--- The Online Dealer Manual ---

Everything anybody needs to know about managing their inventory in the cars4us database is in this manual. All that is needed is to read this manual.

- Your User Name and Password -

You were/will be e-mailed a password when you sign up. This is an auto generated password. Use it the first time you log in and change it to something you will remember. Keep your password secret. You can change your password as often as you wish and should change it everytime an employee who knows your user name and password leaves or becomes disgruntled for whatever reason. Your password can be up to 255 characters long and should ideally consist of upper and lower case letters and numeric digits. It should be at least 6 characters long, but this constraint is not enforced.

Mischief that can be done by someone knowing your user name and password

• Delete your dealership from the database. That means all your photos and vehicles are irretrievably gone.
• Delete any number of your vehicles with their photos.
• Change details and or photos of any of your vehicles - This car has a low kilometer reading because it spent nearly all its time in the repair shop. Only been involved in two major accidents.
• Change your dealership details - make your telephone number point to the competition.

You alone are responsible for your password. You choose whom you trust with it.

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- Maintaining your Inventory on cars4us -

The first, and most important thing, is to get all the details and all the photos of every vehicle you want to enter. This will take you much longer than entering a vehicle. Look at the Dealer Page and click the different categories (car, 4wd, ute, van, truck, bike), or at least all those that apply to your dealership, and see what details you need to know for a vehicle in every one of the categories you are going to use. Yes, you will have to sign in for the Dealer Page. I have seen people jumping up from in front of the computer to run out and check if such and such a vehicle has a CD Player, Air Conditioning, Power Steer and what have you. Know all this before you go near the computer.

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- What is a Submodel? -

An example: Ford (make) Laser (model) GLi (submodel).

Why is this important to you? If you enter say a Ford (make) Falcon BA (model) your car will not come up in searches for the model Falcon. Similarly, a Holden (make) Barina Swing (model) won't come up in searches for Holden Barinas. Enter the BA and Swing as in the Submodel field. If a Submodel does not present itself enter someting like Auto, 5 Speed etc.

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- Your Photos -

You are allowed to upload up to four photos for each vehicle. They must be in jpg format and must be sized to 320 pixels wide and 240 pixels high. You can use Irfan Viewer to resize your photos. It is a small download. Go to our links page to get the link to Irfan View's site. Once you have downloaded it install it. Make sure you set up Irfan Viewer as the default application for all image files. You will be asked the question during installation.

On the links page you will also find a link to a freeware application that can resize multiple jpeg images in one go. That is a big timesaver if you have five or more vehicles to load.

Create a new folder. Then download all your photos from your camera to a this new folder you have just created. folder. Make sure you will be able to find this new folder. Open this new Folder in Windows Explorer. Double click any photo. It will be opened in Irfan Viewer. Select Image and then select Resize. Fill in the new width, 320 pixels. The height will self-adjust to 240 pixels. Save this resized photo to a new folder so as not to confuse it with non-resized images. Make sure you save all images as a .jpg images, not the default .bmp of Irfan Viewer. That is how easy it is. Alternatively, resize them all in one go with Photo Resize.

Note that any images not correctly sized will NOT be displayed. Instead a message will appear in the place of the image to the effect that the image is of the wrong size.

As far as cameras are concerned, buy one with an optical zoom and a flash. Many used car dealers have the cars packed in tightly and it is often difficult to get far enough from a car to get the whole vehicle in the photo. That is where zooming out comes in handy. Note that the macro function, for doing close-ups on small objects like flowers and insects, is not what I am talking about here. Any camera from 1 MegaPixel upward will do. Set your camera to take 640x480 pictures for this purpose. Tell whoever you buy the camera from that you want to be able to zoom out to take pictures of cars from close up.

A flash is absolutely essential for taking interior shots of vehicles. Mostly you can set the flash on automatic.

A few tips on how to take clear, informative photos of your vehicles.

• Do NOT have the sun in front of you, but behind you.
• The vehicle should not be partly in shade and partly in sunlight.
• Do NOT take a photo from the vehicle's shadow side.
• Do NOT stand in the sun and photograph a vehicle in the shade.
• Standing in the shade and photographing a vehicle in the sunlight is fine.
• Bright light is better than poor light.
• Watch out for sunlight reflections from the vehicle's windows, mirrors, etc.

As you will see, there are four file upload fields, marked photo1 to photo 4, on the form used to upload vehicles. Your main photo should go in the first field. Fill the fields from left to right. If field no 1 has no photo fields no 2 and further are not even looked at. The same is true for 2 and 3 and 3 and 4. Again, put your best photo first. The order of the rest is not important.

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- Uploading Vehicles -

The make and model can be enetered in any case - they are automatically capitalised. For the rest, what you enter is what the viewer will see. Enter capitals or lower case, as you wish. Remember, that is what the viewer will see. If you enter your dealership name all in lower case it will be displayed all in lower case.

All the values in the general vehicle form are compulsory, except the remarks text area and the photos. You don't have to upload photos. If you do upload photos you can upload any number up to four. If you don't upload photos just leave the photo fields alone. You can name your photos whatever you want to, they are renamed in the database. The specialized category values are not all compulsory. Alert boxes will inform you if you do not fill in a required value. Every vehicle must have a stock number. You must not use the same stock number for any two or more vehicles. You can use registration plate numbers or whatever other number you want to use. The number can consist of upper and/or lower case letters and/or numbers. Remember that cars4us is case sensitive.

The bike and truck types are a short description of your own, like dirt bike or tipper or covered long haul or whatever takes you feel is a good, short description.

Where you have to fill in numbers, like kilometers, price, no of cylinders or engine size for a bike, fill in only numbers. No dollar signs, commas, or anything else. Alert boxes will keep you from making mistakes.

Payload can be anything, like 12 Tonnes, 3 Cubic Meters or 14 Passengers or whatever takes your fancy. Most utes have a 1 Tonne payload.

Enter a 4wd ute as a ute and tick the 4wd check box. This ute will then be displayed as a 4wd ute.

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- Deleting Stock -

All you need to fill in is the stock number of the vehicle you wish to delete, check the Delete radio button and click Submit. That will delete the vehicle with all its photos. Remember that the stock number must be entered in the same case as when the vehicle was uploaded. Much easier than putting it up, isn't it?

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- Updating a Vehicle -

Here you must choose the same category a vehicle is in (the category cannot be changed), fill in its stock number, and fill in any data that you wish to change. Note that leaving a check box unchecked (unticked) will not delete a value previously entered, it will just leave the previously entered value unchanged. You must select the same values in a select (drop-down) box you previously selected if you want to leave them unchanged. To change them, select new values.

You can replace any photo you want to replace. Say you want to replace photo 3 with a better one, simply use the button on file upload field 3 to select the new photo. In this case you do not have to fill in photos from left to right. You can also add photos if you want to. If you have already entered two photos, start adding more with file upload field three. If you use file upload field one or two in this case your previously entered photos no 1 and 2 will be replaced with the new ones.

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The other things you can do

These are done from the lower form.

- Show Dealer Data -

This is to show your dealership details, like dealership name, address, telephone number, e-mail address, etc. Select this if you want to change any of your details, except your user name or password. Your user name is not changeable and your password is changed from a different radio button. You can also delete your dealership after displaying user data. You need to fill in nothing to select this function. After logging in the computer (the host server somewhere in the USA) knows who you are.

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- Count Vehicles -

Again, you need to fill in nothing to use this function. The number of vehicles you have in the cars4us database is displayed as well as your total allocation.

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- Stock Nos -

Displays the stock numbers of all vehicles you have in the cars4us database. These stock numbers are listed in rows of five. Your user name is prefixed to the stock numbers displayed, as this is how they are stored in the database.

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- Vehicle Loaded? -

Enter a stock number of a vehicle (don't prefix your user name, the computer will do it) in the relevant field and hit the submit button. You will be told if this vehicle has already been uploaded to the database.

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- Change Password -

Fill in two identical passwords. Hit the submit button and your dealership password will be changed. You will automatically logged in with your new password. Use your new password to log in next time.

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- The Dealership photo -

If you want a photo of your dealership displayed with the full description of the vehicle, please upload it using the form at the bottom of the page. Your photo can have any name, but it must be 320x240 pixels and must be a jpg photo. If your photo is not a jpg photo and is not of the right size, it will not be displayed. You can replace this photo as often as you wish.

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- The Session Object -

HTTP (the web communication protocol) is a stateless protocol. This has nothing to do with the word state as it is usually understood. It just means that from one page request to the next there is no knowledge of who requested the pages or anything else - each page request is as if it the first and only.

Obviously, for a logged in user some knowledge needs to persist so that he is not asked to log in with every page request. There are a few ways of doing this. cars4us uses the Session Object. The Session Object expires as soon as your browser is closed or after a time if there is no to and fro communication from your browser to the server. It is deliberately invalidated when you log out.

The foregoing means that if you log in and leave your computer unattended and come back, say 20 or 30 minutes later, you may find that you are no longer logged in and you have to log in again. This is as it should be. Nothing is wrong.

If there is anything dealers have a common problem with, this page will be updated.

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