Have your setup information (from your IHP) and your store license information (from your IHP or Miva Corp.) handy.  For the purpose of this tutorial we will be using YOURSITE.com where your domain name should appear. 

Step 1:

To setup your shopping cart you will have to go to http://www.YOURSITE.com/Merchant2/setup.mv This may be different from where your setup.mv file actually is, but the correct path should be included in the e-mail that came from your IHP when you setup your account.  

Step 2:

You will need to enter your license number in the first screen that comes up.  The next screen will be the license agreement which you must agree to before proceeding.  The screen after that will be where you enter your demographic information.  The next three screens deal with your domain settings including your secure and non-secure URLs and your mail server.  A lot of this information may vary slightly from one hosting company to another and must be entered accurately in order for your store to work properly. 

The setup will have some pre-selected defaults that are the most commonly used ones, however, for some stores that we have worked with we have needed to select the radio button "other" and enter the correct path supplied by the IHP.  If you do not have your own secure server/secure certificate you must choose "other" and enter the secure URL for your website on the IHP's shared secure server.  Click here to see a screenshot of all the settings that you will need.  This is NOT one of the screens that you will be filling out during the setup, but it is the final collection of information that the cart will have saved after you have finished the setup process. We have annotated  the areas that require extra attention in red since they can prevent your store from working properly.

After you are done entering your information a screen will come up pointing you to your store front and the location of your admin screen on the secure sever.  The first will end with merchant.mv (the storefront) and the other will end with admin.mv (the admin screen that will enable you to customize your store).

In general, your store front will be http://YOURSITE.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv and the admin interface to manage your site is http://YOURSITE.com/Merchant2/admin.mv

If you decide to go and check your storefront at this point by going to http://YOURSITE.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv you will get a "FATAL ERROR" message.  While you have setup the cart itself for your domain you have not setup your store yet.  Miva Merchant can have multiple stores under the same domain (i.e. it can be a mall; with purchase of additional store licenses).  You will need to create your storefront by using the "add a store" function before you will be able to see your storefront even if it is the only 'store' you will have under your domain name.  You will not need to purchase an additional license for creating your store since it is included in the domain license.