2009 July to December

The Zen Cart Combination Discounts World

(12/2009) I created a new page called The Zen Cart Combination Discounts World which describes all of the additional features I have built to go around Combination Discounts for Zen Cart. Each feature is described, along with the problem it solves.

Interoperability issue with Edit Orders and Super Orders for Zen Cart

(12/2009) All my Zen Cart discounting mods (and indeed, any non-native order total discounting mods) have an interoperability issue with the Zen Cart "Edit Orders" and "Super Orders" mods. Editing an order with one of these mods will flip the sign on a discount, causing it to appear like a surcharge. The fix is documented in this blog post.

1 Click Buy in Zen Cart Checkout Candy for Better Together

(12/2009) Checkout Candy for Zen Cart now includes a one click buy button for products without attributes that are displayed as possible upsells. The principle behind Checkout Candy is simple: if you have created a Zen Cart Better Together linkage where one item is present in the cart and another is not, you are encouraged to buy it on the Shopping Cart and Shipping Pages. For example, suppose you create a PROD to PROD linkage between product 3 and 10. If product 3 is present in the cart, and the customer goes to the shopping cart page or the shipping page, they will be prompted to buy product 10 (and shown the terms of the discount). Naturally, this goes well with Discount Preview.

Image Display for Zen Cart Better Together

(12/2009) Zen Cart Better Together now does image display in marketing text, Buy Both Now and Checkout Candy. (The Zen Cart Better Together Promotional Page including Add Both to Cart already had this feature.) Older versions of Buy Both Now, Checkout Candy and the Marketing Text are forwards compatible with the new Better Together, but if you wish to use the images, you must get new versions (only $10 for existing users to upgrade! Cheap!).

INTERAC® for Zen Cart now available

(12/2009) The INTERAC payment method for Zen Cart is now available. Canadian merchants may wish to offer INTERAC® as a payment option.

Big Spender/Big Chooser for Zen Cart Updates

(12/2009) Big Spender for Zen Cart and Big Chooser for Zen Cart have both been updated with a new parameter called set_constraint_regprice(). What this does is ensure that any items being counted towards the constraints (for Big Chooser) or the threshold (for Big Spender) are regular priced items not on sale or special.

Big Spender and Big Chooser for osCommerce 2.2

(11/2009) Both Big Spender for osCommerce and Big Chooser for osCommerce are now available. Also, inspired by the popularity of the Zen Cart Matrix-o-discounts, I have created the osCommerce Matrix-o-discounts.

SysCheck Updates

(11/2009) Both SysCheck for osCommerce and SysCheck for Zen Cart have been updated. The check for PHP files in unexpected places has been extended to check for .pl, .py and .cgi files, as a result of seeing new more sophisticated attacks.

Save for Later Updates

(11/2009) I just posted a new version of Zen Cart Save For Later on the Zen Cart downloads site. It has fixes for some HTML markup errors that caused problems in certain templates.

INTERAC® Payments in for your Zen Cart

(11/2009) Some time ago, I promised the Zen Cart guys I'd write a payment gateway for the Canadian "INTERAC" service. I finally got cracking at the end of October, and am hoping to release it before US Thanksgiving. You can see screenshots here and here, and here.

Zen Cart Better Together Promotional Page

(10/2009) The Zen Cart Better Together Promotional Page had a problem with category images displayed when advertising add_prod_to_cat(), add_cat_to_cat(), add_cat_to_prod() or add_twoforone_cat() linkages. This has been fixed and posted to the Zen Cart downloads area.

Impulse Buy for Zen Cart

(10/2009) Impulse Buy shows a group of items of your choosing on the Checkout Shipping page that can be purchased with the click of a checkbox. The sales funnel is not disrupted by returning to the shopping cart page; the customer goes directly to the payment page.

CMS Page Group Restrictions for PrestaShop

(10/2009) I enhanced the "Group Functionality for CMS/Info Block" contribution to be a more general CMS Page Group Restrictions module for PrestaShop.

Better Together for PrestaShop

(10/2009) OF COURSE there's a Better Together module for Prestashop!

CMS Sort Order PrestaShop

(10/2009) The default sort order for PrestaShop CMS pages is the creation order. Sometimes this is not what is desired, so I added a PrestaShop CMS Sort Order Mod.

Boilerplate Text for PrestaShop

(10/2009) I'm just getting started working with PrestaShop. The first mod I have created is the "boilerplate" mod, which allows you to streamline the addition of duplicate blocks of text to many products. Take a look at Boilerplate for PrestaShop.

Boilerplate Text for osCommerce

(10/2009) I modified my Zen Cart tips on adding boilerplate to make them applicable to osCommerce. Here they are: Boilerplate text in Description field, and Using files containing boilerplate text in Description field.

The osCommerce Better Together World

(10/2009) The The osCommerce Better Together World page is now available. It describes all of the additional features I have built to go around Better Together for osCommerce.

SysCheck for osCommerce

(09/2009) SysCheck for osCommerce is now ready. Just like the Zen Cart version, it performs a series of tests that look for vulnerabilities and common hacks.

SysCheck for Zen Cart

(09/2009) A whole lot of Zen Cart carts (and osCommerce carts too) have been getting hacked lately. I put together a series of tests that look for vulnerabilities and common hacks, and called it SysCheck for Zen Cart. For now it's Zen Cart only, but I'll do an osCommerce version soon.

Buy Both Now for osCommerce 2.2

(09/2009) After enhancing osCommerce Better Together with Add Both to Cart, I thought I'd finish the job and add Buy Both Now. Buy Both Now allows you to do a one-click add of two products without attributes from your osCommerce product info page. It has been very popular with Zen Cart users; hopefully osCommerce users will like it too.

The Zen Cart Better Together World

(09/2009) A customer reported a problem to me last week with the Zen Cart Better Together Admin panel. It turns out there was no problem; he had simply confused the Better Together Admin Panel with Discount Preview for Zen Cart. So I created a new page called The Zen Cart Better Together World which describes all of the additional features I have built to go around Better Together for Zen Cart. Each feature is described, along with the problem it solves. Hopefully it will help make your Better Together experience better!

osCommerce 2.2 Better Together Promotional Page

(08/2009) The osCommerce Better Together Promotional Page is now available for osCommerce 2.2. For product based linkages with products that don't have attributes, there is also an optional "Add Both to Cart" button on the page.

Zen Cart Better Together Promotional Page

(08/2009) The Zen Cart Better Together Promotional Page has been updated with images! For product based linkages with products that don't have attributes, there is also an optional "Add Both to Cart" button on the page.

To increase the accessibility of this software, I have moved it off my home page to the Zen Cart Downloads area.

Updates to Zen Cart Listing Page mods for Better Together and Combination Discounts

(08/2009) The Zen Cart Better Together Offers on Listing Pages and Zen Cart Combination Discounts Offers on Listing Pages extensions for Zen Cart have been upgraded. The first versions of these mods only displayed the respective offers on category listing pages; they now also display on all the following listing pages: All Products, New Products, Featured Products, Search Results and Manufacturers.

Beginner's Guide to Mod Installation on osCommerce

(07/2009) Installing a mod to osCommerce can seem daunting the first time you do it. I wrote up a few notes to walk first-timers through the process in my Guide to Mod Installation on osCommerce. Hope it's useful!

Quantity Discounts/Better Together Interoperability with CCGV for osCommerce 2.2

(07/2009) If you use Quantity Discounts for osCommerce or Better Together for osCommerce with osCommerce 2.2, and you also use the osCommerce CCGV (Coupon Code/Gift Voucher) Contribution, you may have seen errors on the checkout payment page. The fixes have been posted: here for osCommerce Quantity Discounts, and here for osCommerce Better Together.