Today we’re going to talk about Modules. Modules are a critical part of the Miva Merchant eco system. You may have heard of the term plug in, app or add on, a module is all of those things for Miva Merchant. It is a self contained plugin that allows you to add new functionality to the core software. There are currently hundreds of different modules for Miva Merchant that allow you to extend its core functionality. Some of these plans are made by Miva Merchant ourselves, but most are made by third party developers who create and sell custom modules for Miva.
A module is installed by uploading a module file to the core software. This file will always have a .mvc extension. However, that’s not all you need to do. Uploading the file makes it available to the domain. However, in order to use a module, you then have to go in and assign the module to the store. In Miva you can have multiple stores under a single domain. So after the module has been uploaded, you have to go tell Miva which store you want to use it on. You can see which modules are available to the Miva community and purchase new modules at apps.miva.com. This is the marketplace that Miva developers sell their modules and store owners purchase them. Let’s dive in and take a look at how to install and work with a Miva Merchant module.
Here I am back in the Miva Merchant 9 Admin. To see what modules you have installed, first come up here to the menu and click on the Modules link. This screen will show you all the modules that you have installed in your store. You may be thinking, “wait a minute, I haven’t installed any modules in my store yet, where do these come from?” Well, Miva Merchant itself is made up of a bunch of modules. So all these modules are part of the core software. They come packaged with Miva Merchant. An easy way to see this is to come and turn on the filter for provider. This will show you who actually created the module. You’ll see here that all these modules here were created by Miva. So let’s actually add a new module. Today we’re going to work with a module called “Toolkit.” It’s made by a company called Emporium Plus. This is a great developer tool that extends Miva’s core template functionality to give you quite a bit more features.
To add a module you’re going to click on the “+” sign for “Add Module.” This will bring up a module dialogue. The first thing we need to do is upload the .mvc file. Here I’m going to choose a file and I’m going to navigate to “Toolkit.mvc.” This is the module file that contains all Toolkit functionality. Now as a common practice, you’re going to want to check “Overwrite” checkbox. All this does is overwrite the file if it already exists on the server and then click “Upload.” So now that the module has been uploaded, you come over here and click “+Add.” This will add the module to the domain and you’ll see we get a message here and once it’s installed there’s a new tab for “Information.” This will tell you information about the module. It will tell you who the provider is, the name of the module, the version, how many stores it’s assigned to, and then the different features this module implements. Even though this module is uploaded, it’s not fully working where we can use it. In order to do that, we need to assign it to a store. Now where you assign the module to the store is going to depend on what type of module it is. There are a few different types of modules. You have the utility module, a system extension module, an order fulfillment module, an import/export module, and there’s quite a few others. However, the most common three are going to be Utility, System Extension and Order Fulfilment. From experience, I know that the Toolkit is a Utility module. However, if you didn’t know, you could actually look at the features list here and you’ll see that it implements the “Utility feature” which means that it will be found under the Utility section. So let me click on Utilities here, and then I need to go to “Add/Remove Modules” to assign it to the store.
This section shows me all of the available modules. Some of these are built in Miva Merchant modules. But if I keep scrolling down, I should see one for ToolKit. Here it tells me the version and the provider. Now, in order to install this module, I need to click this install button here which will assign it to the store. Now that we have the module installed and it’s assigned to the store, it’s almost ready to use. Toolkit has a couple other steps that request a license and a license key and we also need to create an item. Some modules will automatically create them for you, others you have to manually create the item. So make sure you look at the manual install doc to determine if you have to do it for yourself or if it’s done for you. Once a module is installed, there are two things you can do with it. You can update the module, or you can delete the module which would completely remove it from your store. Here, I’m back at the list of the modules in the store and I’m going to search for Toolkit. I’ll edit this module under the Files tab. So say for example I had an updated version of this module, it’s updated very similar to how you installed it. You simply have to upload the newest module file and click “Update.” We’ll select Toolkit, and again, it’s important to check this Overwrite box because the module already exists on the server. Then I’ll click “Upload” and then “Update.” Here you’ll see the module is updated, and that’s all there is to it. You simply have to upload the new file and it will automatically update the module for you. In the next video we’re going to talk about some advanced module settings and how to delete a module once it’s been installed.