. However, you need to have a domain name specifically for staging/testing. (Staging means putting your site in a place where only you and other testers can see it. Once you re sure everything s working well, then you can take the site live. In the drama of the Web, staging is the rehearsal and live is the performance.) For example, if your main domain name is www.soapsdirect.com, you also need to buy a domain name something like www.stagingsoapsdirect.com. You don t want this domain name to be too similar to your regular domain name, though. You don t want customers to accidentally land there. Once you have a staging/testing domain name that is specifically for staging, you can set it up in NetSuite, as shown in Figure BC-4. To set up a domain name for staging and testing: 1. From the Setup tab menu, choose Web Site Domains. The Set Up Domains page opens. 2. In the Domain Name column, enter the URL. 3. In the Hosted As column, choose Hosted Web Page. 4. In the HTML Hosting Root column, choose Staging Hosting Files. 5. In the Home Page column, choose the page from that folder that should be used as the home page for the domain. 6. Click Add. 7. Click Save. When you have HTML files to test, simply upload them to the Staging Hosting Files folder of the File Cabinet. For details on how to do this, see Uploading HTML Files in this chapter. You can then preview them on your designated staging domain.
Bonus Chapter 2: Hosting Your Site BC21 Figure BC-4: Set up a domain for staging purposes on the Set Up Domains page. Feeling Itchy about Tags One of the benefits to hosting your site in NetSuite is that you can use NetSuite s tags to call information from item or customer records, among other things. This allows you to place the tag in your HTML once and have it update automatically when the record it references is changed. For example, even though you don t use a NetSuite-generated site to sell items, you want to show a few pictures of your most popular items in your custom HTML pages. Normally you d upload the images to the File Cabinet and reference them in the HTML, which requires you to re-upload the image when a new one is available. Instead, using the <%=getattribute('item','1','storedisplayimagehtml')%> tag in your HTML automatically updates the image every time the image is updated on the item s record in NetSuite. For a table of supported tags, click Help in the upper-right corner of your NetSuite account, and search for Web Site Tags. Tags that can be used with custom HTML pages are marked as such. Additionally, you can use some of the tags typically used for the themes applied to NetSuite-generated pages to make a hosted page more cohesive with other pages when you re combining custom hosted and NetSuitegenerated pages in one site. For example, you can add login links and a shopping cart summary portlet to a hosted page. When using attribute tags in hosted pages, you can only use the following tag format: <%=getattribute('recordtype','id','attribute')%> To find the ID from the item record, turn on the Show Internal IDs preference. 1. From the Home tab menu, choose Set Preferences. 2. Choose the General tab. 3. In the Default section, select the Show Internal IDs check box. This adds record IDs to lists for quick skimming.
BC22 NetSuite For Dummies