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Members Only Technical Support

Adding a VirtCert Search Engine to Your Web Site

VirtCert is designed to be smoothly integrated into your existing web site. This page provides the technical details of how to do it. This page is designed for people who have a good understanding of HTML, Forms, and the DNS system. For some examples of different versions of the search engines, visit our demo site at www.DemoDiamonds.com .

Requirements

Before you can do anything, you will need the following information:

Member Number	You can find this on the Retailer Tools->Authorize Wholesalers page. By default all companies are set up authorized to sell their own inventory, so you should see your name and member number here.
Web Password	This will be provided to you by VirtCert Support. Email webpassword@virtcert.com if you do not have this value. This is not the same as your VirtCert login password.

For the purposes of this document, we will assume that your Member Number is 1234 and your web password is WEBPW.

"Stealth Mode"

There are a number of ways to run our service from your web site, either obviously using our service, or having it hidden.

We have found that it benefits most Wholesalers and Manufactures to call our web server as search.virtcert.com to promote the fact that their inventory is available through our service, and to encourage their customers to make their inventory available through their own web sites with us.

Most Retailers prefer to run in "Stealth Mode", which hides our service and makes it appear that everything is running off of their own servers. To to this, have your web hosting provider set up a subdomain for your domain name that points to our server, but has your name on it. The most "stealthy" way is to setup a DNS entry that points to our server at search.avcdb.com. Anyone trying to "hack" the system by going to www.avcdb.com will not get any useful information. Details for setting up your "stealth mode" access is listed below.

Form Setup

The VirtCert diamond search engine is driven by an HTML form.

The form can use either GET or POST methods, or a combination of them. We recommend using the GET method, as it does not require the browser to re-send form details to the server when users use their browser's Back/Forward/Reload commands.

The form's ACTION tag should point to the URL:

http://SERVER/cgi/u/MEMBERNUMBER/d.cgi

where SERVER is the DNS (Domain Name System) name or IP address of VirtCert.com's Search Server. This is tradionally either

search.virtcert.com

or a custom DNS name, such as

search.yourdomain.com

which points to search.virtcert.com or search.avcdb.com (for a more "stealthy" approach).

We prefer that you link to us by DNS name rather than IP address so that you do not have to change your configuration if we rearrange our server architecture.

For example, our sample company could use any of these form tags, or similar combinations:

<form method="GET" action="http://search.virtcert.com/cgi/u/1234/d.cgi">

<form method="POST" action="http://search.ourcompany.com/cgi/u/1234/d.cgi">

Basic Form Fields

The form fields control the results of the search and the formatting of the results. Certain control fields identify which member is performing the search, and these control fields should be hidden fields. The basic form fields are listed below: Required Fields are in BOLD. Field names must be in LOWERCASE:

HTML Field	Sample Value	Choices	Description
_s	1234	Your Member Number	Your Member Number (the Seller)
_wp	THEPW	Your Web Password	Your Web Password
shape	Round	ALL or any reasonable shape	The Shape of the stones to be returned. The search engine will translate most reasonable entries into a standard shape. For example, you can use Round, ROUND, RoUnD, RB or BR and they will all return the Round stones. You can have multiple shape variables in your form (checkboxes), or use single or multi-select list boxes to allow multiple options to be returned. If shape=ALL or shape is omitted then all shapes will be returned.
color	D	Any Reasonable Color	Same as above
mincolor			If you want to specify a range instead of a single color, use the min/max variables to define the range. The search engine will automatically swap the values if they are in the wrong order so you don't have to worry about it.
maxcolor
d, e, f, ..., z	on	Blank or any value	Use the individual color names for checkbox style searches. Any checked color will be returned in the search results
clarity	VVS2	Any Reasonable Clarity	Same as above
minclarity
maxclarity
fl, if, vvs2, ..., i3, ce	on	Blank or any value	Use the individual clarity names for checkbox style searches. Any checked clarity will be returned in the search results
mincarat
maxcarat
minprice
maxprice
cert	on	Blank or any Value	If this field contains a value, it will only return stones that have a certificate.
certlab	GIA	ANY, GIA, AGS, etc.	The certifying lab. Multiple values work.
diaid	123456	Any VirtCert Stock Number	Used for looking up an individual stone, or all stones if blank
_v (or) vendor	1234	Any Member Number	Lets you limit the results to a particular vendor's inventory. Supports multiple values. Use 0 (zero) for All Vendors.
_xv (or) novendor	1234	Any Member Number	Lets you remove a particular vendor's inventory from the search results. Supports multiple values. Use 0 (zero) for All Vendors.
_fs	1	1-4	Specifies the File Set to use when returning search results and virtcerts. This is the HTML template file set uploaded on the Retailer Tools->Upload HTML option. The lets you change the web page that the search results are returned in.
_format	tablecheck	tablecheck, basic or any defined format	This lets you change how the search results and order pages are formatted. There are a number of pre-defined formats, or you can have a custom one created by working with VirtCert Technical Support. Can be used as a hidden variable or as a menu box.
_l (or) _limit	1000	Any positive number or 0 (zero) for unlimited	Lets you set the maximum number of records to return on a search.
_g (or) _group	100	Any positive number	Lets you specify how many records to group together in a table. This is useful for speeding up the apparent load time for tables, or to specify how often to re-print a column headings.
_p (or) _page	50	Any positive number or blank or 0 for no pagination	(Not Implemented Yet) Lets you specify how many records to group together on a page. If used, user will be able to page through the results with Next and Previous links.
sortby	carat	price, pricedesc, carat, caratdesc, color, colordesc, clarity, claritydesc, shape, shapedesc, lot, lotdesc	Sort the results by price, carat, color, clarity, shape or lot number, either ascending or descending order. Note: The "price" and "pricedesc" are not exact sorts - due to how the database calculates prices at run-time, the price field is actually sorted on (carat * caratcost) and then the markup is applied as the results are displayed. 95% of the time the sorting will put things in the proper order, but there may occassionally be items out of order. This is an intentional trade-off to have the results appear more quickly for the end-user.

If there is a feature that you would like added, or you have questions as to how to implement a particular feature, please contact us at support@virtcert.com and we will do our best to help you quickly with whatever you need.

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