Deploying A New Mini Site

Once you have performed the initial setup and Easy Niche Store setup, it takes less than five minutes to deploy a new mini site. These are the steps you will need to follow to setup and deploy a new mini site:

  1. Create a new folder on your hard drive for the new mini site. Give the new folder a descriptive name so you know which mini site this belongs to.
  2. Copy all the files and folders from your master site template and paste them into the new mini site folder.
  3. Open siteconfig.php in a text editor, such as Notepad. (siteconfig.php in the new mini site folder)
  4. Edit these site settings in the configuration file:
    SettingReplace With This
    $cfg['site-url']Enter the full URL for your new mini site. Make sure you include the trailing slash, like this: http://www.ministorescript.com/
    $cfg['site-name']Give your mini site a descriptive and keyword rich name. It's best to include your main site keywords in the title, but keep it brief.
    $cfg['site-description']Enter a full description for your mini site. This can be left blank (""), but I recommend you enter something that contains your main mini site keyword because it will help your search engine rankings.
    $cfg['page-title']This is the page title template for all the pages on your site. Make sure you include the {keyword} token to make the page title unique to the keyword displayed on the page.
    $cfg['keyword-description']This is the template for the keyword link title tags. You can either add a custom template here or just insert the {page-title} token to use the same template as the page title.
    $cfg['site-contact']Enter your contact e-mail address for this site. I recommend you do not include the @ symbol in your address because e-mail harvesters will recognize it and add you to their spam lists. Use something like: Contact AT MiniStoreScript DOT COM
  5. Change your Commission Junction PID. If you have added this new site to your Commission Junction account, add the new Commission Junction PID to $cfg['cj-pid']. Just understand that if you don't change the Commission Junction PID, any leads or sales will be tracked under the PID listed in your master template.
  6. Enter you main mini site keyword to the $cfg['site-keyword'] setting. You should not leave this setting as "*", which returns all eBay listings. This keyword should be the main keyword for your mini site niche.
  7. Do a quick search on eBay using your main site keyword. Find the most applicable category for this keyword and click on the category link. At the very end of the eBay URL, you'll see some numbers; this is the eBay category number. Enter that number in the $cfg['category'] setting. For more information on finding the eBay category number, review the Ebay_Configurations.pdf file that comes with your Easy Niche Store script.
  8. Decide if you want to show YouTube videos on the new mini site. If you want to show the videos, set $cfg['display-video'] = 1;, Otherwise, set the display video setting like this: $cfg['display-video'] = 0;
  9. Save siteconfig.php.
  10. Open keywords.txt in a text editor, such as Notepad.
  11. Paste your list of keywords into keywords.txt or type them in. Each keyword should be on a separate line, followed by a carriage return (Enter key). If you want to separate keywords into groups, leave a blank line between keywords.
  12. Save keywords.txt.
  13. Upload all the files and folders in your new mini site folder to your website. You should already have a domain name and site setup on your hosting account.
  14. Pat yourself on the back for deploying another mini site.

Review your new mini site and make sure all the keyword links return eBay listings. I recommend removing any keywords that do not return any results. You can always add the keywords into the keywords.txt file later. Remember, any time you add or remove keywords from the keywords.txt file and upload it to your server, your keyword list will update automatically.

Generate Your Sitemap

Once you are happy with the keywords on your site, it's time to generate your site map. To generate a site map for your new mini site, do the following:

  1. Open your new mini site in an Internet browser. This should be the mini site URL, such as: http://www.ministorescript.com/
  2. Add the following to the end of your mini site URL: index.php?sitemap=1

    For example:
    http://www.ministorescript.com/index.php?sitemap=1
  3. Press 'Enter' to go to the new URL. You will see a message that says 'Sitemap Generated' if the script was able to create the sitemap. If you receive an error, CHMOD both sitemap.xml and robots.txt to 777 on your server. Here's a CHMOD tutorial using the FileZilla FTP client.
  4. If the sitemap was generated successfully, click the 'Ping Google' link to notify Google of your sitemap.

Optional Setup