Installation Cheat Sheet

Welcome to Hotcakes Commerce! We are excited to have you as part of the family. This cheat sheet has the primary goal of guiding you through the installation and setup process so that you can get started using our product as quickly as possible. We are very proud of the work we’ve done to get this ready for you and we think you’ll really enjoy using it. If not, drop us a line. Don’t be shy - we care about what you think!

Please, At Least Read This Part

Installing DNN


Installing Hotcakes Commerce

First, a couple of things you need to know if you stop reading and decide to skim:

1. Minimum Version of DNN: For the CMS, you need to have version 09.02.02 or newer installed. If you need help getting the CMS installed before installing Hotcakes, feel free to submit a help desk ticket, and we'll do our best to point you in the right direction.
2. Module Installation:  Hotcakes installs the same way as any other module. There is no need to reconfigure anything or to otherwise get a developer or engineer involved.
3. Configuration Wizard:  Be sure to go to your Admin menu in the DNN control panel and choose Hotcakes Administration.  This will take you through the most common configuration steps to get you up and running quickly and easily.  See below...

Information to Collect Before You Get Started

Here are some pieces of information you will be asked during the installation. You can skip any of this and come back, but if you want to knock it out on your first pass through, this is what you’ll want to bring with you.

1. Merchant Account – if you want to accept or authorize payments on your website, you will need to have a merchant account. We like Authorize.NET the best, but others are supported. If this is your first merchant account, you will need to create one on the Authorize.Net site.
2. Sales Tax Information – in which regions or cities do you charge tax? What is the tax rate that you charge?
3. Store Address - your store will use this address for "ship from" and other features.
4. Your Logo – have a copy of your logo that you can upload to be used in email messages and other template communications.

Configuration Wizard Cheat Sheet

Step One – General

1. Logo and Store Name – these are used for email correspondence and other template communications that include logo or store name.
2. Address (required) – this is for use with shipping location and address information that is displayed in communications.
3. Geo Location – used to calculate time and the currency that should be used in views and templates.
4. URL Configuration – these are the URLs that are used in the automatically generated URLs for your store. You can override these for your SEO goals. For products and categories, these end up looking like this if you use the default values:
1. /store/category/my-product-category
2. /store/product/you-should-buy-this-product

Step Two – Payment

Payment sets up how you allow your customers to pay on your website. For those payment types that require configuration, you can configure those from the respective edit link.

For using the Test Gateway, make sure you edit the settings for the test gateway if you are using this to evaluate the product. You can set whether you want to test payment failures, authorization failures, refund failures, etc. This will let you test the full process while you are still getting your merchant account setup.

Note that for unlicensed stores, you may only use the Test Gateway option at checkout.

Step Three – Shipping

Shipping setup allows you to setup the shipping methods you will accept and how they are priced. Note that you can tie acceptable shipping methods to shipping zones – this allows you to do things like only offer ground shipping to the contiguous US. We thought you might want to do that and created those zones for you automatically. Wasn't that nice?

Step Four – Taxes

Each tax schedule allows for your goods to be taxed at a rate for a given set of regions. Think about a tax schedule as a relationship to a type of taxed good that you have. For instance, it is common that alcohol be taxed at a different rate than normal goods. So in that case, you would setup two tax schedules – one for normal goods and a second for alcohol. Then, you would manage the region-by-region effective tax rates for each type of product. You can then select the schedule from the product editor.

Step Five – Licenses

First, if you are evaluating the software, you can click Complete Configuration and save this for later. Leaving this step will put the software in the trial mode – which you have 14 days to use to evaluate.

In order to access or activate a license, you'll need to have an account setup at HotcakesCommerce.com. If you already have one setup, use that account to login to this page.  Otherwise, create a new one.

After you've logged in, you will see all of the licenses associated with your account already. If you have a license key that you were given by a Hotcakes Commerce team member, you will be able to put the license key in to associate it with your account here. Alternatively, if you have a license that was purchased through the DNN Store, you can enter it here. Either way, if you have a valid license, it will be associated with your account by adding it here.

Once you've associated your license with your account, you can activate the license directly from the grid. Note that once you activate a license, you cannot use it again. We do not provide a development, GA, or staging license. Our licensing terms allow you to use a copy of Hotcakes Commerce in trial mode for fail-over and testing purposes, they will simply show the licensing message on the product and category page, as well as on the checkout.

If you need to purchase a license, or have questions about how to purchase a license for your e-commerce website, contact us at [e-mail] or on the phone at 561-228-5319.