News

The Site Manager software now supports the option of using a remote SMTP service to deliver emails generated by the web site. (SMTP is a service that sends outgoing email.) Rather than using the local SMTP service installed on the web server, you can now specify the same SMTP service that is used to send all of your company email. This option allows emails generated by the web site to appear as if they are truly coming from your own email account. In some cases, this option can be used to dramatically improve email deliverability for the email generated by the web site.

The Site Manager software now has the option to record and view all emails sent from the web site. This feature was added to help track email deliverability.

A new centralized form data manager has been added to the Site Manager software. This feature makes it easy to export submitted form data for multiple forms from a single administration page.

The site manager now includes the ability to define a custom palette of color swatch within the web based editor that a user can use to assign a font color or font background color. This feature helps insure that the site stays true to its' original look and feel.

The perma link feature which allows you to specify a unique URL for a given page has been extended to include the uploaded document page type as well.

We have upgraded the Fast-Pitch script to now install PHP 5.2.11 and Apache 2.2.14.

The Fast-Pitch script is part of our Server-Pak product.

In order to accept credit cards on your site, your site and the server hosting your site must be able to pass a PCI Compliance security scan on a quarterly basis. The scan, done by companies such as SecurityMetrics, is looking for known security vulnerabilities.

Passing a security scan is not a one time job. New security issues are routinely found and fixed. The Apache and PHP software that run your site regularly release security fixes that require updates.

Updating Apache and PHP means shutting your site down while the updates are installed. Using the scripts in our Server-Pak software, AllMerchants has automated the update process to minimize down time.

You must have full control over the software running your site. Because PCI Compliance requires regular software updates, AllMerchants recommends that all e-commerce sites be hosted on a dedicated web server or Virtual Private Server (VPS).

We also recommend that you avoid installing "control panel" software on your server that is directly tied into Apache and/or PHP. Depending on the control panel software, it's possible to run into scenarios where you are unable to install the updates you need because they will break the control panel, are too complicated to install, or you have to wait for updates to come out for the control panel before you can install them.

We have recently updated our Site Analytics Reporting to show page requests that are not found. (404 errors) You can now define a custom 404 error page in the Site Manager that will be shown when a missing URL is requested.

We can now integrate your site with your constant contact account using the constant contact API.

We have working examples of newsletter signup and/or landing page forms that automatically created new constant contact mailing list subscribers.

Two users can now log-in with the same store administrator account. Previously, the second log-in would log-out any previous log-ins under the same administrator account.

Allmerchants.com has been updated. Changes include:

• The site is now powered by the latest version of our Site Manager (CMS) software.
• To help us better follow-up with your requests, all inquiry forms now automatically feed into a SugarCRM (Customer Relationship Management) system. This functionality is also available to our customers as part of our "Lead Conversion System".
  
• The design and navigation have been simplified to improve the usability of the site.
  
• Detailed information related to our products and services, including screen shots of our Online Store and Site Manager (CMS) products, has been added.
• A new "News" section where we can provide current information has been added.
  
• The article submission feature has been enhanced to reduce abuse so that we can more quickly review and approve quality articles.
• An on-site search feature has been added to allow for searching across all of the articles.
  

To meet PCI Compliance requirements for ecommerce sites, we have now updated our standard web server configuration to include support for installing Clam Anti-Virus software on the server. The anti-virus software is scheduled to scan the server on a daily basis and to send a confirmation email at the end of each scan.

Email deliverability is becoming and ever increasing challenge. The emails generated by your web site, such as order confirmations and contact us submissions, are now at significant risk of not getting delivered.

The following tips are recommended to maximize the chances of web site generated emails being delivered:

• Setup an SPF record in your DNS that includes the SMTP service used by  the web site for each domain name that you are sending emails from.
• Make sure that you have a dedicated IP address assigned to your SMTP service that no else is using. You do not want the activity of others to cause your IP address to get black listed as spam.
  
• Make sure that the reverse DNS of the IP address assigned to the SMTP service matches the HELO provided by the SMTP service.
• Setup email for the reverse DNS domain name assigned to the SMTP IP address. Specifically, setup an abuse@[domain name] mailbox. Setup an abuse mailbox for each domain name that you are sending from.
  
• Some mail servers will not accept email addressed to yourself if the from address has the same domain name. To resolve this, setup a sub domain to be used as the from address for the emails that the web server is sending out. Setup the needed SPF records, MX records, and mailboxes for the sub domain.
• Do not send to a mailing list from the same SMTP ip address as that used by your web site to send emails. Setup a completely separate SMTP service for sending emails to a mailing list. Sending multiple emails to a mailing list will have a much higher chance of being marked as spam and resulting in the IP address being black listed. By having a separate IP address, you help insure that the emails generated by your web site are not being sent from a black listed IP address.

More and more merchant account providers are now requiring their account holders to perform quarterly PCI scans on their web site. Our combination of VPS server configuration and online store, site manager, and site analytics software has been successfully tested to pass a PCI scan performed by Security Metrics.

The ability to export products to an excel spreadsheet has been added to the online store. The format of the spreadsheet allows for making changes and importing the products back into the site. This new capability provides for a quick and easy way of managing a large number of products while still using the web administration to make smaller periodic changes.

When registering a domain name with GoDaddy, be extra careful when considering their "Domain Ownership Protection" service. Unless you fully understand the restrictions that this service places on your domain, we recommend that you do not purchase this service.

Adding the GoDaddy Domain Ownership Protection service to a domain will prevent you from transferring, cancelling, and/or selling your domain name while the service is in place.

The Domain Ownership Protection service can be extremely difficult to cancel prior to it's expiration.

By default, when you purchase the Domain Ownership Protection service it is automatically set to renew when it expires.

Hence, the only way to cancel the Domain Ownership Protection service is to log into your GoDaddy account and disable the "auto renew" setting from the service before the scheduled expiration/renewal date.

The product detail page of the Online Store now allows for attributes that vary by selection. For example, if you are selling a shirt that has both color and size attributes but isn't available in the same sizes for each color, then the product detail page now dynamically updates the available size selections based on the color selected.

The product description field can now also be made to vary by attribute.

A new web based text file editor that supports the tab character has been added to improve the editing of templates and CSS files in the template manager. This feature will give designers and administrator the option of quickly and easily making simple changes to the templates.

The template manager has now been upgraded to include support for editing the CSS files used by the templates.

As of July 1st, 2009, we have just finished upgrading all of our hosting customers to a Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting solution. The new solution provides faster page loads and improved security and reliability at a lower cost.