Welcome to CM Live Deal’s documentation!¶

Technical Requirements¶

• Joomla! 3.x.x: CM Live Deal is NOT compatible with Joomla! 1.x.x or 2.x.x, only Joomla! 3.x.x is supported. Please check Joomla! 3’s Technical Requirements for more information.
• Bootstrap 2: CM Live Deal is NOT compatible with Bootstrap 3. Bootstrap 2 is available by default in Joomla! 3.x.x. Bootstrap 2 must be loaded on your site by Joomla! or by your template.

Features¶

For merchants:

• Easy sign-up: User can register for a Joomla! user account and a merchant account at the same time.
• Easy profile management: Merchants can manage Joomla! profile and merchant profile in the same place.
• Create unlimited deals.
• Start and stop deals at any time: Create deals when merchants need traffic and customers, stop deals when merchants satisfy their traffic needs.
• Know how much their deals attract customers by impression and click values.
• Manage their coupons. Mark coupons as redeemed.
• Know if user is a trusted customer (user will come to redeem coupon).
• Know if user is a return customer.
• Upload photos of their stores, products,... to promote for their businesses.

For users:

• Search for deals by keyword, category and city.
• Get coupon just in few clicks.
• Manage claimed/captured coupons.
• Do not need to pay to get coupon, only need to pay directly to merchant, no more asking website owner for refund.
• Do not need to wait until deal reaches its minimum claim/purchase quantity like traditional “groupon” sites.
• No daily mail: Users are not bothered by marketing emails every day, they only find deals when they need and come to merchants to redeem instantly.

For site owners:

• Create unlimited categories and sub-categories (powered by Joomla!’s Categories component).
• Easy to manage merchants and cities via Google Maps.
• Easy to manage the uploaded photos of merchants.
• Get coordinates by location address or by clicking and moving marker on Google Maps, no need for copy-paste coordinates from Google Maps website.
• Manually create new coupon.
• Integration with Jooma!’s Group: charging merchants for subscription/membership for posting deals on website by integrating with third party extensions of Joomla! (eg. Akeeba Subscription or PayPlans).
• Responsive website: with the power of Bootstrap, website is responsive and nicely displayed on mobile devices, saving the cost for developing and maintaining iOS and Android applications.

Users component¶

The merchants in CM Live Deal component are actually Joomla! users that are in a specific user group.

In your back-end, you navigate to Users -> Groups.

You can see the list of current user groups on your site. Click “New” button in the toolbar to create a new user group.

You give your new user group a name by entering the name in “Group Title” field. You select a parent group in “Group Parent” option. Because merchant is just a registered user so you can select “Registered” as the parent group, you can always select a different group if you are already familiar with Jooma!’s user group and access level.

After creating the user group, you can see it displayed in the group list as the screenshot below.

Media Manager component¶

Merchant can upload image to your site. You need to configure where the images are stored and what image extensions are allowed to upload.

In your back-end, you navigate to Content -> Media Manager to access Media Manager component.

You can see the page similar to the screenshot below.

You click “Options” button on the toolbar to configure the component.

CM Live Deal uses the configuration of Media Manager in uploading merchant’s photo. You can adjust the default settings of Media Manager to suit your needs. If you don’t have any special requirement, you can keep the default settings.

In Media Manager’s main view (Content -> Media Manager), you create a new folder to store all merchants’s photos by clicking “Creat New Folder” button, enter the folder name and click “Create Folder” button.

You will receive “Create Complete” message if the folder is created successfully.

CM Live Deal component¶

In your back-end, go to Components -> CM Live Deal to access CM Live Deal component.

The dashboard is displayed by default.

On the toolbar there is a button “Options”, you click this button to configure the component.

On the configuration page, the settings are grouped into 5 tabs: Layout, Merchant, Deal, Coupon and Permissions.

Layout¶

• Image’s width (management): Image thumbnail’s width (pixel) in deal list table (in back-end and in merchant’s management area in front-end). Default value is 50px.
• Map’s height: The height of Google’s maps, used in both front-end and back-end. Default value is 400px.
• Map’s zoom level: Default Google Maps’s zoom level. Default value is 15.
• Map’s default location: The default location of Google Maps when the map is displayed, used in both front-end and back-end. You can click on the map or move the marker to the location you want.
• Date format: Date format that is used in front-end.
• Time format: Time format that is used in front-end.

Merchant¶

• Merchant’s user group: Joomla! user group that merchant are assigned to. Only users in the selected group can submit new deal and edit merchant’s profile. You need to select the group that you create in the above step.
• Add merchant to group: Options for adding merchant to merchant’s Joomla! user group after registration.
  • Add automatically after registration: After user registers for a merchant account, user is added to the merchant group automatically.
  • Add manually by administrators: After user registers for a merchant account, user is not added to the merchant group. Administrator needs to review user’s registration and add user to the group manually.
• Block merchant: After user registers for a merchant account, user’s Joomla! account is blocked and user can not login, administrator needs to unblock the account after reviewing the registration.
• New merchant notification: Send email to administrators when there is a new merchant registration.
• Image folder: Folder where the images that are uploaded by merchants are stored. You can only select the folders which are in the image folder that you set in Media Manager component. You can select the folder that you create in Media Manager in the above step of Media Manager.
• Display user’s stats: Display coupon owner’s statistics in merchant’s coupon list. This info lets merchant know if coupon owner is a serious customer.
• Display user’s visits: Display coupon owner’s visits to merchant’s. This info lets merchant know if coupon owner is a returned customer.

Deal¶

• New deal notification: Send email to administrators when there is a new deal submitted.
• Search radius from user’s location: The radius in kilometer to search for nearby deals of user. Default is 5 kilometers. This value is used when user searches for deals in his/her location by using the search module.
• Location cookie’s lifetime: Detect user’s location requires reading the database file and make the server slow. User’s location can be stored in cookie and reused later to reduce the file reads from server. With this option you can set how many days this cookie is available. Default value is 7 (days). You can disable storing cookie by using 0 value. You can view Search for nearby deals for more information.

Coupon¶

• Coupon code’s length: The number of characters in a coupon code. Default value is 5.
• Coupon’s characters: The character’s types in coupon code. Default is alphanumeric. Coupon code’s characters are always uppercase.
  • Latin alphabetic characters only (from A to Z): for example, “GWLCA”.
  • Latin numeric characters only (from 0 to 9): for example, “83061”.
  • Latin alphabetic and numeric: for example, “F52H2”.

Permissions¶

On the left side there are tabs for user groups. On the right side, we have the options of the permissions that the users in the selected group can do.

You select your merchant group and configure the following permissions:

• Configure: Denied
• Access Administration Interface: Denied
• Create: Allowed
• Delete: Allowed
• Edit: Denied
• Edit State: Allowed
• Edit Own: Allowed

Menu item for merchant registration page¶

CMLD Merchant plugin has an option for merchant registration page, we need to have this page before setting up the plugin.

In your back-end, you navigate to Menus menu item and select a menu that you want to create the registration page. The below screenshots uses “Main Menu” menu.

After selecting the menu, you are taken to the list of current menu items in that menu.

You click the “New” button on the toolbar to add a new menu item, then you are taken to the page as the screenshot below.

You click the “Select” button of “Menu Item Type” field to select menu item’s type, a popup will be displayed. You select “Registration Form” of “Users Manager” and the popup is closed.

You enter the name of this new menu item and then save.

This new menu item is now displayed in your menu item list.

CMLD Merchant plugin¶

CMLD Merchant (CM Live Deal - Merchant) is a Joomla! plugin to insert custom profile fields into Joomla! user profile. CMLD Merchant plugin provides the needed fields for merchant profile.

To configure the plugin, you need to access Extensions -> Plugin Manager.

You can search for the plugin by using keyword “merchant”, “CM Live Deal”, etc... The plugin name is “User - CM Live Deal’s merchant profile”

You click on the plugin name to edit the plugin’s setting.

• Registration page: You select the menu item of merchant registration page that you create in the above step.
• Status: You set the status to “Enabled”.

For profile fields, you have 3 options:

• Required: Field is displayed and user must enter value.
• Optional: Field is displayed and user can leave field empty.
• Disabled: Field is not displayed in profile form.

After saving the plugin, you receive the message “Plugin successfully saved”.

You can visit the page for merchant registration in your front-end to check if the merchant’s profile fields are displayed there. The page could look like the following screenshot.

CM Live Deal Search module¶

To configure your Search module, you go to Extensions -> Module Manager.

Joomla! creates a new module for you automatically after you install the package of CM Live Deal. You can see CM Live Deal - Search module in your module list.

Click on the module name to edit its settings. You can give the module a new name by modifying “Title” field. In the “Module” tab, you set “Status” to “Published” and select the position you want to put this module in “Position” option.

In “Options” tab, you can configure the main settings of the module.

• Display: How search form is displayed, there are 3 styles, “Inline”, “Horizontal”, “Vertical”. You can see how search form looks like in these styles in the screenshot below.
• Keyword field’s CSS: Custom CSS classes for keyword input field.
• Category list’s CSS: Custom CSS classes for category dropdown list.
• City list’s CSS: Custom CSS classes for city dropdown list.
• Search button’s CSS: Custom CSS classes for search button.
• Clear button’s CSS: Custom CSS classes for clear button.
• Display Clear button: Display or hide clear button.
• Button’s label:
  • Use icon: Use only icons for search and clear buttons.
  • Use text: Use only text for search and clear buttons.
  • Use icon and text: Use both icon and text for search and clear buttons.

CSS fields are useful if you want to customize the element of search form to match your template’s style. This requires your skills in HTML and CSS.

In “Menu Assignment” tab, you configure what pages the module is displayed on.

After adjusting the settings, you can save the module and then you will receive “Module successfully saved” message. If you change the module’s name, you can see its name is updated in the module list.

You can check on your front-end to see if the module is displayed properly. The below screenshot is how the inline search form is displayed in “banner” positon of Joomla!’s‘ default Protostar template.

Examples (the settings on the left side, the result on the right side)

Example of how inline search form is displayed. The Clear button is displayed and the buttons have only icons. The fields are customized by using “input-medium” class of Bootstrap.

Example of how horizontal search form is displayed. The Clear button is not displayed and the Search button has only text. The fields are customized by using “input-medium” class of Bootstrap.

Example of how vertical search form is displayed. The Clear button is displayed and is customized by “btn-warning” class of Boostrap. The Search button is customized by “btn-success” class of Bootstrap. Icon and text are both used in the buttons. The fields are customized by using “input-medium” class of Bootstrap.

New merchant registration¶

Access your menu item for merchant registration that you create in Configuration section, fill the form and click the Register button.

If in CM Live Deal’s Configuration, you set

• “Merchant’s user group” option to “Merchants” user group (create in Configuration section).
• “Add merchant to group” option to “Add automatically after registration”.
• “Block merchant” to “No”.

Then your new merchant is displayed in User -> User Manager similar to the screenshot below.

Create new merchant¶

As an administrator, you can always create a new user account in back-end.

Access User -> User Manager, click “New” button to add a new user.

In “Account Details” tab, you provide basic account information for user.

In “Assigned User Groups”, “Registered” group is selected by default, you need to select the group for your merchants. In the below screenshot, “Merchants” group that we create in Configuration section is selected.

In “Merchant Profile” tab, you enter the details of merchant’s business.

After saving the new user, it is displayed in the list of users on the site.

Edit profile¶

To allow users to edit their profiles, you need to create a menu item for “Edit User Profile”

Create a new menu item in a menu that you want, select User Manager -> Edit User Profile as the menu item type.

Access the new menu item in front-end, login with a merchant account, you can see the form to edit profile which includes merchant’s profile fields.

As an administrator, you can always edit any user’s profile in User Manager.

Manage merchants¶

In your back-end, go to Components -> CM Live Deal to access CM Live Deal component.

On the toolbar, you click “Merchants” item to access the merchant map.

With this Google Maps, you can see the cities and the merchants in every city. Every city has a circle, if the merchant is in the circle of a city that means the merchant’s deals can be listed in the deal list when users search for deals in that city.

If there is any merchant that is not in the circle of any city, you should create a new city for that merchant, or extend the radius of the nearest city, unless the deals of these merchants are not searchable.

Create new deal in back-end¶

To create a new deal in your Joomla!’s back-end as an administrator, you go to Components -> CM Live Deal to access CM Live Deal component.

On the toolbar, you click “Deals” item to access the list of deals.

Click “New” button on the toolbar to create a new deal.

The form to create/edit deal looks like the screenshot below.

You need to enter your deal’s details: name, description, fine print, starting date and ending date. You also need to select a merchant and a category for your deal.

To assign an image to your deal, you click “Select” button to open image popup. Before selecting/uploading a new image, you must select a merchant first, this merchant will be the owner of any image you upload while you are creating/modifying the deal, unless you select a different merchant. You can only assign 1 image to a deal.

If you want to publish the deal, you need to set “Status” to “Published” and “Approval” to “Yes”. However the deal is visible to users or not also depends on starting and ending time.

“Approval” is for marking that if administrator has already reviewed and approved the deal which is submitted by merchant in front-end. When deal is approved, merchant can’t change deal details any more, he/she only can modify starting and ending date.

Other fields in the form:

• Impressions: The number of times this deal is displayed in deal list.
• Clicks: The number of times users click this deal to view its detail.
• Created Date: The date the deal is created.
• Created by: The person who creates the deal.
• Modified Date: The date the deal is modified the last time.
• Modified by: The person who does the last modification.
• ID: The ID of the deal.

After saving the deal, it is displayed in your deal list.

Create new deal in front-end¶

Merchant’s deal list¶

To allow merchants access the list of their deals, you need to create a new menu item for “Deal Management” page.

Create a new menu item, select CM Live Deal -> Deal Management as the menu item type.

In your front-end, login as a merchant and access the new menu item, you can see the list of merchant’s deals.

The list has 6 columns:

• Title: Displays deal name and the name of the category which the deal is in.
• Impressions: How many times the deal is showed in deal list to users.
• Clicks: How many times users click the deal to view its details.
• Captured: How many coupons of the deal that users have captured.
• Redeemed: The number of redeemed coupons of the deal.
• Approved: The deal is approved by administrators or is still in review.

Click on deal name to edit the deal. If deal is already approved, merchant can only change starting and ending dates. If the deal is not approved yet, merchant still can modify the deal’s details.

Submit new deal¶

In deal list, merchant can click “New deal” button to submit a new deal.

The form has the following fields:

• Title: The deal’s name.
• Category: The category which the deal is in.
• Image: Merchant can click “Select” button to open a popup and select an uploaded image, merchant can also upload a new image.
• Description: The deal’s description.
• Fine print: The deal’s terms and conditions.
• Starting time: When the deal starts public to users.
• Ending time: When the deal expires and is not visible to users any more.

You will receive message “Item successfully submitted.” if deal is saved successfully.

Deal list¶

Deal list is where users browse and find the deals that they are interested in.

In your back-end, you create a new menu item for “Deal List” page. You can check the menu item in front-end, the deal list is similar to the below screenshot.

User gets coupon¶

While browsing deal list, user can click on any deal that they are interested in. If user likes a deal and decides to try it, he/she can click “Get coupon” button capture a coupon of the deal. User must be log into the site first before getting a coupon.

“Get coupon” button is not available if the current user is a merchant and the deal is his/her deal.

“Get coupon” button is not clickable if user has already captured a coupon of the deal in the past.

After capturing a coupon, user is taken to the list of his/her coupons, on this page user can have the coupon code and can access the captured coupon to print it..

User’s coupon list¶

You can create a menu item for “User’s Coupons” to let users access their coupon list in front-end.

To have a user friendly URL for coupon page. You need to have a menu item for “Coupon download” view. This menu item should be used as a hidden menu item, it is not visible in your front-end. To do this you create a new menu, create a new menu item for “Coupon download” page in this new menu, as long as you don’t assign this new menu to a menu module and display the module in your front-end, “Coupon download” menu item is not displayed in your front-end.

Administratiors manage coupons¶

In your back-end, go to Components -> CM Live Deal to access CM Live Deal component.

On the toolbar, you click “Coupons” to access the list of coupons.

You can edit an existing coupon be clicking on its code. You can also create a new coupon with your own custom coupon code and assign it to a specific user.

In the edit form, there are the following fields:

• Code: Coupon code.
• User: The user who owns this coupon.
• Deal: The deal which this coupon belongs to.
• Redeemed: Should be “Yes” if coupon is already redeemed by user.
• Redeemed date: When this coupon is redeemed.
• Created Date: The date the coupon is created.
• Created by: The person who creates the coupon.
• Modified Date: The date the coupon is modified the last time.
• Modified by: The person who does the last modification.
• ID: The ID of the coupon.

Merchant’s customer list¶

Merchant can manage the coupons of his/her deals in “Customers” page. You can create a menu item for it in Menu Manager.

Access the menu item in front-end, you can see the list of your coupons.

When user comes and redeems coupon, you can use this page to search for user’s coupon code

Click on coupon code, you are taken to the form to change coupon’s redeemed status and redeemed date.

User statistics¶

This information of a user has 2 values:

• How many coupons the user captured (1)
• How many coupons the user came to merchant and redeemed (2)

If (2) value is equal to (1) value, this means the user always comes to redeem the coupons that he/she captures on the site. This is a serious customer, if he/she is happy at the merchant’s place, there are many chances that he/she will come back.

If (1) value is much greater than (2) value, the merchant shouldn’t expect that the user will come to the merchant to redeem the current coupon.

User visits¶

If the owner of coupon is a return customer, this means the customer enjoyed the products or the services of merchant and now he/she comes back again.

Configuration¶

To enable the statistics, in your Joomla! back-end you go to Components -> CM Live Deal.

On the toolbar there is a button “Options”, you click this button to configure the component.

Switch to “Merchant” tab and set “Display user’s stats” and “Display user’s stats” options to “Yes”.

In your Joomla! front-end, go to the menu item of Customers view, you can see that the statistics are displayed in the coupon list, the descriptions for these statistics are also displayed to help merchants understand.

Get GeoLite2 City database¶

GeoLite2 City is required to detect user’s location. Because the database file’s size is big, we don’t include it in CM Live Deal’s package, you need to download it from MaxMind website then upload it to your server manually.

Go to http://dev.maxmind.com/geoip/geoip2/geolite2/, download the gzipped binary file of GeoLite2 City.

Use your favorite file compression software to uncompress the downloaded file, then you get the file GeoLite2-City.mmdb, upload this file to <Joomla! root folder>/administrator/components/com_cmlivedeal/helpers/geoip/database/ folder.

Configure CM Live Deal component¶

In your Joomla! back-end you go to Components -> CM Live Deal.

On the toolbar, you click “Options” button.

Go to “Deal” tab and set the radius (in kilometer) to search for nearby deals from user’s location and the cookie lifetime.

• Search radius from user’s location: The radius in kilometer to search for nearby deals of user. Default is 5 kilometers. This value is used when user searches for deals in his/her location by using the search module.
• Location cookie’s lifetime: Detect user’s location requires reading the database file and make the server slow. User’s location can be stored in cookie and reused later to reduce file reads from server. With this option you can set how many days this cookie is available. Default value is 7 (days). You can disable storing cookie by using 0 value.

Search in front-end¶

Go to your front-end where the search module is displayed. Now if you select “Your location” in the city list and search, you will get the deals near you in the result.

If the database file doesn’t exist, this function doesn’t work.

If your location can not be detected (not in MaxMind’s database), you will see the error message “We can’t detect your current location.”.

Installation¶

Before translating CM Live Deal to another language, you need to know install that new language.

In your Joomla! back-end, you go to Extensions -> Language Manager.

You can see the list of installed languages on your site. Click “Install Language” button on the toolbar to install a new language.

Search for the language you want to install, select it in the list and click “Install” button.

After installing new language, go back to the installed language list, you can see your new language in the list.

You need to remember the language tag of your new language. In the above screenshot, French language package is installed, and “fr-FR” is the language tag of French.

Preparation¶

You can use your favorite FTP software or file managers available in your hosting control panel to navigate to <Joomla! root folder>/components/com_cmlivedeal/language/ folder. In this folder you can see the folder “en-GB”, this is where the language files of English are stored.

In this “language” folder, you create a new folder for your new language, the name of the folder is the language tag. Follow the above example, you create a new folder “fr-FR”.

Go to “en-GB” folder, copy “en-GB.com_cmlivedeal.ini” file in this folder to the new language folder that you just create (“fr-FR” as in the example).

In the new language folder folder, rename “en-GB.com_cmlivedeal.ini” to “xx-YY.com_cmlivedeal.ini”, “xx-YY” is the language tag of your new language, eg “fr-FR”.

Translate¶

Open “xx-YY.com_cmlivedeal.ini” with a text editor and translate the English strings in this file to your new language.

Important note: Joomla! language INI files must be saved as UTF-8 without the Byte Order Mark (BOM). For more information on Byte Order Mark see http://unicode.org/faq/utf_bom.html#BOM

The above instruction is for translating the front-end of CM Live Deal component. To translate the back-end and other extensions, you need to repeat the above steps for the following folders:

• CM Live Deal component’s back-end: <Joomla! root folder>/administrator/components/com_cmlivedeal/language/
• CMLD Merchant plugin: <Joomla! root folder>/modules/mod_cmlivedeal_search/language/
• CM Live Deal Search module: <Joomla! root folder>/plugins/user/cmldmerchant/language/