News

A customer entering an order or an administrator entering a manual order now has the ability to enter notes and instructions to each product when adding a product to the cart.

The store software now includes the ability to have different page layouts for different categories of products. At the category level, you can now assign a display template for the category page and a separate display template for the prdouct detail pages of the products within that category.

Attribute options for a product are now shown on the receipt throughout the system.

An automated order tracking system has been added to the online store software. The order tracking system works in tandem with the order export system.

The order export system automatically sends new orders to one or more order fulfillment providers and/or drop-shippers.

The order tracking system looks for new shipment information sent by the fulfillment provider and automatically updates the order information and sends order shipment notifications to customers.

The online store now supports multiple tracking numbers per order. A shipment status field has been added as well to track if shipping is "Awaiting", "Partial", or "Complete".

The online store software has now been updated to support exporting of invoices for pay by check customers, sales receipts for credit card orders, deposits, customers, and products to an IIF file.

You can select new orders by date range or order number range.

In order to prevent importing of duplicate orders in QuickBooks, previously exported orders are tracked and can only be exported a second time if you specifically choose that option.

A simple list of settings allows you to define your Quickbooks accounts and codes so that the resulting file imports without any errors.

The online store software has been updated to use PHP based templates rather than SMARTY based templates.

The advantages of using PHP templates are:

• PHP templates execute faster resulting in web pages that load quicker and servers that can handle more simultaneous page requests.
  
• Using PHP templates within the online store software allows for easy access to a wide array of functionality already built into our Site Manager Content Management System.
  
• Most site developers already know PHP so there is nothing new to learn in order to create a PHP template.
  
• PHP templates are typically easier for a developer to create because there aren't limited to the functionality of a special purpose template engine.
  

It's now super simple to have a single log-in page for both a password protected member area and access to online store order history and account information. To achieve this we have update the authentication method of the online store to exactly match the member authentication method used by the Site Manager content management system software.

The process of uploading a large number of product images has been streamlined. The bulk product image uploader now automatically generates thumbnail images when a new image is uploaded. This eliminates the need to run the Thumbnail Generator process as a second step. It is also insures that old thumbnails are not being shown on the site after a new product image has been uploaded.

The interface to the Site Manager has been improved. Many of the actions that previously resulted in a new browser pop-up window opening have now been replaced with a pop up that opens within the same page.

The template manager built into the Site Manager software now supports managing image file that located in the /images/ folder.

All emails generated by the online store software are now sent out via the Site Manager and can be logged to the database and later viewed in the Email Deliveries report.

A new "Consolidated Orders by Category" report has been added to the online store software. This report shows total items sold and total sales for each category defined in the store.

Due to security issues, AllMerchants recommends upgrading your web server to PHP 5.3.2+ or 5.2.13+.

The PHP 5.2.13 release fixes the following security issues:
Directory paths not ending with '/' may not be correctly validated inside 'tempnam()' in 'safe_mode' configuration. It may be possible to bypass the 'open_basedir'/ 'safe_mode' configuration restrictions due to an error in session extensions. An unspecified vulnerability affects the LCG entropy.

The PHP 5.2.12 release fixes the following security issues:
It is possible to bypass the 'safe_mode' configuration setting using 'tempnam()'. It is possible to bypass the 'open_basedir' configuration setting using 'posix_mkfifo()'. Provided file uploading is enabled (it is by default), an attacker can upload files using a POST request with 'multipart/form-data' content even if the target script doesn't actually support file uploads per se. By supplying a large number (15,000+) of files, he may be able to cause the web server to stop responding while it processes the file list. Missing protection for '$_SESSION' from interrupt corruption and improved 'session.save_path' check. Insufficient input string validation in the 'htmlspecialchars()' function.

Support for automatically sending a data feed file to Google Merchant Center has been added. Google Merchant Center is a service from Google that makes it easy to find information about products for sale online. By focusing entirely on product search, Google Merchant Center applies the power of Google's search technology to a very specific task: locating stores that sell the item you want to find and pointing you directly to the place where you can make a purchase.

It's now possible to manage your slideshows using the Site Manager.You can add, update, and remove slides as needed. You can specify a link URL, link target, and a short description for each slide.

Sending bulk email (more than 100) is getting tougher! The big email providers are now very quick to block any and all bulk email regardless of whether it is legitimate or not. One of the things they consider is the "ip address reputation" of a sending mail server. So, when you set up a new web server and that web server starts sending emails on your behalf, you are essentially starting with "no reputation". Or worse, if someone abused your ip address prior to you getting it, you may already have a "bad reputation" that is no fault of your own.

To configure a local mail sending service on your own web server now requires a substantial and ongoing investment in time and resources in order to keep up with the changing rules. For most of our customers, it is simply more cost effective to outsource this part of your web site to a company that already specialized in maximizing email deliverability.

To improve email deliverability, we have now integrated our Email Manager software with the SocketLabs hosted SMTP (email sending) service. SocketLabs specializes in providing a ready-to-use service that is already optimized to maximize email deliverability.

The latest version of our Email Manager software now includes the ability to manage mailing list, send newsletters, create autoresponders, and send out surveys.

Support for integrating Google Website Optimizer has been added to the Site Manager software. The new functionality allows for doing A/B split testing of web pages. A/B split testing allows you to compare entire pages against each other to determine which page converts best. This is ideal for optimizing landing pages. Google Website Optimizer will alternate your pages for you and will track conversions from each page. You can create and test as many alternative pages as you like.

The ability to preview content changes before making them public has been added to the Site Manager software.

When editing a page you now have the option of saving the changes for preview only or saving and publishing the changes. Only an administrator of the site can preview a modified page.

When viewing a page on the front end of the site, you can easily switch between viewing the modified content or the live page.

There is a new "Unpublished List" report which shows the modified pages that need to be published. From this report, you can edit, view, and/or publish the page.

An administrator needs to have "approve" permission in order to publish a modified page. This allows you to setup users who can modified the content but do not have the ability to publish the content.

An option to not show the command bar on a given page has been added to the site manager. This feature is helpful when creating pop up window content that should not show the command bar.

The site analytics tracking code has been updated to automatically confirm an ad click was viewed by a browser that loaded the page and processed the javascript on the page. This check will help detect any ad clicks that were the result of an automated crawler rather than a human.