TYPES OF FILES
Most customers will be working with at least two types of files: graphics and import/export files. You may also be working with other files such as HTML, Flash and PDF files. A lot of this will depend on your site content, how often it changes and how you process your data.
You will use graphics files as part of your site design and for your product photos. These usually include JPG, GIF and PNG files.
While some graphics are available in your Spark Pay online store, you will usually use a designer, purchase images packages, or create your own. Note that having high quality images that are optimized for quicker downloads, especially product photos, are important for conveying a professional storefront.
Spark Pay online stores support importing and exporting CSV (comma separated values) files for much of its data related to the product catalog, customers and orders. For exports, it is usually just a simple download that happens from your browser. You can usually just choose to save to a location on your computer or open it with a program associated with that file type. For those using Microsoft Windows and Office, this is usually Excel. For imports, you will need to upload a file from your computer to your website.
The other types of files you may work with usually have to deal with content delivery. That just means that you might want to put some of your content in other static file types because they are more convenient for you and/or your customers. For example, you may want to maintain About Us information in a static HTML file using your favorite editor and upload it to the site when that information changes. Spark Pay online stores natively support hosting and linking to many different types of content.
FILE LOCATIONS
Files will usually either be located on your computer or your website. In either case, you will want to arrange files by purpose and/or type for ease of management. You will also want to consider the number of files you have. The more files you have, the more folders you may want to create to help you locate them quicker. Finally for those with multiple storefronts, you will want to put files that are shared between the different sites in the Share folder. The Share folder is off the root of each site.
FILE MANAGEMENT TOOLS
There are two ways to access the files on your website. The first is to use the Site Explorer that is built into the Spark Pay online store administrative console. The second way is to use a third party FTP (file transfer protocol) program that can handle file management needs over the Internet efficiently. For those with a large number of files or who need to transfer files often, we recommend using a third party FTP program. Examples include: SmartFTP, BulletProof FTP and others.