blog

Armegeddon Fitness uses SilverCart

Tue, 07 May 2013 10:49:19 +0200

Some months ago, Tamara Burnside from 2 A Tee approached us with some questions she had while working on a client project with SilverStripe and our ecommerce module SilverCart. Not long after, the project Armageddon fitness went live. Tamara did a great job customizing the SilverCart design. I particularly love the grungy look and feel of the website. I bribed asked her to write a few sentences about the project, the client and her experiences with SilverCart:

About Armageddon fitness

Armageddon fitness is the brain child of Richard Callender, a personal trainer to the stars and has worked on countless number of TV programmes including The Biggest Loser. The website started out as a Silverstripe CMS website with information, galleries and and profiles. The Armageddon fitness programme has grown and grown over the last few years and the website has developed with it. We wanted to add a shop to the site so that customers could buy branded clothing, event tickets and trainers could book themselves onto the armageddon course. I hadn't been too impressed with a few of the Silverstripe shop modules until i came across Silvercart. I found it easy to bolt on and configure to just how i wanted it. I would recommend to anyone as its been a joy to work with and has delivered on every level. Thank you Silvercart team!!

About 2 A Tee - tamara@2-a-tee.co.uk

I have 15 years experience in the design industry, i started out as a graphic designer and moved into digital design 10 years ago, I have great pride in the work i produce and love seeing a project through from design to build. I take on small to medium projects and have expertise in all areas of digital design - flash animation / banner design / web design and development / SEO / JQuery.

Drop me a line if you have used SilverCart in a project and also want to share your experience on silvercart.org.

SilverCart 1.3.7 ready for downlad

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 10:41:26 +0200

We have released SilverCart 1.3.7. It comes with some great enhancements. In this release, we put a lot of work into the API (SilvercartRestfulServer) to support OscWare. Even though there is still some work to do, we already support the interface to export orders to Lexware.

There are also some usabililty enhancements and of course a bunch of bugfixes.

Revision until: 2345

MINOR-ENHANCEMENT:

Removed delimiter from SilvercartProductCsvBulkLoader, so the standard comma gets used for imports.
Removed SilvercartMetrics and dashboard fields and templates.
Changed submitButtonToolTip of SilvercartIncrementPositionQuantityForm and SilvercartDecrementPositionQuantityForm.
Enhanced add-address handling in checkout step 2.
SilvercartRestfulServer gained support for Members, Groups, SilvercartPaymentMethod and SilvercartShippingMethod.
Finished documentation for Restful API and blacklisted some Group fields.
Added check for api call before adding blacklist fields for SilvercartRestfulServer.
Added a custom action doSearch for SilvercartQuickSearchForm.

ENHANCEMENT:

Updated i18n file ru_RU.php.
A products EAN is searchable in frontend now.
Skip behavior of shipping and payment step is configurable in backend now.
Enhanced add to cart function.
A hint is displayed on a add-to-cart-form when the product is already in cart.
The quantity can be directly set on a products add-to-cart-form.
SilvercartCachePrimer can now handle multiple locales to prime cache for.
Added posibility to choose whether to display the shipping fees maximum weight in kilogram or gram.
SilvercartRestfulServer works for SilvercartOrder, SilvercartOrderPosition and Member classes now.
Added documentation.

BUGFIX:

SilvercartProductCsvBulkLoader could crash when SilvercartProductMirrorGroupIDs contained an empty value.
AddToCart actions on product detail pages redirect to the detail page now.
SilvercartActionHandler passes all post-request params to SilvercartShoppingCart::addProduct now (important for variants).
Edit address works again.
Product variant fields work on search results page now.
Group views respect the settings 'Default product list view' and 'Allow only default view' in SilvercartProductGroupPage correctly now.
Fixed average time calculation for a thread.
Page of product group page will be restored after adding a product to cart.
Fixed inheritance of DefaultGroupHolderView and UseOnlyDefaultGroupHolderView from SilvercartProductGroupHolder.
Added condition to check whether the method getCacheRelevantFields exists on a DataObject or not before calling it.
Fixed order position duplication error when using SumModification based on the productValue for a payment method.

MINOR-BUGFIX:

SilvercartActionHandler::addToCart handles get requests for productID and -Quantity again.
Fixed a minor i18n issue.
Fixed CSS class name of a SilvercartTextAutoCompleteField (and its inherited classes) when using its SmallFieldHolder.
Editing of addresses works for business and non-business adresses as well now.
Fixed groupview inheritance behaviour if no default ist set.
Fixed call to a not existing property in shipping fees page template.
Shopping cart positions related to a product will be deleted when the product is deleted or deactivated.
Added method 'OriginalLink' to SilvercartProductGroupPage_Controller.
SilvercartRestfulServer doesn't throw notices anymore in CLI context.

MINOR:

Added some css rules.
Fixed some doc typo.
SilvercartRestfulServer Provide possibility to login in via basic auth.
Return correct error code if no api access is given.
Added possibility to add blacklist fields to SilvercartRestfulServer.
Reduced cache dir level to 1.

Happy Easter with SilverCart 1.3.6

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 14:06:36 +0100

Just in time for easter: SilverCart 1.3.6 is done. We recommend all users of SilverCart to upgrade to the current version.

Here is the list of enhancements and bugfixes (valid until Revision 2251)

ENHANCEMENT:

SilvercartCarrier, -ShippingFee and -ShippingMethod gained a priority field for sorting purposes.
SilvercartTask is now able to handle threads (one task can open many threads to run in background now). Added general tmp folder handling.
Enhanced image upload routine in image admin, product context, widget context and payment context.
Customer groups can now be added to a product export.
Added dot notated callback support for SilvercartProductExporter.
Disabled caching in dev mode (set lifetime to 1 second).
Added task to prime the cache of URLs listed in sitemap.xml by simply calling them.
Added documentation in markdown format.
Added special DB property 'LastEditedForCache' to SilvercartDataObject to use for cache keys.
Added cache relevant fields to SilvercartProduct and SilvercartProductLanguage.
Added possibility to extend the csv export in product admin.
Added possibility to add HTML before a products detail data by using updateBeforeProductHtmlInjections in a products decorator.
Added possibility to add HTML after a products detail data by using updateAfterProductHtmlInjections in a products decorator.
Business addresses can now be used on anonymous checkout.

BUGFIX:

Check if getRegisteredCustomHtmlForms exists on current controller.
Replaced method_exists check with hasMethod in SilvercartShoppingCartPosition.
SilvercartShippingMethod::getAllowedShippingFeesFor() works in any user context now (including extensions).
Fixed crash of SilvercartProductExport task in case of no active exportes.
Modified SilvercartProduct::canView() to return always false if a product is not active and the current environment is not in backend (important to prevent inactive products to be displayed in sitemap.xml).
If a product detail view is called on SilvercartSearchResultsPage, there will be a redirect to 404 error page.
Slidorion widget image relations won't be deleted when a widgetset will be saved.
Loadingmask for widgets gets hidden after load reliably now.

MINOR-BUGFIX:

In SilvercartSubNavigationWidget show child pages only when ShowInMenus is set.
Fixed field label of SilvercartImage ImageUploadField.
SilvercartCheckoutFormStep2Anonymous extends SilvercartAddressForm now instead of SilvercartAddressFormStep.
LanguageSelector contains links for search engines now.
Added check for ErrorPage_Controller in SilvercartPage->init() when deleting checkout session data.
Added workaround to JS of SilvercartTextAutoCompleteField and SilvercartHasManyTextAutoCompleteField to prevent a potential jQuery based JS error.

MINOR:

Some minor css corrections for /Security/login.
Removed SilvercartCustomHtmlFormAdmin (outsourced to CustomHtmlForm module).
Some minor enhancements/fixes in SilvercartLeftAndMain.
Added list-style-type disc to a product LongDescriptions ul.
Added SilvercartRestfulServer. Made SilvercartOrder accessible via API.
Removed CMS field for LastEditedForCache.

MINOR-ENHANCEMENT:

Removed RequirementsEngine call for CustomHtmlForm's jquery.js.
Refactored checkout step forms to work with the current CustomHtmlForm.
Added possibility to add positions to the cart and order that are included in the total price.
SilvercartRestfulServer works now.
Added page 'revocation instruction' with SilvercartUpdate.
Changed link on checkout confirmation page.
Added handler for none default CustomHtmlForm actions.
Added central addToCart action for add-to-cart forms.
Some minor code enhancements of SilvercartHasManyTextAutoCompleteField.
A product-add-cart-form will now be registered automatically if not done before calling SilvercartProduct::productAddCartForm().
Added SilvercartBridgeTextAutoCompleteField to handle bridged many_many relations in backend.

You can get your copy of SilverCart 1.3.6 in our download section

We wish you lots of success with SilverCart and happy easter!

SilverCart 1.3.5 released

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 14:06:36 +0100

SilverCart 1.3.5 is our first release for 2013. We recommend all users of SilverCart to upgrade to the current version.

Without further ado, here is the list of enhancements and bugfixes:

ENHANCEMENT:

Added possibility to add HTML output to Page.ss via SilvercartPage_Controller::injectHtmlCode.
Added UserAgent blacklist configuration. MINOR-ENHANCEMENT Removed Apache Solr parts.
Added hook to update a products related tax object by decorator (updateSilvercartTax).
Added possibility to add Google Conversion Tracking Code to SiteConfig. Google Conversion Tracking Code will be added to the order confirmation pages output.
Addad JS side event listener to detect a tab change in browser.
Changed relation from SilvercartPaymentMethod from to SilvercartHandlingCost from has_one to has_many and allow SilvercartZones for SilvercartHandlingCosts.
Added possibility to set country dependant handling costs for a payment method.
Added mechanism to check for a software update of the SilverCart core.

MINOR-ENHANCEMENT:

Added silent mode property to SilvercartTask.
Added logging to SilvercartTask default error and info handling.
If silent mode is active, errors and infos will no more be printed to output.
Outsorced form registration for productGroupPage views into own method that can be overwritten by decorators.
Added SilvercartMoney class.
Added method getProtocol to SilvercartPage.
Removed JsValidationScrolling from checkout forms.
Added method to get a raw map of a DataObject (SilvercartDataObject::toRawMap(), accessible on any DataObject).

MINOR:

Moved cms field for SilvercartPaymentMethod::isActive onto the top of the input form.

BUGFIX:

DateRangePicker in SilvercartOrderAdmin works correctly now.
SilvercartLanguageDropdownField javascript works correctly now.
Fixed required attribute filter in SilvercartProductGroupPage::ActiveSilvercartProducts() to support all required attributes instead of price only.
Product links in a non default locale context are supporting the context of mirrored product group breadcrumbs now.
Slidorion widget will stop animation when switching tabs in browser now.
SilvercartPaymentMethod::setShippingAddressByCheckoutData() checks for Packstation now.
In some cases the controller for SilvercartShoppingCartPosition forms would not be correct. Introduced BackLinkPageID for those forms.
Fixed CanView permission check of SilvercartOrder
Fixed escaped view of addresses with special chars in checkout.
Fixed check for existing email when editing the member profile data.

MINOR-BUGFIX:

Company and TaxIdNumber will now be displayed in backend order details
Added missing sapphire JS i18n entry for TABLEFIELD.DELETECONFIRMMESSAGE . Prompt for deletions of a DataObject got a german translation

On time for christmas: SilverCart 1.3.4

Thu, 20 Dec 2012 09:55:07 +0100

I can‘t belive it‘s christmas next week. 2012 flew by, literally. Each of us was working hard to further improve SilverCart and to keep up with the client work.

We started the year with SilverCart 1.3 and the full multilingial support. Roland did a great job refactoring, so we could release this important milestone in July. You can revisit all the features and improvements of SilverCart 1.3 here in the blog post.

In September, we shipped SilverCart 1.3.1 which focused on the widget system and functionality of the backend (i.e. admin panel).

In October, SilverCart 1.3.2 was due. We packed so many features into this release, it could undoubtedly have been labelled 1.4. Most important improvement was the enhanced order management with the quick data access. Our clients love the widget system, it‘s a very powerful tool and we refined that as well.

SilverCart 1.3.3 came out November. The main focus was performance. We improved the caching mechanisms a lot and also gained some milliseconds by tweaking some functions. But we also developed new features, such as the definable quantity units. 4.75 meters of cloth anyone?

SilverCart 1.3.4 will be the final release for this year. We identified some more performance issues, added config options for the cache, added new widgets...well, just check out the detailed list:

ENHANCEMENTS:

Database performance enhancements.
Performance enhancement of cart and positions.
Enhanced template caching.
SilvercartProductGroupNavigationWidget gained possibility to expand only the active branch.
Added customisable addCartFormNames to SilvercartProduct.
Forms in widgets on product detail view pages get handled correctly now.
Added cache to product group pages getProducts.
Added number of products in a product group to 'SilvercartProduktGroupPageSelectorsForm'.
Disabled jumping when clicking on a SilvercartProductPage tab.
SilvercartAvailabilityStatus gained a field for additional information.
ExtraCssClasses can be used with content view widgets now. SilvercartProductGroupItemsWidget gained new field ExtraCssClasses.
Added new widget SilvercartPageList.
Countries can be set as prioritive now; prioiritive countries will be displayed at the top of dropdown lists when using SilvercartCountry::getPrioritiveDropdownMap() as dropdown source;
Added ModelAdmin for CustomHtmlFormConfiguration; Added new tag "$getCustomHtmlFormSpecialFields" to all forms;
Added WidgetCacheKey to SilvercartPageList.
Pimped SIlvercartSubNavigationWidget: Added transable title, added option to show sibling pages, performance enhancements.
Added page injection to SilvercartTools::getPageHierarchy()
Added SilvercartContentParser
Added method SetRadioSizeMax to SilvercartImageDecorator.
Added plugin hook to add additional product data to add to a product list
SilvercartDataObjectSet provides a function to reset a DataObjectSets item indexes ($dataObjectSet->resetItemIndexes())
Results of SilvercartManyManyComplexTableField can now be limited to the controllers related objects by calling SilvercartManyManyComplexTableField::limitToRelatedObjects();
SilvercartProductGroupPage_Controller::getInjectedProducts() provides exclusion parameter now.
Made ProductNumberShop extendable via plugin provider for SilvercartShoppingCartPosition

BUGFIXES:

Fixed malfunction of AddCartForms in widgets on non product group pages.
Fixed potential PHP warnings when checking for quantity in SilvercartShoppingCartPosition.
SIlvercartProductGroupChildProductsWidget lazy loading adjustments.
SilvercartSubNavigationWidget uses OriginalLink instead of Link now.
Added custom cache key for every checkout step to prevent malfunctional caching.
SilvercartShoppingCartPosition forms get registered correctly in SilvercartShoppingCart now.
LanguageForm is excluded from caching now.
ProductQuestion from ProductDetailPage works again.
SilvercartProductGroupPageSelectorsForm provides a cachekey for number of products and sort parameters now.
SilvercartSearchResultsPage shows correct number of results now.
Expanded CacheKeyExtension for SilvercartCheckoutFormStep2.
SilvercartCheckoutFormStepPaymentError directs to checkout form step 3 instead of 2 now.
Fixed cachekey for SilvercartProductGroupPage.
SilvercartSubNavigationWidget calculates child page levels correctly now.
FillInRequestValues of SilvercartContactForm will be called properly now.
Shopping cart will not process its frontend constructor operations in backend anymore.
Exclude SilvercartCheckoutFormStep5 from caching.
Added workaround to prevent server errors when using search queries with more opening brackets in it than closing brackets. This problem results in a sapphire bug in SQLQery.
Minor i18n corrections of SilvercartProductGroupHolder CMS fields.

The updated API-doc is also available at api.silvercart.org.

You can download SilverCart 1.3.4 or get yourself a hosted demo up and running in a few minutes.

Where there is light, there is shadow. Not everything turned out to be as planned. Our original idea to migrate to SilverStripe 3 could not be made true. It‘s strange, because SilverCart grew so vastly, there is no way to migrate to SilverStripe 3 in a few months. And given the fact that we have quite some customers asking for featues and improvements for their exisiting SilverCart installations right now, each day we implement new features in SilverCart is a day missing to build SilverCart 2 - which in turn now takes one day longer to build. Considering that SilverStripe 3 is also evolving (Version 3.1 beta has just shipped) it‘s perfectly ok for us to catch up later in 2013.

We‘ll all take a break from Monday, december 24th until January 2nd, so we won‘t be around much longer this year. Forum and mail support will be restricted, but we‘ll take a wee peek every now and then.

We wish you all a merry christmas and a happy new year 2013.

SilverCart 1.3.3 is available for download

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 15:30:34 +0100

The latest SilverCart Version 1.3.3 is done and available for download. We recommend to update to this version, since it comes with important bugfixes and also some enhancements you don't want to miss.

Since we are heavily involved in projects for our clients, there are a lot of contributions flowing back to SilverCart. Most likely we'll publish another update in december. Work on SilverCart 2 for SilverStripe 3 has stalled a bit, since Roland is busy with some - at least for us - essential pull requests for SilverStripe core and the rest of us is involved in projects. We're already working with SilverStripe 3 (3 published CMS projects so far, including the completely revamped german website for SilverCart) and thus gaining important insights each day.

If you have used SilverCart before, are using it right now or plan to use it: please let us know about your experience with our shopsoftware. If you are live already with a project, we'd love to feature it in a showcase.

Without further ado, here is the changelog for SilverCart 1.3.3

ENHANCEMENT:

Increased performance of SIlverCart by adding cache options for product lists
Increased performance of SilverCart by optimizing some product and product group specific methods
Quantity units can have a definable number of decimal places now (suitable for adding e.g. 4,5 meters of cloth to the shopping cart)
A tax rate can now be set as default; the default tax rate will be presetted for all relevant backend creationforms
Added basic decorator to decorate all DataObjects
Implemented basic system to provide a DataObject quick preview summary to display in a model admin
Added admin quick preview for SilvercartOrder
Order positions can now be edited in the backend
Added hook to update the search results pages list filters by decorator
Removed fields from SilvercartImage. Fixed fieldLables for SilvercartImage.
Added method to get all valid shipping fees dependant on a product, country and customer group
Added new widget 'SilvercartProductGroupChildProductsWidget'.
Added methods for plugin providers for SilvercartOrder.

BUGFIX:

Default backend menucodes are in the right i18n context when switching to a non-default cms languagenow
Fixed i18n issues with DateRangePicker and Batch Actions
SilvercartProductGroupManufacturersWidget doesn't show up in product detail views anymore.
Fixed initial javascript validation for anonymous checkout shipping address when PACKSTATION is active
Anonymous user gets now logged out if he triggers a changepassword action
EditProfileForm checks if a changed email address already exists, moved callback toSilvercartFormValidation class
Fixed email validation in customer data forms
Fixed malfunction of payment method default records when using a non default locale
CacheKey where clause specified for 'SilvercartProductGroupChildProductsWidget'.
Country info is displayed on address cards in checkout now.
Shipment checkout steps shows delivery country info now.
Description texts for payments may contain HTML code now.

MINOR:

Limited max height of autocomplete field sources to 200px (scrollable);
Tiny code cleanups
Added i18n dependant data format to i18n files
Removed autoscrolling from SilvercartSearchWidgetForm
Added a field label to SilvercartOrder
Some minor backend css changes
Fixed fieldLables for SilvercartImage.
A user who changes his password gets now redirected to MyAccountHolder Page after submit
A user gets now redirected to the address overview page if he deletes a address
Adjusted some german translations
Added CacheKey to 'SilvercartProductGroupChildProductsWidget'.
Added class variable to widgets to determine if the widget divs should be rendered.
Added setter for ProductsPerPageOptions in SilvercartConfig with option to include all products
Shipment checkout steps shows delivery country info now.
Description texts for payments may contain HTML code now.
Disabled SecurityID for SilvercartQuickSearchForm to prevent malfunction when session timed out
Some minor polishing

You can download it in our download section or use our hosted demo to have your own webshop installation up and running in minutes.

SilverCart 1.3.2 is published

Thu, 25 Oct 2012 15:27:45 +0200

It's that time of the year again. While it's getting cold outside we were busy working on SilverCart 1.3.2 in our comfortable office.

You can download SilverCart 1.3.2 in our download section or you can try our hosted demo and have your webshop up and running in no time.

Enhancements

if there is only one shipping method in the checkout, the shipping method will be predefined and the checkout step will be skipped (same for payment methods)
added possibility to update ChargesAndDiscountsForTotal of payment method by decorator
added hooks to update an orders and / or the carts TaxTotal; Shipping / payment step will not be displayed in step navigation if there is only one available
added possibility to extend the editable shopping carts table by plugin; enhanced plugin handling for DataObjectSet return values
added possibility to update a products short and long description; added casting to get MSR price nice for table list fields;
ForgotPasswordEmail is now editable in the backend
orders can now be filtered by street, streetnumber, postcode and city
prepared table list field batch options css for context form fields
added some additional accessors for TaxableAmountWithoutFees and TaxableAmountWithFees
added possibility to provide quick access data to use in a editable table list field; added quick access data for orders
major enhancement of search result relevance
enhanced view of an editables table list fields quick access data
massive enhancement of the product search results relevance
Added ability to switch to a strict search relevance via silvercart config and show only exact search matches
added basic mechanism to inject custom model admin sidebar form (implemented for SilvercartOrder)
shipping address will now be injected into SilvercartShippingMethod::getAllowedShippingMethods() in checkout
added list of additional email recipients to SilvercartShopEmails summary fields
errors can be shown consistently in checkout now.
Checkout session data gets cleared now on non-checkout pages.
default email recipients can now be configured in the backend; default admin email will now only be used as fall back
restructured breadcrumbs methods with ability to get them as DataObjectSet for use in controls;
Added possibility to register WidgetSet containers instead of hardcoded WidgetSetContent and WidgetSetSidebar containers.
WidgetSet handling for productgroup pages adjusted to new flexible system.
Added support for packstation address data
added method to get all active countries
order address are editable in the backend now
added status IsSeen to SilvercartOrder to detect whether an order already has been opened in the backend or not
added SilvercartExactMatchBooleanMultiFilter to be able to filter orders with multiple order status and different boolean indicators (show orders with status a, b and c or show orders without status d, e and f)
added order log history to view data and time of an status changes
added shopping cart methods to get amounts dependent of the members price type (external handling is not needed anymore)
Widgets get sorted inside widget sets for WidgetAreas, not inside the WidgetArea itself.
A shipping fee can have an individual free of shipping cost from value; free shipping can now be disabled for an individual shipping fee
SubnavigationWidget gained ability to display configurable hierarchy.
Added SilvercartProductGroupManufacturesWidget.
ProductGroupHolder allows to define standard list views now.

Bugfixes

fixed payment step when only one payment method is available
fixed potential negative order tax amount when an orders total value is 0
fixed shopping carts total amount for some potential negative cases
plugin provider for a products cart form can now handle multiple plugins
fixed total count of orders displayed in SilvercartEditableTableListField by adding the sourceClass ID as disrinct count column
added some javascript code to prevent malfunction of slidorian widget
removed deprecated quick search field javascript which caused some strange behavior (for some cases)
added getField() methods to all dataobjects which can be manipulated by a customer to prevent multiple escaping;
widget sets are relatable to product groups again
removed products dataobject sort mechanism (sort order is executed in database now)#
fixed possibility of non initialized variable in SilvercartProduct.php
replaced deprecated SilvercartProduct:: with SilvercartProduct:: call; Added conditon to only recalculate an order if there is already a related one when saving an order position
extended shopping cart constructor will not be called in an isolated environment anymore
the invoice and shipping addresses country will now be injected by using the correct relation name SilvercartCountry
SilvercartCheckoutStep3 is now hidden in step list if there is only 1 allowed shipping method
fillInRequestValues gets called on register custome form now;
fixed malfunction of widget set relation out of the backend
InsertWidgetArea doesn't crash on Security pages anymore.
Modified javascript validation of anonymous addresses in the checkout
fixed OrderPositionIsLimit filter for orders with charges or discounts
fixed error when trying to limit an order search result without results
fixed javascript address form initialization; MINOR: changed updateFormFields extension call in SilvercartCheckoutFormStep2Anonymous
SilvercartImage on BeforeDelete checks for valid related Image now, so that no exception is thrown anymore.
Fixed packstation handling
order status batch works again
SilvercartProductGroupPage → isFilteredByManufacturer() could crash when saving the page in the CMS.
Auto loading of a model admins results table will now be automatically prevented if an edit or add form is directly called by url

Minor changes

added some i18n values
added casting to get an address full name; added hooks to decorate an orders shipping and invoice address summary
some minor php doc charset changes
removed irrelevant SPGMSO sort for products
added some icons
added default order status new and canceled
some minor css changes to display import specs
checkout step titles are now displayed correctly
added possibility to disable the decorator update mechanism of SilvercartOrder::getShippingAddressSummary() and SilvercartOrder::getInvoiceAddressSummary(); some minor backend css additions
added OrderNumber and CustomersEmail to direct accessible template vars for order status emails
added second condition to determine whether to shop the shipping method step inside the checkout step navigation
changed submit button title of SilvercartCheckoutFormStep2Anonymous
added packstation fields to order the backend
added ability to change the title of a subnavigation widget via backend uses fieldlabel as fallback;
added CacheKey for SubNavigation widget.
Added check for title attribute to SilvercartProductGroupManufacturesWidget template.

Enhanced order management in SilverCart 1.3.2

Basic filter, print action and status "Unseen"

Batch Actions

Enhanced Date Picker

Order Quick Access

SilverCart 1.3.1 is published

Tue, 25 Sep 2012 15:16:32 +0200

There are quite some features and additions to our new version of SilverCart which you officially might not know about yet - unless you have directly accessed our Mercurial repository at BitBucket.

Now is the time to officially share some information about our latest release of SilverCart 1.3.1 and all the new features and enhancements it brings. Thanks to your great feedback, we could get rid of many bugs to make SilverCart a much smoother experience to use. We're always open for bug reports or suggestions for improvements to make SilverCart even better with every new release.

You can donwload SilverCart 1.3.1 in our download section or you can try our hosted demo and have your webshop up an running in no time.

Enhancements

Added possibility to define the description field for shoppingcart positions.
sort order of SilvercartOrderStatus adjusted to multilingual feature
Added display option for product description in shopping cart.
existing widget sets get appended to a translated page if the whole site tree gets translated
Silvercart has now its own forget password email template
SilvercartPagination uses Pagination method from dataobjectset which can be configured via SilvercartConfig
GroupView template can now be set by template call
added posibility to get a members purchased products and check whether a product was already purchased
search cloud widget can now be used as a content widget
added method to get a text a display how many products on how many pages are found in a product group
inherited WidgetSetSidebar and WidgetSetContent will now be loaded at the right time (after potential actions are called) and with the right method (when the real ManyManyComponents are loaded) => BUGFIXES
added a customer admin to provide enhanced customer filters and exports

Bugfixes

Address tabs get displayed again for SilvercartOrder
sort order of SilvercartOrderStatus adjusted to multilingual feature
SilvercartProduct::getTaxAmount has fallback for getting the default pricetype id no logged in user is present.
SilvercartProuctGroupPage::getProducts fetches products for the current locale only
Remove not working filter in SilvercartProductGroupPage getProducts
SilvercartConfig::Check() sent an error message that no country was activated if the activated country did not have a translation in the current locale; bypasssed DataObject:get_one()
added step title for default order confirmation
Sorting of SilvercartProduct can be configured via_config.php now
Search shows only products with live SilvercartProductGroupPage
Missing check for in init method would lead to crash on paping through the product list and adding images to a product.
email sender is now utf8 decoded
search function seperates search terms for long and short description now to get better search results
fixed caching behaviour of Silvercart login widget to get working error messages displayed
fixed salutation fallback
fixed escaping bug for searches
fixed margin of product widget
inherited WidgetSetSidebar and WidgetSetContent will now be loaded at the right time (after potential actions are called) and with the right method (when the real ManyManyComponents are loaded)

Minor changes

Ability to get short and long description without html tags
SilvercartXMLDataFormatter uses line break for every object now.
fixed some translation issues
email sender gets now converted via iconv to be platform independent
added default value 4 for displayedPaginationPages
added update script for new displayedPaginationPages property and changed silvercart update version to 4
outsourced SilvercartProductGroupPage::getFlatChildPagesIDsForPage() into SilvercartTools
Added fulltext indexes for Short- and LoginDescription
added contition to check whether an object is of type SilvercartProduct when trying to add an AddCartForm in a slider widget; added possibility to set a template base name for silder widgets
modified SEO tools
reduced image table of slidorion widget to images without product or payment relation
some minor css additions
some css changes for tag clouds widget
Removed possibility to manage products from the SiteTree. Added link to product admin instead.
Added shortcut to widget set admin in the SiteTree view.

With some new via backend configurable templates SilverCart 1.3.1 is even easier to use now.

By the display of the product groups you have the option to filter your search. With our new optimized usability SilverCart version you automatically avoid many unnecessary mistakes.

Conclusion

All the new features now provided by this SilverCart release make SilverCart more easy and more comfortable to use. SilverCart provides now more configurable templates in the backend. That means you don't need to go right into the code for changing such simple things as e-mail templates.

And one more thing!

No, SilverCart 1.3.1 is not compatible with SilverStripe 3. We are currently working on SilverCart 2, which will be compatible with SilverStripe 3. Because of the amount of changes required, we'll have to publish a whole new version of SilverCart.

We have pretty much work for clients to do and we are also still developing new features for SilverCart 1.3. Since SilverStripe 3 is not as mature as we would like it to have as the foundation for an eCommerce website, we are holding back a bit.

Long story short...maybe we'll release a preview version that is compatible with SilverStripe 3 and features the most basic modules until the end of this year. If things go well, we have a stable version with some core modules in early (think march / april) 2013.

SilverCart version 1.3 is released

Fri, 27 Jul 2012 16:18:00 +0200

A few minutes ago Sebastian tagged SilverCart 1.3! As there are so many new features and enhancements, this took us quiet some time to release. The most important feature is the full multilingual support. Have a look at the facts:

Features

Widget system is overhauled with many new widgets: Slidorion, image slider, search query cloud, product group navigation
Redesign of the admin panel which is more muser friendly now
Full multilingual support
Added dutch translation (community contribution)
Print options in front and backend that create a PDF file
Batch actions for products (eg print)
Added a page type that displays a simple site map
Dropdown field to change frontend language
Added cli controller to execute updates with sake
Added page type to display active payment methods
Widgets can be assigned to products
Relations can be made easily with an autocomplete field using any attribute (eg assigning products to a product group )
SilverCart extendable with new group views ( three column, four colum )
Print button for product detail view
Meta data is filled automatically when no values are set
Russian translation
Added behat/mink testing framework (seperate module)
SEO tab on SiteConfig (possibility to add google analytics, google webmaster and piwik tracking code)
Basic integration for SocialMedia Links in SiteConfig

Enhancements

New class SilvercartTools that provides many static functions for common tasks
A shipping method can now be configured to be customer group dependant
Added post pricing attribute to shipping fees to declare a shipping fees pricing as manually set after order
Pricetype is now editable on a customer group
Added cms actions to create translation templates for any language for every page of the SiteTree by one click
Added cms action to publish all pages of a SiteTree in a specific translations context by one click
Added possibility to set css extra classes for all widgets
Added action to mark/unmark all visible entries of a backend table
SearchResultsPage extends ProductGroupPage now to provide consistent behavior of template rendering and prevending redundant code
Better performance in frontend and backend
Default layout is improved and more compact
CMS field IdentifierCode is only available for admins
Product groups can be configured to show no products
First shipping method is now preselected in checkout
Product group content will only be displayed on first page now
Added link to lost password page
A payment method can now be restricted to shipping methods
Any number of countries may be defined to be free of shipping costs
non administrative members can now be added to an administrative group by an admin
Added SilvercartFileIFrameField to get a more configurable file upload field
Price amount of a shipping fee is now extendable by decorator
Added canonical link meta tag to mirrored product views
Added editable table list field to execute batch actions onto a selection set out of the fields entries (order status change, print html, print pdf, export dhl easylog, ...)
Added task to export dataobjects as XML
Added SilvercartDownloadPageHolder and DownloadPage to Display multiple downloads in frontend
Widgets can be sorted by drag&drop
Added parameter to use short filenames for sake controlled XML export

Bugfixes

Meta info now gets displayed correctly
Fixed missing address accessor mehtods in SilvercartOrderDetailPage_Controller
Fixed broken search function in product detail page, order detail page and address detail page
Less clicks needed to append a file or an image to a product
Reorderd last checkout step to meet new german law requirements
Fixed tax calculation of an orders shipping fee
Fixed payment methods displayed on payment methods page for anonymous customers
Prevented sending emty emails in SilvercartShopEmail
Fixed product import routine
Removed all HTMLText fields from widgets because they do not save their values correctly
Fixed fatal crash when the system tries to delete a cart position related to an already deleted product

Corefixes (change to SilverStripe)

Added possibility to overwrite restrictFields of CMS fields params by decorator. DataObject.php has to be modified to do that hg push! This is needed to provide a working ModelAdmin for Member when handling with many Customer/Address/ShoppingCart objects

This version of SilverCart is the best we ever had and we use it in almost all of our projects. It is also a result of community feedback. We are happy that our SilverCart community is constantly growing.

New Modules for SilverCart

We have some new modules that are compatible with SilverCart 1.3 only. Get them via our BitBucket repositories.

Customer Ratings

This module allows to add a customer rating to a product.

Groupview modules

The modules groupview fourtile and groupview threetile expand the product presentation options selectable by the user. Defaultly we had tile and list view.

Megamenu

With many product groups a horizontal navigation will come to its limits. The megamenu module brings an interactive menu powered by javascript.

Haendlerbund

This module provides an interface to the german Händlerbund, which is a federation for legal affairs for online resellers.

Protectedshops

Protectedshops provides third part ratings and a trust certificate for your shop.

Cross selling

A new widget for products and product groups that shows cross selling products. These may be defined manually or automatically based on your sale statistics.

Latest products

Provides a widget that displays a configurable number of new products.

Vouchers

This module allows to add voucher rebates (absolute and relative) to SilverCart.

PDF invoice

Automatically creates PDF invoices for orders.

COD

Payment method for cash on delivery.

Product attributes

Provides attributes for products and a widget to filter by attributes on product group pages.

Baseprice

Provides base price calculation for products. This is necessary due to EU laws.

Graduated prices

This module brings rabates depending on customer groups and product quantity.

Product variants

This module allows to add product variants to your SilverCart installation.

Freight groups

This module lets you define freight / cargo groups to restrict shipping methods to defined groups. A freight grooup can be related with a product, so you can define a product to be shipped by forwarding independant of it's weight or dimensions.

These modules bring many new features to SilverCart and are available free of charge. Feel free to donate some pizza or cool drinks, others have done it before you ;)

Saving mouse klicks

Mon, 16 Jul 2012 16:46:46 +0200

SilverStripe2 has some inconveniences when it comes to backend usibility. If an object has a relation to a file or an image you have to save the object first before you can append a file. This took the user some extra klicks.

SilverCart 1.3 has this problem solved with a simple trick. If a user presses the „add“ button to append a new file or image to a product the object gets saved in the background. If the user leaves the popup field without saving the object gets deleted to prevent empty entires in the table. Sounds easy but it took Sebastian and me some time to figure out where to do this. Have a look at the code:

public function getCMSFieldsForContext($params = null) {
        /* @var $request SS_HTTPRequest */
        $request = Controller::curr()->getRequest();
        if ($this->ID == 0 &&
            $request->param('Action') == 'add') {
            $this->write();
            $editURL = str_replace('/add', '/item/' . $this->ID . '/edit', $request->getURL());
            Director::redirect($editURL);
        }
        $fields = parent::getCMSFields($params);
        return $fields;
    }

The method belongs to the class SilvercartImage. If the CMS fields for an image are instanciated two conditions get checked before the image gets written. First the ID must be „0“ which is the case if the object has not been written yet. Second the request action must be „add“. We want to save only if the user pressed the „add“ button.

Now the second part which is implemented in SilvercartProductAdmin:

public function init() {
        $request = $this->getRequest();
        $postVars = $request->postVars();
        if (array_key_exists('update', $postVars)) {
            $productID = $postVars['update'];
            $currentProduct = DataObject::get_by_id('SilvercartProduct', $productID);
            if ($currentProduct->SilvercartFiles()) {
                foreach ($currentProduct->SilvercartFiles() as $file) {
                    if ($file->isEmptyObject()) {
                        $file->delete();
                    }
                }
            }
            if ($currentProduct->SilvercartImages()) {
                foreach ($currentProduct->SilvercartImages() as $image) {
                    if ($image->isEmptyObject()) {
                        $image->delete();
                    }
                }
            }
        }
        
        parent::init();
        $this->extend('updateInit');
    }

Leaving the window without saving leads to a controller action and the right column in the product admin controller will be reloaded. The request has an action „update“ in this usecase. The classes SilvercartImage and SilvercartFile have a method isEmptyObject() that returns true if there is no file appended and no attributes are set. In this case the current object will be deleted.

More news about SilverCart 1.3

Mon, 28 May 2012 21:07:16 +0200

Some weeks ago I moved to a new house with my family. All the work regarding the relocation kept me so busy that there was no time left for SilverCart. Though I still read the mercurial commit messages I was really surprised when Sascha showed me all the changes on friday. I will try now to recall them for you to give you a taste of 1.3.

The backends top navigation has completely changed for more overview and intuitive user interaction. There are only 5 list items left. If you hover them you get to a second level navigation. Before we had 10 and more list items depending on which modules were installed.
There is less work for you in the prices tab because you do not have to enter the currency any more. Instead the system currency is shown configured in the general configurations. Sebastian created a SilvercartMoney class for that.
The product detail view in the backend has only first level tabs. Sascha and Sebastian ordered the input fields in columns which is not possible with SilverStripe scaffolding behavior. This is also a performance improvement.
We do not use the DataObject manager module any more. There were too many JS script problems because we offer many non standard AJAX functionallity in the backend like autoloading of DataObjects. Furthermore, there is one requirement less for the installation. I think with SilverStripe 3.0 the dataobjectmanager will be obsolete anyways.
SilverCart is 100% multilingual now. Any language dependant product attribute can be added in many languages. We have a multilingual shop project and work with much effort on this frequently asked feature.

Download the tip of SilverCart to get a taste of the new system. We are looking forward to your feedback.

We are almost done: SilverCart 1.3

Wed, 23 May 2012 20:44:32 +0200

As you might know, we started working on SilverCart 1.3 in January. Some weeks ago, we were done with the features and started with testing and quality assurance. We also opened a thread in the forum to gather invaluable information from community members for the beta version.

Since we have already updated several older e-commerce projects to SilverCart 1.3 and also have some new SilverStripe + SilverCart webshop projects we are working on right now, we are very confident that SilverCart 1.3 will be the best SilverCart ever.

Especially the all new support for multilanguage webshop installations required a major rewrite of large parts of the SilverCart core and all of the modules. Oh, and of course the product variations, and...

We can't wait to officially release SilverCart 1.3, the ecommerce module for SilverStripe. Stay tuned!

Download section renewed

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 22:50:13 +0100

As I was in the office last week Sebastian showed me the new download section he was working on. With some mouse clicks you can customize yourself a download package with SilverCart and depending modules. You do not have to worry any longer how to rename module directories or where to put them because the package just has to be copied to your server or working directory. In the past, many problems were caused by wrong directories or missing modules or wrong module versions. Today I learned by browsing silvercart.org that this feature is online for a better user experience. Under all the project workload in the office Sebastian still finds the time to think about such problems and finding a solution for them.

Sascha is in the same situation regarding the work duties, but he still found the time to reorganize the documentation. We tried to realize the docu section with SilverStripe, but the result we came up with did not satisfy us. It would have taken us two to three days to build a documentation module for SilverStripe but we decided rather to concentrate our development efforts on SilverCart. DokuWiki is a good and establised tool which SilverStripe itself used for its documentation. It has some disadvantages like the markup, which is very buggy on mobile devices, but it has a nice UI making documenting fun. This is very important as developers hate writing documentation ;)

What I wanted to say: Sebastian, Sascha, you guys rock! *slime*

New documentation online

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 14:04:33 +0100

Today we published our new documentation under "doc.silvercart.org", providing a much better experience for users and developers in search for information on SilverCart.

We used the DokuWiki wiki system which provides some neat features for writing documentation out of the box. It took us about two days to migrate the existing documentation from Silverstripe to DokuWiki and adjust the wiki frontend to our needs. And that's part of the answer to the inevitable question why we don't continue to use Silverstripe as technical base for the documentation.

Why don't we continue to use Silverstripe for documentation?

Truth is we don't have the resources for building all the missing features for Silverstripe as a documentation platform at the moment. Our feeling is that we should use our time for writing the documentation, not building the technical base for doing so :)

Alas we hope that with the easier reading, searching and editing abilities the documentation for SilverCart will continue to grow and benefit you - our users and developers.

We are working on SilverCart 1.3

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 08:57:00 +0100

With the announcement of SilverStripe 3 and the first preview versions, we found ourselves trapped in a deadlock. We knew that we had to modify the administration area to enable new features, but have been hesitating to do so and trying to stall for time. Since the architecture of the admin area in SilverStripe 3 is subject to heavy modification, we were afraid we will have to do it all over again once SilverStripe 3 is out.

Reality catches up

It took us a while to realize that SilverStripe 3 is still work in progress and that SilverCart has grown much more than we initially expected since the announcement of SilverStripe 3. Taking this into account, porting SilverCart to SilverStripe 3 will take longer than we expected back then when we had our first tests with the SilverStripe 3 alpha in June 2011. As you hopefully may have noticed, SilverCart has grown vastly in the last 8 months.

Additionally, we will be faced with clients using SilverStripe 2 for quite some time even after SilverStripe 3 is released. Not everybody can update right on the spot, and not everybody will. Remember PHP4?

This is why we have delayed some very important refactoring and redesigning tasks - until now.

Working on it

Some weeks ago we have started to work on SilverCart 1.3. Features that are confirmed to make it into SilverCart 1.3 are:

improved support for multilanguage online stores
improved and streamlined administration area
product variations (this feature is already productive for our client Schuhfabrik Walber: walber-schuhe.de)

While there are some more features in the queue, we are not sure which ones will make it into the next release of our OpenSource eCommerce Software. Stay tuned for updates on that matter.

Timeline

We try to have the features for SilverCart 1.3 complete by the end of February 2012. Right after that, we will start the quality assurance phase. A public beta should be available in march.

SilverCart GroupViews explained

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 10:10:55 +0100

GroupViews are a very powerful concept in SilverCart. By optimizing how a bunch of product groups or products are displayed, you can greatly affect the conversion rate of your online store. A higher conversion rate means more turnover and more turnover means more profit. This is why you should take the time to master SilverCart GroupViews.

There is also a great article by elasticpath which covers list view vs. tile view in detail.

Depending on your procucts and your target group it might even help to create a spealized group view, for example a mixture between tile + list. Let's say you want to highlight special products in the group view, so you decide to have a 3 column tile for all products costing less than 100USD and products above that price should be presented each in a single row mixed into the tiles. (To prove your theory you should of course run an A/B-test, which will be covered in a future blog post).

Sebastian has wrote a tutorial in the documentation section that covers the topic of group views thoroughly. In this tutorial, you will learn how to create a module that adds a new group view to SilverCart. Don't worry, it won't hurt and all the files needed are included in the tutorial as well.

SilverStripe vs. WordPress

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 07:24:23 +0100

Disclaimer: This post is in no way meant to feed a flamewar. Even though I am obviously biased when it comes to SilverStripe, the german version of this very site - silvercart.de - was powered by WordPress with a commercial template for almost 10 months. There were valid reasons for this decision and I would do it again without hesitating.

SilverStripe vs. WordPress

Yesterday there have been some lively tweets about SilverStripe vs. other CMS (Joomla, Drupal and WordPress). While I have not worked with Joomla and Drupal so far, I do have first hand experience with WordPress. I could not resist the temptation and so I tweeted

C'mon, this CMS flamewar is Kindergarten: #SilverStripe is Lego Technic, #Wordpress is Lego Duplo. You can build castles with both :)

It wasn't until being under the shower this morning when I realised that this comparison could be interpreted in an unintended and misleading way.

I do not think that Lego Technic is superior to Lego Duplo in any way. Both have their own purpose - they are highly optimized, streamlined and spezialized toys, coming from the same brand. Being a father of two kids, I am familiar with both, Technic and Duplo. You can build wonderful castles with both of them, but still they are different. (For those of you not familiar with Kids and/or Lego: use google)

What I love about WordPress

I just love the fact that you can have a professional looking site up and running in minutes and start pumping content right away. There are lots of useful modules and a gazillion professionally designed templates that you can get by squeezing out a few bucks from your - hopefully not maxed - credit card. There are even tons of great free templates available if your are building the site just for the sake of content.

The shortcodes are so amazing that I find myself tempted to put them on the SilverCart roadmap. The WordPress blog module comes with categories and everything you can dream of and it beats the SilverStripe blog module big time. There are also some really great SEO modules available.

I don't like the CMS section. Here it becomes obvious that WordPress is a blog that tries to be a CMS. But it does the job.

The admin panel is easy to understand, some details could be solved better but overall I find it quite useful. Server side updates are a different story, though. While I totally love them from a user perspective, the developer inside me thinks about problems with code versioning, inconsistent codebase and complex workflows when deploying from a staging to a live environment. But would you need that deployment process for a garden-variety company website where only the content changes?

I tried to do a little bit of customizing (multilanguage site, anyone?), but the architecture and the code actually scared me away.

And in my opinion this is the central aspect of differentiating WordPress and SilverStripe.

What I love about SilverStripe

SilverStripe has many faces. It is a framework, but also a CMS (even more with the newly developed separation of framework and CMS). But it's also a cathedral with a growing bazaar of modules.

We are software developers, not webdesigners. Our product SilverCart may look like a normal website, but actually it is complex ecommerce software with a web interface. We think UML, IDE and VCS, not backend-template-editing and design wizard. I love the framework part, that lets us customize the software to fit the need of our clients. Nothing beats hammering down a pre-planned class diagram, /dev/build and have almost everything right in place. It really speeds up the development process and we are way more productive than we have been with any other CMS or framework so far. And you bet that we tried one or two of them before building SilverCart (but this is a different story...).

I also love SilverStripe because it does not interfere with our tools and processes. For us it is better to have less configuration in the database and more configuration in files. The template engine makes sense, unfortunately the templates can't have PHP code completion in your IDE.

When Felipe Skroski was interviewed on SSbits, he took the words right out of my mouth:

So in this scenario I think CMS will evolve to hosted solutions like virb.com and squarespace.com or to solid frameworks and UI kits to create the new web applications and that's the beauty of SilverStripe 3 - we call it CMS, some people refer to it as CMF, but it should be called something else like a web app SDK. Regardless of the name it's going to be a full-on development framework with a UI.

But where is light, there also is shadow. Some modules only provide a very basic set of functionality, for example the blog module. There is no way that SilverStripe can compete with WordPress when it comes to blogging functionality. And when you think of blogging as "pumping out significant amounts of content regularly and keeping it structured and masheable" you will understand why WordPress is #1 in the world.

And yes, there are plenty of design templates available for SilverStripe. But let's be honest: most of them suck. You just can't go out and spend a few bucks and receive decent design template in exchange. And this is a valid need today, not everyone needs or can afford a custom made design. Of course this is a chicken-egg problem: as SilverStripe gains steam and popularity, we will see the bazaar grow and more template/module/widget providers will emerge.

Of hammers, nails, screws and the Audi V8

"When you are wielding a hammer, everything looks like a nail."

Now it all boils down to identifying the problem and finding the right solution for it. You know these so called experts who come along with a solution even before they fully understand the actual problem. This is why I say:

"When you are wielding a hammer, either focus on nails and skip the screws or learn to use the right tool for the right job."

You also have to understand that different personas have different needs and therefore a different perspective. There is no "Best CMS", just as there is no "Best Car". You wish you still had your old, rusty pick-up truck when you are trying to bring home that christmas tree in your shiny new Corvette...

One of the cars I owned that impressed me most was the Audi V8. While it was basically a Audi 200 chassis, these crazy Audi engineers somehow managed to squeeze in a massive V8 engine along with almost every available gadget. The result was a totally crammed engine compartment and you literally had to break your hands to get that wrench in place when you had to fix something. As a car mechanic, you would hate this car, because it is difficult to repair and everything takes much longer than it would with other cars. Of course the spare parts are special, too. The prices for the parts and the maintenance costs are sky high. But as a driver, you just love the car because of it's amazing cruising style, or because of the look in your neighbour's eyes when he sees you drive by or because of the image of the brand.

Conclusion

Different personas have different needs. As long as I don't have to pop the hood, I would go with WordPress again. I'd fasten my seatbelts and cruise right away. In any other scenario I would go with SilverStripe. That's because we are a software development shop and we know our needs. Of course, your mileage may vary.

So, when someone asks you the ultimate question about the best CMS, life, the universe and everything - you know the right answer is: 42 it depends.

Product variations: Beta release available upon request

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 19:14:52 +0100

This is for those of you who just can't wait to get your hands on our new module for product variations: upon request we will send you the current beta release.

Just drop us a line with your email adress and Sascha will send you the zipped current version.

It's not quite polished, that means documentation and some bells and whistles are missing, but it works great already. It's also quite complex, so plan some time to explore the possibilities.

Product variations is one of the most - if not the most - comprehensive modules we have written for SilverCart so far.

Installation Screencast for SilverCart 1.2 Published

Sun, 04 Dec 2011 08:33:11 +0100

I just recorded a new screencast showing the installation process of SilverCart 1.2. The good news is: You do not have to touch the source code any more. The installation with the help of a web form which you already know if you ever installed SilverStripe.

&amp;nbsp;

In words the installation process is easy to describe: Download, upload, fill in installation form, done. All this takes you about 7 minutes. Most of the time you have to wait for your the running scripts.

Pease tell me your opinion about the new version of our ecommerce software!

All roads lead to revenue

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 04:35:55 +0100

Yesterday I have been to an online store and I tried to buy something. I put a product into the cart and went to the checkout. I got as far as the login screen. As I realized that that a registration was required I quit. I did not want to register, because I had no confidence that the registration process would be easy.

I am a difficult customer because I have high expectations. I am willing to spend my money but it has to go quick and I want to choose the way how I spend it.

I then realized that our software is so much better than that. You may check out without creating a customer account or log in at the checkout without loosing your cart. You may also register during the checkout process. The customer will never be bothered with a lost cart or a left checkout where some steps have to be repeated. Leave the control to the customers and they will spend their money.

It is even possible to restructure the checkout process completely. A single page checkout? Registration after the checkout? Everything is possible with SilverCart and our flexible checkout process.