Hi Junkyard,

Here's a link to a post I made about email configuration when I first started testing the cart. 

http://forum.abantecart.com/index.php/topic,1164.msg4559.html#msg4559


Abantecart seems to suggest that SMTP  is the preferred way,  but like you I have only gotten  desired results using Mail.  It leaves some confusion in my mind,  but since Mail works for me,  that's what I am using.

Lee

David,

First - I believe the encryption data manager from Abantecart is a standalone data encryption.  This note in the documentation is pretty straightforward.
NOTE: Do not confuse SSL data encryption with signed SSL certificates (HTTPS) used for browser access to sites

Next - things that you might not know:

An SSL Certificate is purchased for the entire domain name (be sure you're getting one that works for both www.  and no www on your domain as most sites work now either way or set up redirects to handle it.  But to a SSL cert www.mydomain.com and mydomain.com are two different names.  And if you are running in a subdomain  that is a standalone name, or you can buy a wildcard cert for mydomain.com and it will cover no www,  www, and all subdomains on mydomain.com

Also you must have a dedicated IP address for your domain - if you are on a hosted account,  you can usually obtain a dedicated IP address for a couple of bucks a month more.

Next, in most cases you can control the pages or sections of your site having some under http://  and others under https://.  This is usually done via .htaccess and rewrites.  I am unsure how this would need to be engaged within Abantecart as I haven't done it. 

Unless you are quite comfortable with adding things and solving any server setup issue -  I would suggest to see what your hosting provider is offering for SSL, and most importantly if they will install it.  The other question is to see what they will charge to install a cert they didn't sell,  or if they will do that.

I don't like doing things to my server personally so I either use a managed server box (which is what I am testing Abantecart on),  or on self-managed servers I use a server admin service.  In either configuration  I just let those guys install my certs and attend to my annual renewal updates. My feeling is they know the server side and I don't,  so I let them attend to it. 

The certificate cost is an annual fee,  not a one-time fee  and most certs issue a new key when you renew -  that key has to be changed in your server information for your cert to continue to work correctly.  It's just maintenance,  not hard,  but has to be done or customers get scary warnings when things are out of sync.  Since it is once a year,  it sometimes get overlooked, or you can purchase for extended periods of time (multiple years).

For me since the setup of the keys, is critical and it comes so infrequently  I always have someone else do it for me. As I tend to forget some important step when it comes up.  Once you get the rewrites setup - and Abantecart can direct you there,  that won't need attention.

I hope this provided a bit more clarity rather than a bit more confusion.

Lee

Yes,  adding the ability to keep customers apprised of their orders,  etc  is always a good enhancement.

Lee

PS -  I didn't know exactly how to vote on the survey -  deciding if this enhancement should be core or extension is beyond my comfort zone.  so just register me as a yes  and I  defer to cart coders to determine the correct placement.

DavidLIR,

This is just general info - Abantecart uses caching to increase the speed of page delivery  and browsers also cache.  So often when you make changes into your pages -  you won't see those activate until you actually clear the cache, often in both places.

Under System > Cache  at the bottom of the page you can clear the cache on the server. 

 You should also clear the cache on your PC.   Sometimes if a glitch has been fixed, you can continue to see the bug because you are viewing a cached version of the page, so force refreshing will allow you to see the fix.

Generally speaking, CTRL-F5 will do a non-cached refresh, while F5, CTRL-R, and Refresh button will do a cached refresh. That is, the browser will not retrieve the latest information from the server, unless you perform a CTRL-F5

Lee


PS Abantecart will need to answer about the extensions - for more clarity that I can provide.

It is my opinion that the banner statistic reports in it current form is fairly meaningless and adds too many records to the database.  In checking on my database there are over 6000 records and I am not even live - just building the site.

Currently there is no way to reset the stats to zero with the reports area and in the products viewed reports which makes it more difficult to manage.

Additionally,  there should be a report date range request that would make this perhaps more meaningful over time.

There are more functionality features that could be and perhaps should be added to make this report useful rather than just the rapidly expanding database placeholder that it currently provides.  But just adding the reset and the date range request would trememdously improve the usefulness of this report.

thanks for considering.
Lee

thanks Ron and JHammond,

Ron since you use Mail Chimp -  did you hook up the Extension in AbanteCart yet or do you plan to?  I am not familiar with Mail Chimp,
but was thinking it might be a way to handle at least the newsletter sending.  If you have any further guidance on that thought, please share.

I will make a post into features requested section for this to be at least considered for future development.

Lee

I had found that Ron,  but it doesn't appear to do what I want it to do.  Seems that just sends the same email to several different addresses.  That would be good if you wanted more than one person tracking something.

What I would like is
orders from orders@mystore.com
newsletters from newsletter@mystore.com (I am probably do that my adding the Mail Chimp)
contacts us from customersupport@mystore.com
That type of thing. 

The question is does the current system provide this?  And if so,  how/where?