Topics

Just an idea for you to consider: a button called something like "Desktop version" that shows up for the users who accessed the website from a mobile device (AFAIK, cart is already capable to detect this) and allows them to switch to the full (Desktop) view of the cart (and back) by pressing it on demand. It could come in handy for some mobile users with very large screens who prefer desktop version (while cart redirects them to the mobile).  It was a concern for Gnel here:
http://forum.abantecart.com/index.php/topic,1859.0.html

They say Google Analytics accounts will become history this spring, and those who haven't already voluntarily converted over from Google Analytics to the new Universal Analytics, will be forced to, as Google will automatically convert over the accounts who have not already done so themselves (though the old name 'Google Analytics' may stick unofficially).
   https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2790010?hl=en
   https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/upgrade.
Some of us do not use Analytics (to speed up the page loading) and so, do not care much; but some users do, and AC does support automatic GA integration. Perhaps, the change in old AbanteCart's code (like shipped Javascript snippets) would be required for the new UA accounts to work, so filing this feature well in advance for the abantecart's information, just in case

It could be a new nice feature, unless there a quick way to set it somewhere.

Do you remember those two Grid & List orange buttons to the right of the product listing sorting header?
Customers can press and change on the fly how the listed products are layed out, no matter if it's a list built from Search or by browsing Categories.

Now the problem is, only a few customers really know and use these buttons; and there is no Setting found in the AC to control the default behavior.
The default "Grid" layout is fine when applied to the lists built from browsing Categories;  but the lists built from Search -- there should be a way to change the defaults separately,  like to show the Search results in the form of the List rather than Grid.   With the "List" type arrangement the customers can see product descriptions shown under the thumbs.  These descriptions are helpful for the lists built from Search because search results are quite random, detached from the categories, so the customers often get lost.

These 2 orange buttons to switch between 'grid' and 'list' are reflected in "Sorting + Pagination" section of
public_html/storefront/view/default_html5/template/pages/product/search.tpl

But how to specify which button is pressed by default for the list built from Category and the list built from Search (separately)?
We would like to be able to specify the default one (the List) specifically for the products found in Search while leaving it as is (the Grid) for those customers who prefer browsing Categories.  If you know the place where to look at into the code for the Search, we would appreciate that.

The only seemingly related note we found in the release notes for 1.1.8 was
"default_html5 minor fix related to product listing buttons for product"
( http://www.abantecart.com/shopping-cart-news/125-abantecart-new-version-118 )
Not sure how that fix aligned with this feature.

Are you familiar with situation when some of your orders are never paid?  Reasons vary (afterall, it's up to a customer), and in reality it may happen quite often.
By default in the cart, the ordered amounts are automatically subtracted from stock, so you will have to add the stock manually for each such product.

We do have the related Stock Tracking feature in AbanteCart, but :
- it can be managed per product only (at least in 1.1.7),
- it is ignored by the system whatever value you choose (Yes or No), the amount is always subtracted (at least in 1.1.7), so if you thought you would do a quick database update like
   mysql> update ab_products set subtract=0;
to disable Stock Tracking for all your products, it will not help  (at least in 1.1.7).

The cart does have a seemingly related global configuration parameter in the Settings->All,  called 'config_stock_subtract' for the Checkout group, but it cannot be changed in the Admin. Anyways, it is set to Off by default, and changing its value to 1(On) in the database doesn't make any difference  (at least in 1.1.7).

Soo...   The Tip & Trick is to add exclamation mark into the file  /public_html/storefront/model/checkout/order.php   line 247

[~/public_html/storefront]# diff model/checkout/order.php ~/tmp/order.php.saved
247c247
<             if (!$product['subtract']) {
---
>             if ($product['subtract']) {

This line is in the following section:
---
foreach ($order_product_query->rows as $product) {
                                if ($product['subtract']) {
                                        $this->db->query("UPDATE " . $this->db->table("products") . "
                                                                          SET quantity = (quantity - " . (int)$product['quantity'] . ")
                                                                          WHERE product_id = '" . (int)$product['product_id'] . "'");
---

As a result, you will have the "stock tracking" really disabled for all products at once.  To enable it back, revert the change.

The hack is related to how often your orders are really paid, and your inventory/stock control at the same time.
It is based on the issues discussed earlier in these threads:
http://forum.abantecart.com/index.php/topic,198
http://forum.abantecart.com/index.php/topic,1257

We found it's more appropriate to subtract the actual stock manually after the order was really paid,  instead of monitoring and manually adding the stock for the unpaid orders. Especially when you have to keep low amounts of 1-2 in the stock for each product, while a good chunk of your orders will never be paid. 
We haven't seen anything relevant mentioned in the release notes for 1.1.8 and 1.1.9, so it might be the same in these versions too. Hope it helps

hi,  why would it never publish a review when you submit it for the extensions store http://marketplace.algozone.com ?
Haven't seen any reviews from other users as well (it always says "Be the first to write a review"). 
Feedback is important since the extensions' descriptions are pretty scarce.  Thanks!

In continuation of older topic on cart's Reports improvements ( http://forum.abantecart.com/index.php/topic,1391.msg5483.html#msg5483 ) -
is there a way to see what product names (keywords) did customers try to look for using abantecart's Search block ?
There's currently no such thing in the Reports in admin.
Maybe it's possible to somehow edit a file like 
storefront/view/default_html5/template/blocks/search_top.tpl
storefront/controller/blocks/search.php
so that it echoes each  $text_keyword  into a plain-text file on filesystem that we could read later on ?   Thanks!

There is a little scary bug in 1.1.6 (maybe 1.1.7 too?) related to saving Design/Content pages  ( SQL tables 'contents' and 'content_descriptions').
It happens this way.  Sometimes, when updating existing pages contents, occasionally you may have a field error related to certain field's validators like:
  Required Data has not been entered. Check for field errors!
  Content Title must be between 2 and 64 characters!
  Content must be more than 1 characters!
  etc..

So, you follow the instruction and modify the Title (or the Content, etc) properly and hit on Save... and after it says something like "Success: You have modified a page!", what you see is Content Manager blank, cause the page you were editing just disappeared from both Admin and Store altogether!

You start checking db and discover, the page is still present in the 'content_descriptions' and 'pages' and 'page_descriptions' tables, but  was wiped out from the 'contents'. You can insert into 'contents' values manually in mysql and you will be able to see the page but the bug is still there, and intermittently hampers editing pages deleting them  from 'contents'

Basically, when any error (be it the 64 characters Title limit; or Content > 1 character; or any other error like the Allowed memory size from http://forum.abantecart.com/index.php/topic,1285.0.html ) occurs, it somehow interrupts the page editing process in the Content Manager, drops the reference to 'contents' table stored in the memory, and after pressing on Save to the bottom it is gone.

The cart's default sitemap ( index.php?rt=content/sitemap ) is human friendly but is not robots friendly; and there is no XML shadow created in the document root. XML sitemap page is usually created for search engines like Google using Sitemap Protocol 0.9 are therefore compatible with other search engines that adopt the standards of www.sitemaps.org .
There are quite a few sitemap generators online: http://code.google.com/p/sitemap-generators/wiki/SitemapGenerators but that requires some manual work as well as decision making.  What we suggest is to embed this functionality in the cart by default, like some others did: 
http://addons.oscommerce.com/info/3226
https://drupal.org/project/xmlsitemap
Or maybe facilitate it for the users in some other way, like in the documentation.  Thanks!

[new]

1. If so, will you as a new test customer (having a mailbox on Yahoo or Gmail or Hotmail) receive the registration confirmation(welcome) email from your cart upon registration?
2. If received, did you see your store's name in the From: field of this email alright,  or that field was totally empty in inbox?
3. If the From: field was filled with your Cart's name/address correctly,  what is your Abantecart version (our's is 1.1.6)?

We're experiencing this exact problem:
http://forum.abantecart.com/index.php/topic,1322.new.html

Remarkably, the store's address and name are still shown correctly in From: of other SMTP notifications (like Order's) that are delivered just fine (registration emails won't make it to Google for instance, as Google rejects it completely),  suggesting there is a problem with one specific notification type only (registration confirmation).

Apparently, it can be repeated on any Abantecart installation that chose to use SMTP in System>Settings>Mail, would like to confirm on that.

Is there any information on supported browsers versions for the Abantecart's storefront (default HTML5 template)?
Thanks!

We thought to align pricing on our price tags the other day, and came up with this:
there's a section in a file  storefront/view/default_html5/stylesheet/style.css

.thumbnail .price {
        float: right;
        margin-right: 19px;
        text-align: right;

Changing both instances of the 'right' to a 'center' made it look as attached.
It might help someone who gets "uneasy" on that like us
( note that style.css will be overwritten with a default one on next upgrades,  so you have to keep tracks on the changes you make unless you build your own html5 template per abantecart's how-to  http://forum.abantecart.com/index.php/topic,1340.new/topicseen.html  )

If you do Free Shipping in store for some products, we have noticed it cannot be disabled per product --
you set Free Shipping option in product settings to off but it still show up on Checkout..  How you can repeat:

enable Free Shipping extension,
enable Requires Shipping and Free Shipping options in certain product (products.free_shipping=1)
see the method appears in store checkout correctly.

Now switch off the Free Shipping option in settings of the same product and try to order it-
discover the method is STILL offered to a new orders in store 
We cleared all store and browser caches, to no avail.

Only when you disable the Free Shipping extension completely - then the option is gone in the store altogether..
Alas, this is not workaround when some (but not all) of your products should offer this method.  We are 1.1.7
Could you confirm if disabling per product would work for you properly?
Thanks!

On some reason, when the cart's mail protocol is SMTP, the welcome (registration confirmation) emails have nobody in the From field,  as if  PHP generated an email with the "from" missed or malformed in the SMTP headers. 

A Yahoo user, for instance, would still get such reg. confirmation notification delivered to inbox but the From field is totally blank:
     From nobody Mon Nov 11 11:53:28 2013
At the same time, the message body (itself being plain text) would show the message headers inserted right in the body in plain text before welcome text itself (possibly, Yahoo's feature to draw user's attention to the suspicious emails?) and that text will show the store's E-Mail mentioned correctly past From:, Reply-To:, and Return-Path: in this text.  Looks like a message formatting issue?   If she now presses "Reply" to this e-mail in Yahoo!,  she will see the emptiness in the To: of her reply, suggesting that Yahoo!  still cannot identify the Sender of the notification.   

Google is worse -- user will never receive any welcome email, as the message will bounce with error:
----------
This message was created automatically by mail delivery software.
A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its
recipients. This is a permanent error.
SMTP error from remote mail server after end of data:
    host gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com [2a00:1450:400c:c05::1a]:
    550-5.7.1 Our system has detected that this message
    550-5.7.1 is not RFC 2822 compliant. To reduce the amount of spam sent to
    550-5.7.1 Gmail, this message has been blocked. Please review
    550 5.7.1 RFC 2822 specifications for more information. vs1si9946364wjc.33 - gsmtp
----------

That said, if you set  Mail Protocol to PHP(Mail) in admin System>Settings>Mail, and register a new user, it will be delivered correctly both to Gmail and Yahoo!  and will have the store's E-Mail address, and the StoreName shown past From:  correctly.   The "from" field is empty only in case of SMTP, and only in welcome emails.

Other SMTP notifications are fine and have the store's address and name shown correctly.  We thought maybe there's a problem in how  storefront/controller/pages/account/create.php  treats SMTP delivery for new accounts registration confirmation notifications.

Good example: 
   Admin > Sales > Orders > Printer icon  > print.
It does print nicely formatted order and invoice data -- only the data you need.

Bad example:
  Storefront > Product details page > Print button (near the 'add to cart') - print and see the output.
  Storefront > Login to customer's panel > Orders history > open any Invoice > Print - see the output.
Here it picks up the whole HTML page  and therefore prints too much stuff.. 
We've had feedback from consumer where they only needed their product details printed,
and then their invoice details - without the rest of the HTML webpage.. 

Could you consider improving the output of the two above Print buttons (consumer's Storefront side) in the future versions?
(like what the printer icon in Admin orders listing page already does correctly;  and printing the product would only include the product details, the image, description and such).
The thing is, the consumer said she could've printed it via browser File > Print if the whole web-page was what they needed.. 
Thank you!

Yep, we already have it  but  when you have 2-3 level categories like us, only the lowest level category shows actual product count on the Catalog > Categories screen    All upper level Cats just displaying zero's.  It seems to do simple count from products_to_categories. But zeroes have no informational use.  We think any level category  should have an aggregate count of all the products beneath, no matter how many levels.  Is it possible to enhance the formula?  Real numbers would help better manage the stock.

Hi!
According to the documentation at
  http://docs.abantecart.com/pages/settings/details.html
"Store Owner: The store owner's name, or can also be the name of the store. This value will be in the "from" field of any email that is sent from the website when sent, such as one that is sent to the customer after purchasing."

Yet, we've noticed the Store Owner's name (System > Settings > Details) isn't really used in notifications.   
Instead, this is the Store Name value that is used everywhere:
- in the From: field of all outgoing emails,
- in the e-mail Subject,
- in the email signature,
- in the mail body (placeholders).

What's the built-in function for the 'Store Owner' value then?
Thanks!

Googlebot was detected to create rather high and excessive load on site.
It appears to crawl several thousand files with images and hundreds of phps of the cart so many times a day:

http://www.google.com/bot.html
"For most sites, Googlebot shouldn't access your site more than once every few seconds on average. However, due to
network delays, it's possible that the rate will appear to be slightly higher over short periods.In general, Googlebot
should download only one copy of each page at a time. If you see that Googlebot is downloading a page multiple times,
it's probably because the crawler was stopped and restarted. "

We think we have to block it from crawling certain files\pages using a robots.txt file approach:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/93708
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/156449

Is there any recommendation as to what Cart's directories could be blocked from crawling without
doing harm for the products to be found on web using google?   Thank you

Hello!
We are thinking of better formatting for the product names  shown in store's product listing (the lists generated from search and by choosing a category),  namely we have to split the long product names that we have into 2 separate lines:

current behavior:
       PRODUCT NAME SHORT DESCRIP
                              TION
to =>
                    PRODUCT NAME
                    SHORT DESCRIPTION

Currently,  product names continue to the second line automatically after the 26th character or so, but we need to be able to specify by what exact character the new line should start for each product name we have. Inserting some extra spaces in name is ignored and did not help either..
We thought it could be achieved by adding HTML tags like <br> directly into the product names at Catalog > Products > click on product > General > Product Name field,  but HTML gets treated as simple text, so no help here..  Is there any way to do it,  maybe escaping the tags somehow, or else?   
Any ideas are appreciated! 
Thank you

Hello!
We have a 3 level structure of categories for our products:    Level 1 > Level 2 > Level 3   (Make > Brand > Year)
It more or less represents used(well, pre-owned auto parts in our store.   It is fine if a consumer browses Catalog she can finally get to the right junk for her car.

But when she uses the Search to try and find parts by name,  she's having a hard time identifying the part for her exact car  among the multiple parts she gets listed  in her search results  because:
- all the products have largely similar looking names (like for example, a "Crankshaft" or "Oil Filter" ), 
- and only the pictures and prices are different...
This moment the consumer's pulling their hair out on the search results page cause the only way for  them to  choose among found products correctly  would be to deep breath and open EACH found product details in separate browser tab, then look through each products' details...  ( Note that product details page also won't tell you anything of the upper categories your product comes from:  it is only from the product description text we add where you can get the idea of product Category on that page. )

By any chance,  is there any way to indicate(show)  Level 2  category name (brand)  under each product title that are output  on the Search results page?
That would be a tremendous help  for the consumers  to identify the right product surprisingly easy and quickly. 
We really appreciate all of your time and energy spent to make AbanteCart the best free shopping cart ever likely to find. Your all exceptional people!

When a customer places new Order, the stock is being reduced by included product amount, even if the Order has Pending status yet, and was not shipped.
Seems, it was implemented to avoid an occasion of overselling the same product(s) amount to multiple customers.  Okay but then we have 2 issues:
- the behavior (to reduce stock on order placement stage) seems to be fixed and is not configurable depending on order status (or is there a setting for it ?)
- the stock is reduced forever:  the product amount is not returned back to stock after you change Order status to Cancelled/Failed/Refunded/Chargeback/whatever. Even when you remove the product from inside the Order (red icon), or delete the order completely, the stock isn't restored.. This is worrying, as it might be an oversight rather than built-in feature?  Real life orders often cannot be completed on various grounds, yet product's quantity remains unreversed..