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I downloaded some extensions from the Marketplace but I changed my mind and decided not to install them. How do I get rid of these unwanted extensions? They show as "ready to install" but there's no delete button.

Hello. I'd like to suggest the inclusion of a category fix in the next upgrade. The issue is described in details in this post:
http://forum.abantecart.com/index.php/topic,4887.0.html Thank you.

In this article, I will explain how and why to add an intra-site search engine to your AbanteCart store.

If you have a barebones website with products only, this article does not apply to you as AbanteCart's built-in search engine is most likely meeting your search needs.

Now, if you have a website with lots of information pages such as a library or a resources section pointing to pages within your website, please read on.

As is, AbatenCart's search engine only picks up products and category pages; it does not crawl and index additional information pages you may have added to your store. In my website, for example, I have a library with loads of articles and other resources, both inbound and outbound. Of course, I made these resources available for my customers so there would be no point in having them unless they can be found.

When I decided to add an intra-site search engine to my website, I searched for several options on the market, including Google Search. Finally, I decided to settle with Zoom Search Engine since it's the one that best meets my needs. Zoom is simple, powerful, and flexible. It has no recurring fees and if you have a small website, it's totally free!

An intra-site search engine is easy to set up. In the case of Zoom, I downloaded it to my desktop, configured the settings to my needs, then put the crawler in auto mode. Depending on the size of your website, it may take over 24 hours to crawl the entire site. This is pretty normal. Once you are done with crawling, you simply upload the data files, search.php, settings.php and search_template.html to your server.

As you go about looking for an intra-site search engine, check to make sure the developer offers tech support and what kinds of features it includes.

For those of us who love AbanteCart and all the features that it comes with, we may have settled on a particular design or look and may be satisfied with it. But the crucial questions are, "Are we listening to our customers and online visitors?", "What kind of feedback have they volunteered (if any)?", "Do we read their silence as a sign of approval?", "Do we normally ask for their input, comments and/or suggestions?", or "Do we assume we reached the pinnacle of web development and there's no more room for change?"

A good webmaster takes into account his/her audience's feedback, just like companies conduct satisfaction surveys to determine how customers like their products and/or services, and whether their needs are being met.

An area that's often neglected in web design (even by large corporations) is accessibility. Far too many websites are not accessible for those who are blind, deaf, or with other types of physical disabilities. There are plenty of resources online on this subject and, if this is something you never thought about, I strongly recommend you start doing. An accessible website makes it more inclusive and therefore more attractive. Nobody likes to be left out and people with disabilities are no exception! Recently, my company added a free extension to the Marketplace called "Accessible Cart". Check it out: http://marketplace.abantecart.com/accessible_cart

With that said, I would go a bit further to say that some of us may be stuck at some aspect of our website. Maybe we fell in love with the color scheme or the graphic elements or an image slider or whatever. It doesn't really matter what, there is always room for improvement. In 15 years in the assistive technology business (and close to 20 as a webmaster), I can't tell you how many times I changed my website and now with AbanteCart, I'm finally reaching a point of satisfaction. But this satisfaction came at a price (and a lot of time spent).

Every once in a while I read comments from fleeting visitors who come to this forum in hopes of finding the perfect shopping cart for free. Some are very demanding, others are plain rude. How can we expect a team of volunteers working on this wonderful project to give us a PERFECT shopping cart? There is no such thing. A sensible person would take what they were given for FREE, be thankful for the GIFT and help make it better. For me, this is the beauty of AbanteCart: the level of dedication of those involved. Of course, there are times we wait for an answer to a question that never comes, but hey this is a part of life. People are busy. Maybe we can dig in further and find the answer ourselves.

The Marketplace has wonderful extensions designed to enhance and extend the capabilities of AbanteCart stores. If you haven't bought an extension for a while (or never bought one), maybe it's about time to do so. When you buy an extension, you are encouraging its developer to create more extensions. If nobody buys, what's the point of making them anyway? To me, lauding OpenCart for the x number of extensions they have in comparison to AbanteCart (as I read in a post today) is totally unproductive. We can have as many extensions as they do - and as good as they are. It's entirely up to us, the AbanteCart community.

Finally, here's some food for thought on the issue of web design: Why would you settle with French fries when you can have gourmet food?

PS: I don't mean to be offensive to anyone with my French fries comment. I like FF but I love GF.

Did you know the Marketplace has several extensions that allow you to integrate live chat into your online store? Here are the links to some of them:

http://marketplace.abantecart.com/marketing/zopim_live_chat
http://marketplace.abantecart.com/marketing/live_chat_integration
http://marketplace.abantecart.com/marketing/olark_integration
http://marketplace.abantecart.com/live_tex_integration
http://marketplace.abantecart.com/red_helper_integration
http://marketplace.abantecart.com/jivo_chat
http://marketplace.abantecart.com/floating_chatbox
http://marketplace.abantecart.com/tawkto_integration

In this article, Patrick Sexton explains how to defer certain images without JQuery for faster page loading. I applied this technique to my category/subcategory images and I'm very happy with the result. I noticed my website loads much faster.

https://varvy.com/pagespeed/defer-images.html

These were the two files I have used:

/storefront/view/default/javascript/common.js
/storefront/view/default/template/blocks/category-top.tpl

NOTE: Along with image deferment, I also used image compression.

My favicon is not showing on the product page on Internet Explorer 11. No problem with other pages or other browsers. I'm using v 1.2.7 of AbanteCart. Any idea how to fix it?

Recently, I paid someone to optimize my database and upgrade the shopping cart to version 1.2.7. After the fact, I'm having a problem that I never did before on version 1.2.0. Here's a brief description:

No matter what category an item is listed under (for example, "vision'), it will come up in any other category URL. For example, in the following link, any word you use to replace "vision" with makes no difference. The product URL will be found - regardless of category name! I call it the "whatever factor". You can type whatever and the product will pop up. No kidding!

https://assistech.com/store/vision/fc1204

NOTE: I'm not providing any goofy links because I don't want Google to index goofy stuff. Or maybe I should provide one with a little tweak. Please copy the URL below, remove the white spaces before and after "whatever" and paste the URL in your browser window:

https://assistech.com/store/ whatever /fc1204

I swear I don't have a category named "whatever". lol

Has anyone experienced a smiliar problem with v. 1.2.7?

I was told this problem has nothing to do with the database optimization. The person hinted it might be a problem with v 1.2.7 or an issue caused by my extensions. I uninstalled and deleted all my extensions only to found out the problem persists. If it is indeed an AbanteCart glitch, what would the solution be?

I appreciate any suggestions and/or recommendations that might lead me to a resolution. I would love to hear from other Abantecart 1.2.7 users and/or core developers. Thank you!

I'm half way done with a new Abantecart extension that will have multiple functionalities, including a currency reminder (to check out in the default currency), an upsale promoter, and an "ask questions" feature. I'm looking for someone with experience in extension development to help me finish the job. This is a paid job, by the way, and I'd rather hire on a fixed basis. If anybody is interested, please send me a pvt message and I'll reply with more details. Thanks!

For some reason, when I mouse over Add to Cart button on the product page, it shows a little shopping cart icon on the top right hand corner - in addition to the regular size icon! See screenshot attached. How and where can I fix this?

Currently, I have three payment options set up in my store. They are all turned on in the extension Admin and all are showing in the shopping cart, but when I ran a SQL query in the database, only one option shows. How do I fix this?

How do I go about requesting that a default extension be made accessible?

The extension in question is default_authorizenet_aim. The form fields are not coded properly. As is, they are not accessible for those who are blind or visually impaired.

I cater to the blind and this is important for my customers. I appreciate if one of the core developers could respond to my inquiry. Thank you.

PS: I created an extension that is dependent on default_authorizenet.aim. Without this fix, my extension won't be 100% accessible. Your help is greatly appreciated.

I got a critical error message when testing a new extension. Any leads on how to fix the problem will be greatly appreciated. Here's a summary of the error message:

There has been a critical error processing your request

SQL Error: You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near '0 store_id = '0', store_name = 'Assistech', store_url = 'https' at line 2
Error No: 1064
SQL: INSERT INTO `ac_orders` SET 0 store_id = '0', store_name = 'Assistech', store_url = 'https://assistech.com/up127/';, customer_id = '0', customer_group_id = '1', firstname = 'Oliver', lastname = 'Simoes', email = 'ollie@assistech.com', telephone = '15208838600', fax = '5208838600', total = '187.6167', language_id = '1', currency = 'USD', currency_id = '1', value = '1', coupon_id = '0', ip = '73.24.199.186', shipping_firstname = 'Oliver', shipping_lastname = 'Simoes', shipping_company = '', shipping_address_1 = '1234 Main Street', shipping_address_2 = '', shipping_city = 'Tucson', shipping_postcode = '85721', shipping_zone = 'Arizona', shipping_zone_id = '3616', shipping_country = 'United States', shipping_country_id = '223', shipping_address_format = '{firstname} {lastname}\r\n{company}\r\n{address_1}\r\n{address_2}\r\n{city}, {zone} {postcode}\r\n{country}', shipping_method = 'Priority Mail 1-Day', payment_firstname = 'Oliver', payment_lastname = 'Simoes', payment_company = '', payment_address_1 = '1234 Main Street', payment_address_2 = '', payment_city = 'Tucson', payment_postcode = '85721', payment_zone = 'Arizona', payment_zone_id = '3616', payment_country = 'United States', payment_country_id = '223', payment_address_format = '{firstname} {lastname}\r\n{company}\r\n{address_1}\r\n{address_2}\r\n{city}, {zone} {postcode}\r\n{country}', payment_method = 'Credit Card / Debit Card (Authorize.Net)', comment = '', date_modified = NOW(), date_added = NOW() in /home/assistec/public_html/xx/core/database/amysqli.php on line 106

What file in v. 1.2.6 contains this js reference?

https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.11.0/jquery.min.js

My website is taking about 4 seconds to GET store. I already changed the driver from mysql to amysqli and enabled Turbo cache with the webhost, but these steps haven't helped improve the first byte load. Is there anything else I can do to make it faster? The total page load time can be as low as 9s and as high as 40+ seconds, depending on how busy the server is. (I use a shared server.) I'm in the process of optimizing images, minifying scripts and deferring whatever scripts I can. I use v. 1.2.0 with tons of customizations and I'd rather not upgrade. I'm also trying to stay away from CDN as I had some a pretty bad experience with CloudFlare (constant 404 errors).

My shopping cart is missing a couple of images. Does anybody know the name of these images and where to find them? I use version 1.2.0.

- Breadcrumb separator: https://assistech.com/store/telephone-ring-alerting-systems

- Rewrite Review stars: https://assistech.com/store/fc1204/#review

Some of my database search queries are taking too long. Is there a way to improve its performance?
I see a bunch of abc tables at the top. Are they necessary for Abantecart to work properly? Can they be deleted without affecting the performance of the shopping cart?

I appreciate whatever information is provided to help me improve performance/speed?

Also, I have a slow query log file, but I don't know how to read it. Any insights on that?

My website keeps throwing 503 permission errors randomly while going around my website. It is also loading very slowly. When I contacted my hosting provider, they saw that my website had gotten marked in mod_security; they white listed what was causing it but now it seems to be happening again. Any help would be appreciated.  I am using Abantecart 1.2.0 with some custom plugins and am running php version 5.4 with fast cgi.

For some reason, my shopping cart is not displaying all the items in the VoIP phones category: https://assistech.com/store/voip-video-ip-phones

It lists a total of 26 items (20 on page 1 and 6 on page 2). Of the 6 on page 2, 5 are repeats from page 1 and 5 other items are not showing at all. When I go back from page 2 to page 1, I can see the missing items. How can I get the shopping cart to display the items correctly (without repeats and without skipping any items at first view)?

Is it possible to create  create a page showing the latest items? I added a new icon under Design > Menu. Now I want to create a page for those items. When visitors click on this icon, it will take them to that page.