Zen Cart / osCommerce Archive from June 2007 - January 2007

Newsletter

(06/2007) I couldn't get over the fact that Constant Contact bills by the month irrespective of whether or not you even sent a campaign. What are they thinking? So I searched around a bit and looked at a few things until I found MailChimp. Brilliant! So here's my newsletter. Thanks, Chimps!

Local Message

(06/2007) A client in the grocery business wanted a sidebox so potential customers could easily determine when deliveries were done to their area. After he accepted it, he asked me to release it as a contribution, and Local Message is the result.

Military Discount for Zen Cart

(05/2007) A user emailed me with the suggestion for a discounting module for shipping to APO/FPO locations. What a great project for Memorial Day! So carry on smartly and double time it over to Military Discount, soldier!

Installment Plan for Credit Card Users

(05/2007) I have completed work on the Installment Plan Payment Module and submitted it to the downloads area.

VAT Discounting Conflicts Resolved!

(05/2007) UK Zen Cart owners who display tax inclusive prices can now use the VAT fixes for the Group Discounting module and the Coupon module. Oddly enough, I have never heard complaints about this problem in either Quantity Discounts or Better Together - although they both contain a similar inaccuracy in their VAT calculation.

Checkout Candy works with Combination Discounts

(05/2007) The wait is over. Your upselling dreams have come true. Checkout Candy (which was initially designed to work with Better Together) now works with Combination Discounts. Call now, operators are standing by.

My only concern about these mods is that they will have such an economic impact that the Federal Reserve will have no choice but to raise interest rates. But that's a chance I'll have to take.

Making the leap to Vista

(04/2007) My Windows PC also recently expired, so I called Rajiv at Dell (who goes by "Sam," oddly enough!) for a new one. He told me they weren't shipping XP systems anymore. So now I'm running Vista when I need to use Microsoft Apps. By the way, there's a pretty obvious typo in their latest campaign, "The Wow! starts now." Obviously they meant, "The Ow! starts now."

I am told they have since reconsidered their Vista only policy because of customer complaints. <sigh> Bad timing on my part.

Traversing the DOM with PHP - Pain Reducing Solution

(04/2007) After my wizened RH9 system went to PC heaven, I bought a new PC and put FC4 on it. Well, FC4 comes with PHP5, not PHP4 - and some smart guy decided to just remove a ton of DOM related functions in PHP5. Not deprecate - remove. They're just not there anymore. What a pain! So here I was thinking, "how am I going to write PHP4 code on my PHP5 system?" Turns out this guy in France had the same problem, and so he wrote a DOMXML to DOM translator. Sweet! Or, as they say in France, "Doux!"

Monitoring your Zen Cart with phpTrafficA

(04/2007) I recently installed the open source web analytics tool phpTrafficA on a client's site. He was using StatCounter, which is a superb tool but is unfortunately (mis)reported as spyware by some A/V and A/S apps. Of course, the other advantage of using phpTrafficA over any third party tool is that because it's open source, you control it and can tune it to your own needs. Anyhow, here are the instructions for installing phpTrafficA on your Zen Cart. The phpTrafficA maintainer was kind enough to provide a backlink to my site.

Combination Discounts

(04/2007) Ever since the release of Better Together, people have been saying, "Please sir, may I have some more?" More combinations, more options, more everything. So I thought I'd create Better Together on steroids. I'm calling it Combination Discounts. It should be ready soon. It's ready!

Document and Article Manager for Zen Cart

(03/2007) Need to be able to easily add documents and articles in a variety of formats to your Zen Cart site without custom programming? Take a look at Document and Article Manager, which automates the process.

Each article has a little icon representing the filetype. I got these great icons from a fellow in Germany named Andi, who was kind enough to provide a backlink.

That Software Guy, Inc. joins the JSWeb team!

(03/2007) That Software Guy, Inc. has become an official subcontractor for JSWeb, a partnership of freelancers working under the umbrella of JSWeb Hosting (the UK's only Zen Cart Certified Web Host).

Color Tools Completed!

(03/2007) Well, at long last I have completed my work on the color tools I've been tinkering with forever. Here's ColorShifter, which allows you to dynamically modify GIF files. And here's ColorChecker, which will report information on the color properties of a GIF. I'm working on documentation which I will post as soon as it's ready.

PMP Exam Success

(03/2007) I just passed the Project Management Institute's Project Management Professional (PMP) Exam. It was gruelling. If you're studying for this exam, visit my PMPExamGuide.com website, which is a treasure trove of study notes and tips.

Per message delete for Email Archive Manager

(02/2007) Were you aware that Zen Cart can be configured to automatically archive emails that are sent from the Contact Us form? It's easy - just go to your Admin screen to Configuration->Email Options, and set "Email Archiving Active" to true. The interface to see these emails is a contribution called Email Archive Manager. Prior to my enhancement, only date-based ranges of emails could be deleted; now emails may be deleted one at a time.

More Levels, More Automatic Marketing Text for Quantity Discounts

(02/2007) I have wanted to increase the number of levels for Quantity Discounts for a while, so I added this feature to Quantity Discounts version 1.4. But I didn't stop there; I added two new flavors of Quantity Discounts Marketing Text to give you even more ways than ever increase your sales volume. I even provided some sample code to make integration a snap. Download version 1.4 of Quantity Discounts today!

Switching SMS on Sale on and off

(02/2007) I got a lot of feedback from people who said they liked SMS On Sale, but since they had to pay for every SMS message, they wanted the ability to turn it off during working hours (when email notification of a sale would suffice). So now SMS on Sale can be turned on and off from the Admin screen. Download version 1.1 of SMS on Sale today!

More bookmarking capabilities in Zen Cart Social Bookmarking

(01/2007) I added support for the bookmarking interface from AddThis to my social bookmarking contribution for Zen Cart. The AddThis implementation is very much like the Socializer's, but it also has bookmarking statistics that show you how many users are bookmarking your pages. The AddThis guys were even kind enough to provide a backlink to my site.

SMS on Sale not enough? Get SMS on Message!

(01/2007) If someone sends you an email through your Zen Cart "Contact Us" page, you can now get an SMS text notification containing their name and telephone number. This will be useful for shopholders who are away from their computers for extended periods of time. See SMS On Sale Extensions for more details. Only $19.95!

Improved Better Together Cross Selling Text

(01/2007)The ability to automatically make an upsell prompt based on Better Together product linkages was always great - but it only worked in one direction. If you've linked product A with product B, then product A's page had the capability to suggest the purchase of product B at a discount, but not vice versa. In Better Together 1.3, this limitation has now been removed; marketing text can now upsell in both directions. Product A will say, "Buy this item, get a product B at 50% off." Product B will say, "Buy product A, get this item at 50% off." Of course, this works for product to category and category to category linkages too. Upgrade to Better Together 1.3 today!

Get an SMS message when your Zen Cart store gets a sale

(01/2007) I have wanted to write a text messaging application for a while, but the Clickatell setup seems like such a pain that I never pursued it. Then I realized that most North American providers give you an email address with your mobile that you can use for text messaging. So I wrote SMS On Sale for Zen Cart. Check it out. Want the upgrade to get even more data in the text message? It's only $9.95.

Updated Afternic Prices Realized for 2006 Q4!

(01/2007) The latest sales results from Afternic are posted on my domains page.

Interesting e-commerce sites

(01/2007) Over the break I had time to do some surfing and ran across Shopping Cart Reviews and Practical E-Commerce, both of which were very interesting reads.