Merchant Guide

Welcome to Meloncart, a full-featured e-commerce plugin for October CMS. This guide is written for store operators and covers everything you need to know about managing your online store through the backend administration panel.

What is Meloncart

Meloncart provides a complete e-commerce solution built natively for October CMS. It handles product catalogs, shopping carts, checkout, payments, shipping, inventory tracking, price rules, discount coupons, and customer management — all from within the familiar October CMS backend.

The plugin is designed to be theme-driven, meaning your storefront's appearance and behavior are controlled entirely by your CMS theme. A reference Commerce Theme is available as a starting point for building your own storefront.

Plugin Dependencies

Meloncart builds on several established plugins to provide a complete commerce stack. Each dependency is installed automatically when you install Meloncart.

Plugin	Purpose
Responsiv.Pay	Payment gateway processing and invoicing
Responsiv.Currency	Multi-currency display and formatting
RainLab.User	Customer accounts and authentication
RainLab.UserPlus	Extended customer profile fields
RainLab.Location	Country and state data for shipping and taxes

Installation

Install Meloncart using Composer from your project root:

composer require meloncart/shop-plugin

After installation, run the database migrations:

php artisan october:migrate

This creates all the necessary database tables and seeds the default data, including a default product type and initial order statuses.

Backend Navigation

Once installed, a new Shop menu appears in the backend main navigation. It contains the following sections:

• Categories — Organize products into a hierarchical category tree
• Products — Create and manage your product catalog
• Orders — View and process customer orders
• Shipping Options — Configure shipping methods and rates
• Price Rules — Set up catalog-level pricing rules that affect product display prices
• Discounts — Create cart-level discount rules and coupon codes
• Reviews — Moderate customer product reviews and ratings

Store-wide settings are found under Settings in the backend, grouped under the Shop category:

• Order Routes — Define order statuses, transitions, and notification rules
• Shipping & Measurements — Set weight and dimension units, and the shipping origin address
• Company Information — Your company name, address, and logo for invoices and packing slips
• eCommerce Settings — Tax display preferences and default location settings
• Review Settings — Configure review moderation and rating options

Quick Start

Here is a quick walkthrough to get your first product listed and visible on the frontend.

1. Set Up a Tax Class

Navigate to Settings → Tax (provided by the Responsiv.Pay plugin) and ensure you have at least one tax class defined. Every product requires a tax class assignment, even if the rate is zero.

2. Create a Category

Go to Shop → Categories and click New Category. Enter a name such as "General" and save. Categories are used to organize your products and are required when creating a product.

3. Create a Product

Go to Shop → Products and click New Product. Fill in the required fields:

• Name — The display name of the product
• SKU — A unique stock keeping unit identifier
• Price — The base selling price
• Tax Class — Select the tax class you created
• Categories — Assign the product to your category

Add a description and at least one product image, then save. Your product is now in the catalog.

4. View on the Frontend

If you have the Commerce Theme (or a custom theme with catalog components) installed and active, navigate to your store's product listing page to see the product. Each product has a detail page accessible through its URL slug.

TIP

The Commerce Theme provides a complete, working storefront out of the box. It is the best way to get started quickly and serves as a reference for building a custom theme.

Next Steps

Continue reading to learn more about the specifics of managing your store:

• Categories — Organize your products with a hierarchical category tree
• Products — Create and configure products with options, extras, and pricing
• Variants — Set up product variations like size and color combinations
• Inventory — Track stock levels and manage availability
• Discounts — Create price rules and coupon-based discounts