Planet osCommerce

You know, remodeling a home is a pain... well can be a pain but it sure does make you feel good when you can see the end of the work. Hopefully for me that will be soon. : ) I mention the remodeling because Melinda (modom) has been great enough to help me keep up with the Live Shops while I have been busy trying to paint, rip up carpet, put down tiles, etc and so on.

I got through 3 pages (60 entries give or take a couple) worth of entries tonight. Lots of great sites added, but sometimes I have to wonder what people are thinking. I came across several sites that were not active... not only did they not even have a coming soon page (which still can't be listed but atleast it is something) but they actually still had the generic place holder page webhosts give new people. There were a couple where the sites could not be found. I would really like to know why someone would submit a website if the store (or any site at all if they are trying to sneak em by someone) isn't even there.

Another thing I would like to mention, although I know it has been said several times now by me and by Melinda... there are rules to submitting websites. Atleast 10 sites had to be removed because they did not follow the rules. It is bound to happen but it gets frustrating when it keeps happening over and over and going through the Live Shops is something I (and others) do in our spare time... what little there is of it.

Anyhow, I did come across a couple of really great sites... meaning they were well done and appealed to me. Everyone has their own tastes and people should definately check out the sites as they get added to see what others are doing with osCommerce.

I really liked https://sklep.swiatczekolady.pl/index.php although I couldn't read a word of it and have no idea what the title is. I do know they sell chocolates. The site definately took some time to change the stock look. The product list page is pretty neat and they put a lot of thought into the product descriptions.

I also liked http://www.kleidershop.ch They used the STS template system for the layout which is very clean and professional looking. Only thing I found that could be an issue was that there was a javascript error.

Now, this site may not impress some but I absolutely loved the colors and the fact that even though the layout itself is very "standard" they did some really cute things with the look tpo make it their own. http://www.girlcharlee.com/

Well, I am off now to go do some work before I head to bed. Lucky me. : )

Hi,

We are keeping caught on the Live Site Submissions ... thank you Wendy!

However, we are finding that there are several duplicate submissions and some are not following the Live Shop rules here:
http://www.oscommerce.info/kb/280

All sites that do not follow these guidelines are deleted.

All sites that put in duplicate submissions are deleted ... we have a checker in place so it really does not help you to make multiple submissions.

Soon we will have a category navigation for the Live Shops and your site will be in the most appropriate one!

On some earlier site submissions I found a few sites that I thought were really nice to share.

1. http://www.edenbridals.com
This site is very clean and elegant and has lots of graphic work. The only thing I would change on this site is the Result Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 ... [Next >>] navigation links in the stylesheet to be more in line with the colors of the site ... a nice burgundy color would be good!

2. http://www.sportsaccessories.com
I especially like the way a graphic is to the left of each category listing when you click on that category and love the colors!

3. http://www.atwixend.com/
You can navigate from category to category using the little arrow buttons on the same line as the name of the category ... good job and nice, soothing colors!

We look forward to community input!

Sincerely,
Melinda

It looks like we have to use another compatibility function due to inconsistencies between PHP versions.

For PHP versions below 4.3.5, defined() returns an integer (1 or 0), whereas from 4.3.5 onwards it returns a boolean (true or false).

This makes it impossible for us to use the following:

We've just announced our new public development server and are anxious to see the possibilities it can bring. I've been working on this the past week and look forward to development again to finalize the 3.0alpha3 release.

Although public access to our development repository is now available, public testing will first pick up when 3.0alpha3 is finalized as it will be packaged and available for download. No download package for the 3.0alpha2 release is available due to the problems it has on PHP4 servers, which have been fixed in the development repository.

The new public development server also brings us back to our roots as an Open Source Project, after closing the public CVS server we had a while ago to concentrate on the new framework and to cease the support conflicts it created on the support forums.

We've learned from that experience and have separated the development server from the support site.

Those that previewed the new site all provided positive feedback, and look forward to fostering a development community again.

Tip: Subscribe to the Timeline RSS feed on the development server to keep up to date with the development progress made

The Saferpay payment module I first worked on for the new post-transaction action features of 3.0 was implemented with a program Saferpay provides that is used to communicate to the payment gateway. The use of this program is similar to using cURL but had the disadvantage that it had to be manually installed and that the output of the program had to be saved to a file.

Creating the files was no problem as it was easily done in the osCommerce working directory, and deleted as soon as it was no longer needed.

I previously blogged about implementing an additional Saferpay module that uses SOAP to communicate to the payment gateway, which did not require the use of the "saferpay" binary.

When I started to look into it, I did not understand the documentation provided of how the system works and asked Saferpay for help. They suggested that I use a more simpler approach as setting up the module would have been too technical for store owners to achieve, and forwarded me the necessary documentation. I did not know of this simpler method beforehand and was thrilled that they provided yet another means of being able to communicate to their gateway.

The simpler approach uses normal HTTPS POST connections to communicate to their gateway, and is common for payment service providers to use.

I agree that setting up a SOAP based module would have been too technical seeing that most store owners that use the PayPal IPN module have not set it up with the Encrypted Web Payments feature it supports. And that, in contrast, is pretty easy to setup.

I've now updated the Saferpay Credit Card, ELV (bank transfer), and Virtual Terminal payment modules to use the HTTPS POST method, with all 3 modules retaining the same functionality and post-tranaction actions as introduced earlier.

Or maybe it is just me being a goofball... but I have just spent a bunch of money trying to make a Betta happy. Bettas are those colorful fish you see in Walmart or petstores that most people keep in a small bowl. Well, the other day my husband and I were in Walmart and we were in the pet section getting food for my dogs and I spotted the Bettas all lined up in these tiny little plastic bowls with white covers. I am such a softy and talked my husband into letting me get one. Like we need another pet. We have 4 dogs and 2 cats as it is. Anyhow, to make the fish happy I HAD to have a bigger tank so we got a 1 gallon tank, some pretty glass stones and a plant. Not bad, everything included about $40.

Ok, get home fish is in the new tank and happy. I am happy cause the fish is entertaining. Had to name him because Bettas have amazing personalitys. Like little bitty dogs or something. So anyhow, named the fish Bart. He seems really happy for a couple of days. Wouldn't you know it though... poor thing get's bored and keeps attacking his shadow and swimming in circles. I have had several Bettas in my life but never one that had so much energy so I had to have a bigger tank for him. HAD to. Did I mention I am a goofball?

Now, 3 days go by and I talk my husband into taking me to the pet store to get a bigger tank but I don't feel good so he goes by himself. He comes home with a 5 gallon tank, another plastic plant, a big rock, more gravel and an algae eater Yay! Get Bart, that's the Betta, into the new tank and he is like so psyched. He's swimming in the stream of the filter like some little under water surfer having loads of fun. I am happy cause he is happy. 2 days go by and he is no longer swimming around all happy but spending most of his time bugging the algae eater trying to make him swim so I think he needs some friends. I really think he sees "sucker" written on my forhead.

Two days later after watching Bart act all depressed we go to the petstore and get him 4 friends. No idea what kind of fish they are but they are small and kind of cute. Well, Bart doesn't like two of them so we have to give them to the sister in law. So now the tank has Bart, Zig and Zag... two speedy little yellow fish, and the algae eater without a name.

You would think things are perfect now but no. Things are great for about a day and a half. Because it is a new tank and plastic plants the algae eater has nothing to eat and is like acting nutso so the husband stops at a petstore on the way home from work today and picks up 2 live plants and algae eater food. omg who ever heard of such a thing? And because the fish won't eat the food that falls to the bottom he also picked up a crab. Yes, a little crab. I named him Gary. That thing can eat and eat... he hasn't stopped since we put him in the tank.

Well so far so good but it has only been a couple of hours. Bart is loving one of the plants the algae eater is liking the other. I have to wait until later on to put the tablet food in and see if he will eat that. Zig and Zag are well.... zigging and zagging all over the place and Gary the crab is cleaning the tank and pretty funny to watch.

So to make a Betta fish happy, this insane sucker of a woman has spent just about $150. I think I need to see someone about my softness but it is almost my birthday so I have told the husband he doesn't have to get me anything. Like he was going to after spending all this money on a fish anyhow. They are fun to watch and sitting right here on my desk so that is a plus. I catch myself just sitting here watching them for long periods of time. Kind of relaxing and honestly more fun than most of the stuff on tv. Zig and Zag like to chase my led light I shine in the tank and Bart comes up to the surface and "kisses" my finger if I put it in the water... yes, I am easily entertained. This story should have already clued you in.

As a side note... anyone who tells you Betta fish can be happy swimming in a bowl the size of a coffee cup is just plain old wrong. They just don't know any better.

The checkout procedure has been worked on again to meet the requirements of some payment modules, with the ordering process now being split up into numerous class methods. The logic has returned to the order class (now osC_Order) after being moved over to the checkout/process content module.

This provides a level of flexibility where it is no longer required to go through the checkout/process page to process an order, and can now be done practically anywhere.

The class methods now used to process an order currently consists of:

osC_Order::insert()
osC_Order::remove()
osC_Order::process()
osC_Order::sendEmail()

The new logic now creates the order in the database via the insert() method before contacting the payment gateway for the transaction to occur. This allows the correct order ID to be passed with the transaction request to the gateway, and only processes the order if the transaction was successful. (This replaces what I blogged about previously regarding the random and unique order transaction ID)

For payment modules that require no external interaction, such as Authorize.net, the calls to insert() -> process() -> sendEmail() are performed in the payment modules process() method.

Payment modules to date have had before_process() and after_process() class methods which has now been replaced with one single process() method.

The execution is different for payment modules that do require external interaction, such as PayPal, where the order is inserted into the database on the checkout/confirmation page, and processed at a later stage.

This behaviour was introduced with the official PayPal IPN payment module contribution made for the 2.2 Milestone 2 release, and does have some drawbacks due to technical related issues.

As most community members are aware, if a customer makes an order through the normal PayPal payment module and does not hit the last continue button on PayPal's site to return back to the store, the order would not have been created in the database and the store owner receives a payment email from PayPal without an order to reference it to. This problem was addressed with the PayPal IPN contribution where the order is inserted on the checkout/confirmation page and processed on the callback request PayPal makes to the online shop that is performed when the payment has been confirmed by the customer.

The reason the order is created on the checkout/confirmation page and not when the customer returns to the store after paying at PayPal or when the callback request from PayPal is received, is incase the customer does not hit the last continue button on PayPals site to return back to the store, and incase the session validation features of osCommerce prevent the callback request from resuming the session of the customer (when the session ID exists in the callback request URL).

The negative aspect of this approach is that if the customer did not confirm the payment at PayPals site, an order entry would still exist in the database marked with the order status of "Preparing". Logic exists in the osC_Order class to replace orders marked as "Preparing" when the customer visits the checkout/confirmation page multiple times (incase they wanted to add a product to their cart at the last minute) to avoid the orders database table being flooded with "Preparing" order entries.

The drawback here is the possibility of the order still being deleted (replaced) even if the customer confirmed payment at PayPals site. This can happen only if the callback request is delayed and if the customer does not hit the last continue button at PayPals site to return to the store normally, but uses the browsers back button (or a bookmarked link) to return to the store and goes through the checkout procedure again to make another order.

This situation would be rare though and have confirmed with several people directly that they had not experienced this with the official PayPal IPN payment module contribution for 2.2MS2.

These are just some examples of the technical issues involved when working on the payment modules, the checkout procedure, and again on the payment modules if one needs special requirements

An addition to the checkout procedure is a re-introduction of the credit card class that was removed a while ago. The Credit Card Types Administration Tool page is now combined with the new credit card class, where each credit card contains a perl based regular expression pattern to match against provided credit card numbers. Two new parameters are provided to the store owner to control the pattern matching behaviour, where it can be enabled or disabled for server side matching (through PHP) and on the client side with javascript.

The benefits of perl based regular expressions (preg) over posix based regular expressions (ereg) is that the same pattern can also be used for client side javascript matching.

In addition, the credit card payment modules now share a relationship with the Credit Card Types where specific credit cards can be enabled for specific payment modules.

This is shown nicely at the end of the attached movie, demonstrating the post transaction actions again with Authorize.net and PayPal.

Now that my development branch is stable again, I'll be able to forward a pre3.0alpha3 version to the payment service providers to start the certification phase. A page on the support site will be added next week to show the progress made here, and will mention it in a blogging entry as soon as it is ready for public viewing.

Here is a second movie demonstrating the post-transaction actions of 3.0 for your viewing pleasure

oscommerce_3.0alpha3_post_transactions.mov

(Disclaimer: cat and mouse game; Tom and Jerry)

I've had a lot of fun the past week with the payment modules; not only working on post-transaction actions, but also on the backend API side of things and have ultimately split the way the modules are structured.

Similar to work being done on combining the catalog and administration tool files, there are now two main files to a payment module, one for the catalog side taking care of the initial transaction for a new order, and a second file for the administration tool taking care of installation, removal, and post-transaction actions. The second set of module functions are never used nor needed on the catalog side, so moving these over to the administration tool side cleans up the API and adds in an extra level of security. This also brings in a performance increase on the catalog side, but won't be seen (hey, there's less inclusion of code going on here )

The modules that communicate with their gateways via a HTTPS request can return the response with just one line of code:

$this->_transaction_response = $this->sendTransactionToGateway('https://test.authorize.net:443/gateway/transact.dll', $post_string);

(the sendTransactionToGateway() class method is part of osC_Payment, so it is available to all payment modules)

The cool thing about this function is that it falls back nicely onto what the server is capable of doing to make that HTTPS request. The first thing that is tried is using the native PHP functions when OpenSSL is built with the PHP installation (PHP 4.3+ feature). If this isn't available, it falls back to using libcurl, which is "curl" built into the PHP installation, and if the server doesn't support that, it automatically falls back to using the cURL binary file that should exist on the server.

I really do not like the cURL binary file method as the credit card details are passed to it via exec(), which can then be seen on the server via the "ps" command. If this is the case for your shared webserver, I'd recommend changing hosts if you want to accept credit cards this way, as it can be insecure.*

* Some modules are able to pass the parameters encrypted to "curl" (using exec()) but is unfortunately not common.

One problem that I wanted to tackle properly with the payment modules API update, was to take care of the cat and mouse game of the order being created after a payment request to the gateway has been made, specifically the desire and need of passing the order ID to the gateway for its intended financial transaction.

The problem here is that the order ID does not exist at this stage as the order has not been created yet. It was common to pass just a randomized value to the gateway but had no official relation to the order as this value was not being stored with the creation of the order.

With my thinking cap on, I would have liked to have solved this problem by using database sequences, similar to MySQL's auto_increment feature, as it is not possible to neatly grab the current (or next) auto_increment value for a specific table before an insert has been performed (argh; cat and mouse game). But regardless of using auto_increment or sequences, the database tables involved of storing a new order would need to be locked so that the relationships between the tables match the order being created (ie, osc_orders and osc_orders_products; by orders_id).

And this is what the ultimate problem is: unfortunately not all hosting providers have granted their customers with LOCK privileges.

No, I did not have to ring every hosting provider in the world to ask if they provide LOCK privileges to their customers or not, but did some research and came across this problem while searching for alternative methods. One of the projects that are experiencing this problem is Drupal:

http://drupal.org/node/39460

They use the more neutral (or standard) approach of using sequences over MySQL's auto_increment feature, and have been experiencing this problem with their releases.

As osCommerce is not yet officially database independent (although the API for it is just about there), and we are focusing on compatibility with MySQL 3.x -> 5.x with MyISAM and InnoDB tables, I took my thinking cap off and decided to keep it simple, yet still secure, to have this work on each and every MySQL database server out there (thank you MySQL drawbacks! ) and keep everyone happy.

The solution that has been implemented is to create that random order ID value, make it unique, and to store that with the order when it is created. That way there is an official relationship between an order and a transaction that can be seen. Whether or not the ID passed to the payment gateway is the order ID or another ID does not (or should not) really matter; the important thing here is that a relationship between the order and transaction exists, and prevents duplicate orders from being sent (another reason some payment gateways require an order ID to be sent to them).

This has no affect on the post-transaction actions side of things (eg, capturing an authorized transaction), as the gateways return their own transaction ID which is used to identify the transaction for post-transaction actions.

That was my thinking-cap experience for the week, and had fun finalizing the modules I got started on and starting on new ones. The certification from the payment service providers will begin next week, and look forward to the results this will bring.

The communication here to the payment service providers has been great, with all being anxious in seeing and certifying the new modules.

I will post another video of what is possible now with the post-transaction actions in the coming days, so stay tuned!

Ahhhh .. the joys of development are again prevailing! ;-) The work involved from the third 3.0 alpha release onwards actually produces frontend changes that can be proudly shown rather than writing again about the backend changes for the new framework that was worked on in the MS3 -> 3.0alpha1 and 3.0alpha2 releases.

Not that the backend changes were not needed; it's just more exciting to work on something where the results can not only be experienced (performance, security, optimizations, ..) but also seen!

Last week I was in contact again with some payment providers regarding test accounts and technical implementation documentation for the work involved in updating the payment modules for the 3.0alpha3 release. The contact made here will definitely strengthen during the next couple of weeks as the work involved here matures, and will also increase due to the amount of payment providers out there.

The first payment gateway I received a test account and technical documentation to was Switzerland based SaferPay. They have two methods to perform transactions over; the primary means is through a binary/executable file they provide that communicates with their gateway (similar to using cURL), and the second means is via SOAP. As I didn't have sufficient documentation for the SOAP method I went ahead and played around with the binary/executable method. What I don't like about this method is that PHP needs access to the exec() function, and that is passes the credit card number to the binary/executable as an argument. This can be dangerous for a shared server environment, and hope to have some implementation questions answered during the new week.

The SOAP method should address such issues for shared server environments, and think that those using the binary/executable file are on secured dedicated servers anyway.

The work made here and the addition of the SaferPay payment module is the first payment module that is able to communicate to its payment gateway after an order has been processed. This allows the store owner to perform transaction actions to an order via the osCommerce Administration Tool, and no longer relies on doing the same actions on the payment gateway administrative interface. This should however be considered a "luxury" feature and not a "payment gateway administrative interface" replacement

The SaferPay gateway allows the osCommerce Administration Tool to "approve" and "cancel" a financial transaction to an order, and to "inquire" about it's current status.

The default transaction method for the module is to keep the financial transaction on hold. That means the checkout procedure checks to see if there are sufficient funds on the credit card, and holds it until the store owner is ready to accept the payment and to ship the products ordered.

Attached is a movie demonstrating this. There is a new "Transactions History" tab added to the Order Edit page where the transaction history is shown. The statuses are still shown as numbers but will be replaced with textual equivalents similar to how the Order Statuses are implemented. (Please also note that this is not the final layout of the order edit page)

oscommerce_saferpay.mov

After the order has been processed, the financial transaction status of the order changes on the payment gateway from "Reservation" to "Payment" to "Cancellation Payment", performed via the osCommerce Administration Tool. The "inquiry" transaction action is also automatically performed after the financial transaction status changes to provide more information to the store owner on the same page. This will end up being a parameter for the payment module as it requires two requests to the payment gateway to be made, which slows things down by .. err.. 1 request

I'll keep the blog up to date on the progress made here with this and the other payment modules.

I returned from my break on the weekend and greatly enjoyed the time I had off. The thoughts of having a lot of snow here was smashed when experiencing the amount this corner of Germany receives.

I was in Bayern for a week at Tegernsee, with the break starting off with a delay due to the clutch needing to be repaired in my car and due to some havoc weather Bayern had that weekend. The good luck in the bad of needing to have my car repaired at the last minute, was to not experience the long traffic jams the bad weather had caused. There was a person on the news who said it had taken him 19 hours to drive from München to Köln, where it would normally take around 6. This was exactly the route that needed to be taken and was lucky to have taken it without any problems leaving a couple of days later.

This changed the week at Tegernsee from Sun-Sun to Tue-Tue and meant a lot of driving on the way back as I wanted to (still) catch the last day of Cebit at Hannover on Wednesday, at the other end of Germany

The week at Tegernsee was full of sightseeing, walking, and drinking. It's great walking for hours when it is snowing, ageing slowly with white hair, white eyebrows, and rosey cheeks, to have some hot chocolate in a restaurant at the top of a mountain

These pictures were taken at Wallberg, which is about 1,600m above sea level:





The last picture is of Tegernsee.

Here you can see the amount of snow that was on the side of the walking paths and on top of the roofs:



The obligatory snowman ..



and drink



That was at the Hofbräuhaus in München - a valid candidate for a public meeting location

As a week wasn't enough, we've booked another break there again for the end of September, to experience the area in another season and to catch the Oktoberfest

The day at Cebit wasn't quite my thing but did have a quick chat with the people from Ogone concerning their payment solutions and our next release, specifically the work for the next alpha release regarding payment modules.

The night in Hannover actually made it worth the drive there and had a great time at Brauhaus Ernst August and a quick stop at an Irish Pub before finding the way back to our Hotel So next year I'll just skip the Cebit part and go straight to the pubs

I was hoping to have caught up with other payment providers at Cebit for contact reasons, but didn't find any others - atleast any that I knew by name. The payment modules is what I will be working on next for the next 3.0 alpha release, and look forward to catching up with the contacts made to actually get the most out of each payment gateway to actually process orders on the Administration Tool rather than only approving/disapproving them.

A change that is now occurring is my focus on team management having priority over development. I had this the other way around in the past to get the releases out the door but now that we are getting closer and closer to a stable release (3.0), the team needs to strengthen itself due to the increase of responsibility the stable release will bring. This may seem easy from the outside, but it's not Managing a group of volunteers brings more grey hairs than managing a group of employees This is something we are slowly moving towards, which also brings in its own layer of difficulty to deal with at the same time (to keep everyone happy; community members included).

What fun would this be though if it was a piece of cake? There's enough hard work here to earn my next break in September

.. well, we're not quite there yet but the 78th Oscar awards are currently running

The second alpha testing release to the 3.0 version has been released to our sponsors for testing! This release includes a lot of work made for the new database based language implementation and to the checkout procedure for cleaning the execution logic.

I look forward to the feedback provided here, and for the work now being done for the third alpha testing release where visual changes can (atlast) be seen

I'm also going to be away for a week on a well deserved break (from work, and from Karneval ;-)), and will spend some offline time in Southern Bayern (Tegernsee). Lets see how far I get with the snow chaos there at the moment

The roadmap shown on the support site has been updated to reflect the 3.0 alpha development cycle, as presented to community sponsors when the testing phase started with the 3.0alpha1 release.

The previous roadmap reflected the 2.2 milestone development cycle, with milestones 3 and 4 being moved and spread over to the 3.0 alpha development cycle. The version bump from 2.2 to 3.0 is due to the amount of changes made and the new "template structure" framework.

The 3.0 alpha releases are still only available to community sponsors to have a controlled group testing the releases out. We have decided to keep the testing of the alpha releases controlled as these releases contain known quirks and are not yet ready for production use.

An additional update to the 2.2 Milestone 2 release will be made with the 3.0 alpha 3 release to contain not only confirmed bug fixes, but also updated payment and shipping modules from 3.0alpha3, and the administration tool login and new installation procedure introduced in 3.0alpha1. This update release to 2.2MS2 will then officially finalize the milestone development cycle for the 2.2 series.

The roadmap page can be viewed here:

http://www.oscommerce.com/community/roadmap

4 years and 8 months ago John Doe was commited to the public development CVS server to show the one product review he has ever written as part of the sample data used for new online store installations.

John Doe shared a love / hate relationship with developers and store owners; loved by developers who enjoyed the ease of being able to login into an online store installation without needing to create an account, and hated by store owners who had to remove the account manually from the Administration Tool.

Some of the hate was also shared by developers who could not figure out his password

Today, this default customer account has been removed due to the many advances made since then, and is now honored by leaving that one review he wrote as part of the sample data used for new online store installations, as a "guest" review.

Farewell John Doe, thanks for the good times you shared with us!

As some of you or all of you may have heard, the Live Shops are now up to date. Melinda and Rhea worked very, very hard. I did what I could, which wasn't nearly as much as they did but now it is my turn to work and keep the sites up to date.

I am checking them every day which seems to be working well so far. Going to keep my fingers crossed that I am able to keep up. There are many submissions a day which is fantastic. Just shows how popular osCommerce is!

Don't forget to follow the guidlines when submitting a site so it can be listed.
If you are unsure what they are go here...
http://www.oscommerce.info/kb/280
and that will tell you what you need to know.

Gotta run, got a canasta game to play!
Have a good one.

Hi,

All of the live shops are now listed in the "Live Shops" section here:
http://www.oscommerce.com/shops/live

If your site was submitted but is not found in the live shops then it was removed for not following the guidelines which are here:
http://www.oscommerce.info/kb/The_osCommerce_Project/280

These guidelines are also listed as a link to the knowledgebase article when you are submitting your site to the live shops.
http://www.oscommerce.com/shops/live/new,shop

I want to thank the live shops team for all their hard work!

In the coming weeks the docs team will be going over the knowledgebase and updating as much as we can for the ms3 store version.

Thanks everyone and have a great weekend!

Hi,

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and New Years!

The live shops are moving right along and will all be activated soon.

We will be going through the ms3 installation and making some changes in the documentation.

Hope to have more later!

I am tempted to write this in my natural language being Dutch. Afterall this is my first entry into a blog of my own and writing in a foreign language is very difficult. Not neccessarily for the grammatical errors, which are more easy to forgive, but to give the right feeling and expression to what you write. Even that already sounds wrong worded but I forgive myself for this one time

As a kid I loved to write. Elves, dwarves, giants, you name it and I wrote myself a story for it. That is until I was about twelve years old. Then I more or less lost interest, probably mostly because diaries were for girls and I was no Ludlum, Tolkien, Robert Jordan or whatever great writer I love to read.

And all of a sudden there were 'blogs'.
Excuse me, what do you say ? Oh, you mean 'personal diary'. What girls write when they are young and silly or when they are older and do not get enough attention (or too much).
No no, you got it all wrong. It's much more then that, even directors write blogs !! It's a whole new way of communication where you write your personal feelings about anything you like and people can respond to that !
Ah yes, of course, but isn't that what I said ?
No, because everyone is allowed to read it.
Silence...thinking...
So..is it good or bad ?
Frankly said I have no idea but it does sound cool doesn't it !

So here I am with my balls put to the wall. As a total surprise Harald asked me to join the team and with it comes this blog. What's the use of a blog if nobody reads it but myself ? What if I write totally uninteresting stuff which nobody wants to read anyway ? Exactly, a total waste of time.
But who can tell and I have to admit I enjoyed writing this first little entry in my own blog.
So Harald and other team members; thank you for not only asking me to join the team but also for awakening of what spark was left of my 'blogging' part

Until later...

Hope this makes you laugh, it sure did me... the truth is always funny.

10 things I learned from my spam email folder.

1. My manhood is too small. (omg I have one??)
2. Even if it wasn't tiny, it doesn't work anyway.
3. My mortgage interest rate is too high.
4. My golf clubs are old and outdated.
5. I am paying far too much for prescription drugs.
6. I am missing out on many opportunities to meet singles in my area.
7. There are many stocks that I have never heard of that will make me rich.
8. If that doesn't work, I can still get rich on Ebay.
9. My long lost, fabulously wealthy Nigerian relatives continue to die by the carload, leaving me enormous sums of money.
10. My Ebay and PayPal accounts have been suspended. I need to resubmit my financial information and passwords to http://www.westealebayandpaypalpasswordsfromidiots.com in order to restore service.

Hi,

The live shop entries to be added are waiting on the live shop team members, Wendy and Scott, to finish reorganizing their assigned category structures. Then, each team member will have approximately 45 pages of sites to input into the live shops section to finish. Personally I have finished my category reorganization and am about finished with my site inputs! Yeah!

The goal is to finish inputting the sites into the live shops section by November 30, 2005. The sites that have not been categorized cannot be put into the live shops until the category reorganizing is finished by the other team members so waiting ... waiting ... waiting ... waiting ...

There are some additional comments in the ms2.2 documentation download so if you need a fresh copy be sure and download it!

Thanks!

Man oh man. Reformatting a computer should be such a simple thing even if it can be a headache but nooooooooooooooooooooooo my computer feels like being a... well, a you know what!

I burned 9 DVDs full of stuff I needed (ok wanted in the case of the 2 1/2 DVDs worth of music), but my computer does not want to read the majority of them and keeps saying particular items have errors. So I am currently flipping out. This means I have NONE of the websites I have been messing with, none of my graphics which include pictures that can not be replaced of my birthmother who passed away, etc etc. I can live without the websites... those can be made again but I really am freaking out about all of my personal stuff like the images, address book, text files with phone numbers on them and so on.

To top it off this all happened Friday and it took until today to get my computer to reinstall an operating system... won't even accept XP Pro, had to go back to Home Edition (gag) and just now able to get the backup of my emails to load. Won't load my contacts but atleast I can get the majority of the important ones from the emails. This means I now have to contact everyone I was suposed to help and let them know what is going on. Yuck.

Anyhow, figured I would post this here on my blog so anyone who comes to the forums looking for me will understand why I have not been around. I still haven't been able to install any of my IM thingies so have to try and figure out all my user names and passwords. What a pain in the butt.

I am soooooooooo going to double check anything I burn from now on before I touch a dang thing on my computer. lol Oh well, such is life. All of it is replaceable eventually sept the personal pics. I will be upset about that for a very long time to come.

In responding to a Post:

The correct method is to give support in your respond without asking for a member to contact you in regards to help as the help can be given via the forums and the respond that you give via the forum may be of benefit to many users rather than the initial poster which is the case if they are to contact you directly.

The idea is to have responds in the forum that can benefit the community as a whole and not just the individual as most of the time either the question has been asked before many times or if it happens to be something new then the respond is there to aid anyone else whom has this issue.

Our aim is not to have a go at you but to help aid in educating in the proper methods of respond to give when posting so as to benefit the community rather than the individual.

If you post for a member to contact you and they do, this does not benefit the community, and in effect nulls the post in it's posting, thus when another member with a similar issue does a search and finds the post it is of no real use to them unless you are available in the future to also answer that persons issue privately, whereas if you post with the correct resolve to the issue in the forum this becomes beneficial to the entire community and to anyone doing a search based on the issue.

I hope that this makes things a little clearer as to why the actions that we take are as they are.

Hi,

Knowledgebase Developments:

A new kb article has been written about incorporating php with mouseover graphics to hold the session id...enjoy!
.Add Mouse Over Graphic Links with Session ID

There are some touchups to the article "Add php Links to Graphics with Session ID" on that same page.


Live Shops Developments:

Work is continuing on revamping the live shop listings putting them into categories/subcategories according to the site's main description or the majority of products in one category on each site.

When a site is submitted to be a live shop the description should incorporate the "main" item that is sold. This really helps us to categorize each site and put in the appropriate category/subcategory.

The site categories are being broken down to 3 levels so in the future someone will be able to search for a site in the "live shops" section of osCommerce. This will really be nice to specifically go to a category/subcategory and find sites of that listing in the future.

As always we appreciate the osCommerce community!

Hi,

The kb has been updated with an article about database errors into one article with what the error is, what the correction is, and any references to read more about the error.

Database Error Corrections Article

This information has helped me with problems due to a server change or simply forgetting something so hope it will be valuable!

Thanks for your continued support!

Melinda

Hi,

The documentation is up to date except for a few articles left so nothing to report this past week but I did have a restful labor day!

Thanks!

Melinda

So sorry this post has nothing to do with osCommerce but I had the urge to post something after speaking to this very nice lady while playing canasta online.

She recently lost her nephew. He was murdered... get this... by a 22 yr old woman for a gold chain. Yes, I said a 22 yr old woman, for a gold chain.
Can you believe that? All caught on video. Kicked in the head for 20 minutes by the womans boyfriend who is over twice the kids size. There are many other things they did to this teen but I will not go into it because it is horrible and scary to think people are capable of such things.

Luckily the people who killed this teen were caught and are in prison. When they were caught they were wearing the things they took off his dying body. This poor kid was just walking to the skytrain station after watching fireworks. Shows you that you just never know when will be the last time you see someone you love. Now this is a horrible subject, and depressing and sad and disturbing but it brings home something I truly believe in which is what prompted me to make this post...


Always, always, always make sure the ones you love know it.


I make it a point to tell my husband I love him before he leaves for work every morning. I tell him I love him every time he walks out that door, or calls on the phone. Sounds silly, but even after 7 years of marriage I want to be sure he knows just how much I love him. Every time I talk to a family member, I tell them I love them. I have lost enough family members to know I never want them to leave me without them knowing I care.



Such a simple thing to say, yet so many do not say it.

Hi,

The knowledgebase tips and tricks section is almost complete with updates to the milestone 3 update.

There are 5 articles left to change that are turned off at the moment.

Thanks!

Hi,

The docs for the Tips and Tricks section of the knowledgebase are just about complete for the ms3 version with the addition of a few more articles today. These all will be tested in the upcoming days as to accuracy to use for the milestone 3 release. Any that are not compatible will be turned off until they are updated.

A few new articles were added today to the Catalog Area/Boxes area:
http://www.oscommerce.info/kb/osCommerce/Catalog_Area/Boxes

and to the Catalog Area/ Design and Layout sections:
http://www.oscommerce.info/kb/osCommerce/C...sign_and_Layout

The new pdf download for the ms2.2 is available online:
http://www.oscommerce.com/solutions/downloads

This is a brushed up version of all the wiki docs so is complete. This was the first documentation available for the osCommerce store so this is close to my heart. A lot of information was gathered from the community on how to do and change code in the osCommerce store to give everyone a starting place to learn more about osCommerce.

We are very excited about the ms2.3 upcoming release! The code has changed and a much nicer look in the admin area plus better code throughout the catalog store and more features than ever before.

Thank you osCommerce community for hanging in there with us!

Anyone else in the South US (actually all over the eastern US at this point) as sick of the storms and rain as I am? It seems like day after day for weeks now there has been nothing but hot and humid days with tropical storms, hurricanes and thunder storms thrown in... With nothing but the same (well no hurricanes so far but I am keeping my figers crossed) in the forcast for atleast a week.

It is so frustrating. Between having to shut down my computer because the storms are really bad, and not having electricity it seems I have no time to do the things I want to, like helping on the forums, answering the tons of email questions I get... or help with the Live Shops area, which is what I am going to go do as soon as I finish writing this. We are finally between storms which means I have a little bit of time to help out.

I had about 2 hours online time yesterday and spent that updating my site Home and Garden by adding a cool Amazon.com affiliate thing I stumbled across while trying to answer a question someone had emailed me about. I need about a weeks worth of clear skys to be able to catch up on all of the stuff I need to do though.

Someone send me some sun please!

Hi Hi =)

I have been so busy lately I have had hardly any time to post, or help answer questions or add Live Shops. Being busy is a good thing, but oh man.... never enough hours in the day I guess.

Funny thing is when you have nothing to do, nothing comes your way. When you have a full "To Do" list, seems like everyone wants something from you. I have been helping a couple of people with websites. One I am really proud of, not only because I think it looks cool (which it does) but because the guy is really nice and he got royally screwed by someone he had hired to do his site (found him on a reputable site too... what a shame) and I was able to help him out. Makes me feel really good inside to be able to help people expecially such a nice one like he is. If you like perfumes, oils, bath gels and so on you should check out the site. Fragrant Body Oilz. He sent me a bunch of stuff and it all smells wonderful. My house smells great now... and so do I. Gotta love it.

So finished his site, and one other... hoping to have another done by this weekend. Then maybe, just maybe I will have time for myself. lol Crossing my fingers. I am trying to set aside about an hour a day to help enter the Live Shops which is a huge list of sites but avoisin and Modom have been staying right on top of things and working on them hard.

Everyone on the team is working very hard and I hate feeling like a slacker. This week is just a really hard one on me. My husband is out of the state working and I am what I would guess you could call handicapped (just waiting for dang ssi to say so too) and have to take care of the house and the dogs on top of trying to help people... in between bouts with migraines, pain and the summer weather in the south with the storms that pop up out of nowhere so I have to shut off the computer even if I am feeling ok and it makes me crazy grrrr Ok, deep breathe. Needless to say I can't wait until he is back so he can do the things I can't/really shouldn't be doing and I can get back to doing the things I can and I enjoy when I am feeling up to doing them.

Wow, my first rant. Hope it was kind of mellow and not too bad. I hate ranting and complaining... rambling on, now that is something I am good at. Guess it is kind of the same thing.

Hope ya'all have a great 4th if you are in the states and a great weekend if not.

Hi All!

We now have a new tree menu in the knowledgebase!
KnowledgeBase

Please refresh your page when you get there if needed.

This new layout makes it so easy to see where you are while reading the articles and I want to thank Harald for the tremendous work he continues to do!

THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!

I hope everyone finds this more effective and as always we appreciate your feedback.