Emerging technology news and featured online achievements within the marketing, development and creative community.
WP e-Commerce 3.7.6.9 made its appearance earlier today including a raft of fixes aligning WP e-Commerce closer with WordPress best practices and stability improvements.
If the version number (3.7.6.9) is any indication this release also marks the end of an era as the 3.8 series prepares to kick off including standards-based integration with WordPress for custom Post types, the WordPress image gallery system as well as Post Categories and Terms taxonomy.
I’ll be using this format for future WP e-Commerce Plugin updates as well as a wrap-up of changes in my own Plugin releases. Without a doubt the crown of highlights in 3.7.6.9 goes to stability fixes within the Checkout process, e-Commerce Tracking comes close behind in my own priorities.
Fixes that have gone into 3.7.6.9 are also being applied to WP e-Commerce 3.8.
A modest list of additions in this release as development priorities are obviously flowing into 3.8 and stemming off its use of custom Post types; get ready to say goodbye to wp_wpsc_products.
Minor update for Facebook Like Button with the ‘definitive’ way to correctly detect the Product details page, also in this release is support for positioning within the template through the Store > Upgrades > Facebook Like Button admin page and a template tag for manual placement.
Time to get my head around variations for Product Importer Deluxe and custom payment gateways for Offline Credit Card Processing. Check out the updated Gold Cart, Presentation and Payment Gateway pages on the GetShopped.org website.
This minor update to Related Products renames ‘Disregard Related Products for this product’ to ‘Use automatic selection of Related Products’ and adds per-product basis for ‘Disregard Related Products for this product’.
As discussed on the Support Forum I’ve renamed ‘Disregard Related Products for this product’ to ‘Use automatic selection of Related Products’. In doing this I’ve added ‘Disregard Related Products for this product’ which works as intended, disabling all Related Products functionality for that Product.
I’ve finally cracked the ‘best’ way to detect the Product details page, this support will move forward in WP e-Commerce 3.8.
Full recursive category support (that means Fruit>Apple>Red Delicious>Premium) as well as product tags (Tag A|Tag B|Tag C) are among the updates that have made it into the 2.4 release of Product Importer Deluxe.
Below is an overview of changes from the last update post (2.2) for Product Importer Deluxe.
Just so you know, 2.3 was a silent update including changes to Product Categories Importer; I’m looking to integrate this into Product Importer Deluxe removing the need for a separate WordPress Plugin.
With the critical features for Product Importer Deluxe cooked in I’m now focusing on variation support and the migration to support WP e-Commerce 3.8.
Thanks to tremere from XDA for making the Sony Ericsson X1 a ‘usable’ phone for the first time in it’s life! The latest builds have included support for mobile internet access but without APN details you’re high and dry.
Below are working APN details for Telecom XT in New Zealand. I gleaned these working details off a soon to be released Motorola build running Eclair (2.1).
Instead of making individual posts for each Plugin that’s been updated today I’m collating it here; some very cool features detailed for Add to Wishlist.
Plugins that have been updated today include:
Related Products, Add to Wishlist, Facebook Like Button and Facebook Share all got a dose for better detection of the Product details page within WP e-Commerce when Permalinks are turned off.
Add to Wishlist
Add to Wishlist got a major overhaul with a fresh Admin page to manage Plugin options including the e-mail subject and template for sending your personalised wishlist to others.
You can now control the position of the ‘Add to wishlist’ button within the Product details page through standard WP e-Commerce hooks as well as manually through a template tag; just be careful not to nest a form within a form, before I forgot, you can also send a unique wishlist URL to others to view your wislist as guests and set the quantity of each wishlist item; may be removed/adjusted in future releases.
Special thanks go to Hungry Dog Media for making this update to Add to Wishlist possible.
I’ve been laying low last few days learning about the depths of WP e-Commerce to integrate my Plugins even better, take a look at what I’ve come up with in 1.6!
You can now manually assign related Products to each Product using a simple check box selection system, no more custom Product meta! I’ll be embedding this customisation across all of my Plugins as I continue to learn more and more through my experience with the Instinct team. Oh, and I’ve also filtered out the Product being displayed also showing up in the Related Products list!
Give it a go, read the Product detail page for Related Products or for existing customers download the latest release today.
I’ve put a few tips together for Telecom NZ – my new broadband provider – on how to maintain a strong, trusted and respected relationship with customers.
This post was originally titled, ‘Telecom NZ: How not to be a dick in 3 easy steps’, I’ve since ‘toned’ this post down in order to resolve the issue amicably through support and corporate channels.
The core of my issue is to go about enabling front-line support staff within Telecom to remove the speed restriction imposed on fixed-line broadband plans that have usage caps, this process currently takes up to 48 hours which is unacceptable as an on-demand service. As it stands now I have a crippled internet service which leaves me feeling punished for going over my allocated limit with no means of ‘topping’ up my account nor Telecom support staff able to lift this restriction. Is this the fostering of customer relations that is encouraged by Telecom?
I understand the need and purpose of fixed-usage broadband plans to limit the costs of data usage passed onto customers and that data has a real ‘cost’ within the industry but without the means to pay for additional usage or lift this restriction I am at a loss of why this feature has not already been implemented as part of the core roll-out of capping internet speeds.
If you could raise this issue to the respective person within your department I would be very appreciative, I understand that this will have no effect on my case but I can clearly see this benefiting other Telecom customers. [...] I’ll be raising this issue with the Telecommuncation Dispute Resolution group for consideration.
Credit must be given where it’s due, call 123 and say ‘complaint’ followed by ‘broadband’ if you need any form of intervention from front-line support staff, they are awesome!
Speed limiting
‘Usage capping’ is an industry standard in Australia and New Zealand to reduce broadband costs passed onto customers, here’s the best way to go about speed limiting.
If you like maintaining a strong relationship with customers…
If you want to be appear incompetent…
Plans
Fixed price internet plans allow customers to pay for usage up to their allowed data usage, if a customer goes over the allowed data usage in any billing month the remaining period of that month has reduced Internet speeds.
If you like maintaining a trusted relationship with customers…
If you want to come off as a car salesman…
Internet
If you like maintaining a respected relationship with customers…
If you want to destroy your relationship with customers…
The migration from custom Page Templates is almost done – only Wholesale Pricing and Bulk Product Manager remain – so I’ve embarked on my next mission, adding configurable Admin page under Store > Upgrades, Related Products and Printable Invoices are the first Plugins in this series!
The positioning of the Related Products element within the Product detail template (single_product.php) can now be managed from a drop-down option within Store > Upgrades > Related Products. I’ve added support for manual positioning through the template tag wpsc_the_related_products(); make sure you set the Position to Manual if you plan to manually place the Related Products element. I’m in the process of going through and updating documentation to explain how to manually specify related products as well as other goodies for this Plugin. Check out the Product details page for Related Products.
Quantity on Hand got a serious upgrade this weekend becoming Store Reports bringing additional reports and detailed monthly and all-time live reporting functionality to WP e-Commerce.
Quantity on Hand was a standard Count Sheet report that reported stock levels in WP e-Commerce, this is now only a small part of a much larger and comprehensive Plugin, Store Reports includes the following report templates:
Each report can be filtered by month as well as all-time. The three reports above are included in the initial release with additional reports planned for inclusion shortly release, these include:
Existing Quantity on Hand customers shouldn’t fear, their Session ID will allow them to download Store Reports straight away! Check out the Product details page for Store Reports.
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