calling people with an oscommerce site (again!)

[hunkydory]

For those of you with an oscommerce site, I have a (pretty)straightorward question...

How do you edit your files online without crashing the site. It's supposed to be an easy process, find the file you want to change, press 'edit', change the text, press 'save' and then the changes should occur.

However, as usual, this doesn't work for me... whenever I change any files in the Admin area my whole site crashes. My developer cannot understand it, he has gone through the process on the phone with me and it still happens. He logged in to look at the file I changed and, apparently, the '\' backslashes and things are gone even though I haven't touched them.

I have even tried to copy & paste the original code back over what I've done, but still vital characters are missing.

It's driving me crazy as now, even for the smallest amendment, I have to call him and I feel like I have no control over the site. I am not anxious about editing code, I just cannot understand why every time I do this the whole thing collapses!

Can anyone enlighten me on this? (and please don't just tell me to ditch Oscommerce!!)

[Robert]

I never use the built in editor, I use an FTP package. Browse to the file, select edit. It appears in notepad, save and quit uploads the new file. Simple and fast.

[hunkydory]

Ok, I'm going to sound stupid here, but...

If I go to FTP and open the relevant folder, the files appear as icons, I don't have the option to edit them, if I 'double click' to open them, I can't...
Do I need to download software which will enable me to do what you mention?

Sorry to be thick about this, but I get lost at this point!

[Robert]

What FTP program are you using?

I use a free one from www.coreftp.com which works fine.

[hunkydory]

Well that will be my problem then seeing as I'm not using any program!!! I'm just going where my designer said in the browser... I will download the software and see how it goes!

[DuaneJackson]

It sounds like you are using some sort of web-based control panel. Try downloading Core FTP from Roberts post above and try to connect using that - you may need to check ftp server, username and password with your designer.

[welshnoonoo]

I use oscommerce, and I don't have any problems at all editing the products via the oscommerce control panel. There must be some sort of problem with the site. Try going into the oscommerce forum and asking them.