Posted by SolidShops on March 18, 2011 at 06:18 PM
The bi-weekly deployment process that we started in January this year has proven to be of great value. Not only is it a great way for us to focus only on what really matters, but our customers know that every two weeks we’ll put a new version of our application online. In those new versions we often implement bug fixes, but also new features.
In this version we have implemented the following:
- all shops now have an auto-generated sitemap.xml file for better search engine indexation
- all shops now have a robots.txt file at www.yourstore.com/robots.txt
- payment processing has been re-written from the ground up in a new admin screen
- support for manual bank transfers, cheques and cash on delivery has been added
- support for Ogone, Authorize.net and 2Checkout is underway!
- an Italian version of the checkout process has been added
- solved a bug where the use of single quotes would cause problems when adding variants
- using images from your assets in checkout caused an SSL warning in Internet Explorer, this has been resolved
This was a maintenance release where many other things have been improved behind the scenes. Expect support for more payment providers in the next few releases, as well as various improvements and bug fixes.
Keep sending in your feedback so that we can continuously improve the application and help you build better online stores. Enjoy the update!
Posted by SolidShops on March 04, 2011 at 10:40 AM
In the two weeks after our previous release, we have again received an amazing amount of useful feedback from our users. We use that feedback to plan what features or fixes we should release in every new version of our software that we bring online. Here ‘s what’s new in this release:
New Feature
User Permissions for staff logins
Sometimes you don’t want your clients to see the ‘design’ or ‘settings’ tab in your store. Go to “account”->”Staff Logins” or click here if you are logged in to your store and click on the user you want to set access permissions for. If you don’t grant your users access to some of the tabs, they won’t see the tabs and they won’t be able to access them.
Updates & Fixes
- We now log an activity to your dashboard when somebody edits a product
- We now log an activity to your dashboard when somebody adds a comment to an order
- We now log an activity to your dashboard when a product is out of stock
- You can now filter products by tags using the template language
- A French version of the checkout process is now available
- A bug was fixed in the template editor that would remove ‘+’ signs from source code
- The user image of a client is now shown in your orders if the user has a gravatar
- There was a bug where tags would be cut off after 100 characters, this has been resolved
- We fixed a bug in stock management that allowed people to buy products that were out of stock
- Three extra variables have been added to products in the template language:
1. product.stock: the actual stock level of your product
2. product.trackstock: true/false depending on whether or not you are tracking stock
3. product.alwaysavailable: true/false depending on whether or not users can buy the product when it’s out of stock
Posted by SolidShops on February 18, 2011 at 03:17 PM
Based on the valuable feedback our users have given us, we have implemented the following fixes and new features for this release:
- The sign up process has been simplified.
- It’s now possible to add a quantity field on the product details page.
- Documentation to link your custom domain name has been updated.
- All prices in your store now have two consistent decimals places.
- A Spanish translation has been added to the checkout process options (thanks Faisal).
- An minor issue with shipping rules containing “the rest of the world” has been resolved.
- It is now possible to customize and translate order confirmation emails.
- Designers can now change the look and feel of the checkout process
- A new filter called charlimit() has been added to the template language to limit the number of characters to print. See documentation here for more information and examples.
- Product.weight has been added to the product object in the template language.
- A new filter called weight() has been added to the template language to display product weight in a format of your choice.
- There is a new object called “order” in the template language, that you can use to print our order information in e.g. your confirmation emails. See the documentation for details and code samples.
If you have any feedback or suggestions on how we can make our application even better, please let us know in the comments, on Facebook, or on Twitter and we’ll make sure we pick the best ideas for our next deployment day.
Enjoy the update everyone!
Posted by SolidShops on February 04, 2011 at 06:51 PM
It’s been another two weeks since our last deployment so here we go: new fixes and new features for all our users. The following has been implemented:
- Uploading of favicon.ico is now possible through the assets manager.
- You can now translate your complete checkout process into Dutch.
- Added documentation to the help pages on how to build a search form.
- You can now edit source code of your page and product descriptions.
- A small CSS bug was fixed to correctly mark up odd and even rows in a table.
- When adding shipping rules, your last base unit (weight/price/…) will be remembered.
- Images of your store managers are now shown next to recent actions in the dashboard.
- Swedish Crown is now a supported currency. Contact us if you require more currencies.
- There was a typo in a checkout error message which has been fixed.
- When adding variants, the currency code sometimes didn’t show up. Now it does.
- A new filter has been added to the Solid template language to format your numbers.
Here’s an example on how you can use the new currency filter. We have updated all user templates automatically with this new filter.
That’s it for this release. We focused mostly on bringing translations to the checkout process, as this was the most requested feature up to now. We’ll be working on more localization features for the next release. Let us know if you have any suggestions on how we can make SolidShops an even better platform for building unique online stores.
Thanks for the feedback and support, it’s been an amazing upstart so far, thanks to all of you!
Posted by SolidShops on January 21, 2011 at 11:32 AM
Another two weeks have passed since our previous release. That means it’s time again for another deployment day!
For those who are new around here, our bi-weekly development promise to you means that we will deploy bug fixes, security and performance improvements or new features every two weeks. We call these bi-weekly deployments our “Deployment Days”. Deployments can be small or they can contain larger changes, depending on the feedback our users give us.
This time, the following things have been implemented in version 1.0.5, next to the usual server and infrastructure improvements:
- The SolidShops template language has been tweaked a little to be more consistent
- Documentation has been updated to reflect template language updates
- When you click “full screen” in your code editor, that choice will be remembered
- Links that point to documentation pages or to your store now open in a new window by default
- We now show user pictures next to order follow-up comments
- We now show user pictures and names in your activities log to better manage multiple staff.
- There was a bug in IE8 that would trigger an error when cropping images. This has been fixed.
- The admin interface now uses kilograms consistently as a weight unit.
- Recent tags only showed up after adding two tags. You can now start re-using tags after adding one tag.
If you have any feedback of suggestions on how we can make our application even better, please let us know in the comments, on Facebook, or on Twitter and we’ll make sure we pick the best ideas for our next deployment day.
Enjoy the update everyone!
Posted by SolidShops on January 06, 2011 at 05:12 PM
Hi fellow eCommerce developers! We hope everyone enjoyed the holidays. We sure did but now we are back with our first update of the year.
Following up on our bi-weekly deployment promise, we have just released version 1.0.4 of our hosted eCommerce platform. Based on the great feedback we received from our current user base, we have implemented the following fixes:
- all shops are now running on HTTPS for improved security
- the links in our HTML confirmation emails are now clickable
- if you cancel an order, the order isn’t shown on your dashboard graph anymore
- canceled orders aren’t counted in your statistics anymore
- the “tax settings” screen seemed a bit unclear so we improved the usability there
- it’s now possible to use relative url’s in your CSS files
- some users reported HTTPS warnings on two pages. These warning are now gone.
- a minor CSS bug was fixed to mark up tables correctly
- in Internet Explorer, notifications didn’t show properly. This has been resolved.
- a bug in our signup page caused a warning in internet explorer 7. This has been fixed.
- the “staff logins” page contained a bug where users could enter unlimited users.
Of course, just like always we’ve done our share of work on the server side of the application as well, this time mainly to improve stability and security.
Enjoy the new release everyone and thanks a lot for your amazing feedback, keep it coming please. Thanks to you we are able to improve SolidShops continuously!
We wish all our users a lot of success and especially a lot of eCommerce fun in 2011!
Posted by SolidShops on December 23, 2010 at 10:59 AM
Ok folks, it’s been exactly two weeks since we pushed out our previous update. As you may know by now, we have a development cycle set up where we push out a new version of our application every two weeks.
We call this process our “Deployment Day” and it’s our promise to you that we will push out regular updates and fixes on a bi-weekly basis.
Depending on your feedback, a new version may include bug fixes, performance improvements or feature updates. The following was fixed in version 1.0.3, which is now live for all our users:
- users can now change the clean URL for any product for better SEO results
- users can now change the clean URL for any content page for better SEO results
- full SSL support on the admin side of your store to avoid session hijacking
- a bug where shipping country wasn’t saved correctly has been fixed
- PayPal premier support has been set up so customers can pay without a PayPal account
- the order details screen has been streamlined to show orders in a more convenient way
- although not a bug, a new login screen has been implemented
- a lot of server optimizations have been done that make our app faster and more secure
Enjoy the update everyone and keep your feedback coming!
Posted by SolidShops on December 10, 2010 at 04:12 PM
Time flies dear friends. We launched SolidShops.com less than a month ago and the second update is already here. We have put a policy in place where we will deploy new functionality and bugfixes at least every two weeks.
Just like our first Deployment Day from two weeks ago, we have been working hard on fixing some of the bugs our users pointed out, as well as putting in some improvements to make the application even better.
Here’s the full list:
- Order details now show the clients full country name instead of just the country code
- Order confirmation emails are updated and contain your shop domain for easy access
- A contact page has been added so that anyone can contact us straight from the website
- Pricing plans have been updated. The basic plan can now have 2 staff logins instead of just one
- Some empty documentation pages have been updated. Thanks to Webnology for the request
- Added instructions to the Payment settings page on how to link up a PayPal account
- Fixed a typo on the checkout page
- In this release, a lot of server improvements have been made to more easily manage user backups
Keep sending in great feedback so that we can improve the application to perfection. Enjoy the update!
Posted by SolidShops on November 26, 2010 at 04:57 PM
Since we launched in beta last week, we’ve received a lot of useful feedback from you guys. We plan on bringing a new release online every two weeks. In those bi-weekly releases we will implement bug fixes as well as new features, depending on the feedback we receive.
For this weeks deployment, the following updates have been implemented:
- A bug was fixed in our tax calculation to round with a precision of 2 numbers.
- Fixed a typo in the SolidShops Announcements partial.
- Some users encountered an error saying their theme file already existed, this bug is fixed.
- Show owners now receive a push email whenever a client places a new order in their store.
- The email users receive when creating a new store has been cleaned up a bit.
- Documentation was added on how to link up your own domain name to your SolidShops store.
- The taxes settings screen showed double tax rows. This has been resolved.
- The Twitter Plugin shortened url’s twice instead of once. That bug is fixed.
- Implemented several small security improvements on our servers
Enjoy the goods and keep that feedback coming!
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