Author: Joe

Zencart reCAPTCHA Contribution Mod

Zen-Cart

One of the few options to try and combat SPAM on your zencart install, is to try and implement a CAPTCHA text/image on your contact us page. I recently updated a contribution I  created several months ago. This reCAPTCHA contribution will add configuration fields to the database for your api key and password, color theme selection, and enable/disable feature on contact us form.  The original contribution had used native mysql queries, so I have updated the contribution to support zencart’s $db:Factory object. Continue reading Zencart reCAPTCHA Contribution Mod

Zencart + UPS XML Dimensional Support

Zen-Cart

One task I have put off from switching from osCommerce to ZenCart shopping cart platform, was updating the UPS XML contribution.  For those familiar with the shopping cart system, you know by default they only support standard UPS shipping. The cart figures shipping all the items together in one box. However, some products can’t be shipped together, and distorts shipping quotes for UPS. The solution that evolved in osCommerce was using UPS shipping API to get detailed freight quotes.
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Setup WAMP and SVN Subversion on Windows

Say you work on a desktop and a laptop computer, and you synchronize your laptop. Edit some files, save, and upload. Everything is fine. Now you get home or back in the office, sit down at the desktop, and forget to synchronize. You edit the files some more, upload, and save. Uh-oh, now you lost the changes you made on your laptop. You’ll have to get a copy off the laptop, and find all the changes you made. Ever done this? Version Control makes this scenario so much easier to resolve.
Update (2010-09-29): I’ve recently moved onto using mercurial for any new projects. Please let me know if you have any issues with the newer SVN server installers. I haven’t had a chance to update mine to the latest version. However, this tutorial should still work.
Continue reading Setup WAMP and SVN Subversion on Windows

Zencart Related Products

Zen-Cart
Zen-Cart
Zen-cart is an excellent open source ecommerce shopping cart system. One of the features I like about Zen-cart is that once you understand the templating structure, writing plugins becomes pretty easy.

One of the features I enjoyed using with osCommerce, was a plugin for creating a related products box below a displayed. The plugin was easily implemented, and used an extra field add to the database. That was a great asset, that I felt missed using. Zen-cart offers something very similar in its port of XSell (Cross Sell). This feature would work fine if you are adding a few products at time, and do not have many related products. However, in my case, I have about 4,000 items in my catalog. The products are mostly lighting fixtures, which for must companies have coordinating fixtures for each room. This would be a bit cumbersome to create all of the related items. This is why I decided to write a quick plugin to get this simple functionality back. Continue reading Zencart Related Products

Thunderbird 3 Search Not Working

Mozilla recently had Thunderbird 3 Release Candidate 2 available for download. I was Thunderbird3interested in trying out the new version. I upgraded my XP machine from version 2 to the Release Candidate version. Upgrade completed successfully. I opened up Thunderbird, and all of my emails were imported fine after the upgrade, and the program proceeded to index all of my emails.

I thought I would test out some the new features being touted in the new release. To my frustration, the new search feature would never complete. I would start typing in a search phrase, and then click on one of the terms suggested to me by sqlite. Thundbird opened a new tabbed, and the interface just showed my search criteria at the top with a dialog in the middle reading “Searching…”. The first couple of tries, I thought there was no matching criteria because Thunderbird’s search seemed to never complete. Continue reading Thunderbird 3 Search Not Working

jQuery Uploadify 2 + CodeIgniter

uploadify-logoCreating useful upload forms having become very popular on the web these days. Many people have found that flash based options create a more rich user experience. I was working on a project recently to allow a user to upload images to a CodeIgniter application. I enjoy using jQuery, and found an excellent flash based uploader in Uploadify. Continue reading jQuery Uploadify 2 + CodeIgniter

CodeIgniter Shopping Cart Library

CodeIgniter is a great PHP framework to work with. One of the items several CodeIgniter Logodevelopers have been asking to be included in the next CodeIgniter release, is a core library for a shopping cart. The library is being added for CI version 1.7.2, and is currently available via SVN on the CodeIgniter website.

UPDATE 09/12/2009: The shopping cart library has now been released as part of the Code Igniter stable release version 1.7.2. You can dowload it at CodeIgniter.com

Continue reading CodeIgniter Shopping Cart Library

Open Flash Chart 2 + CodeIgniter

Many of you maybe familiar with the CodeIgniter (CI) PHP framework. I was asked by a client recently about creating a graph for some data in a report. CodeIgniter LogoLooking through several charting libraries at the CI website, I found a few options listed in the wiki. Open Flash Chart 2 (OFC) seemed like a nice option and was also open source. There was a couple libraries written for CI using Open Flash Chart, but the recent code for OFC has recently changed. Continue reading Open Flash Chart 2 + CodeIgniter

Zen Cart Easy Populate

Zen-Cart

I recently was switching a online store from using osCommerce to Zen-Cart, and realized how nice it is to have the Easy Populate add-on. For those not familiar with the Easy Populate add-on, this allows you to download the product data from your online store into a CSV file. You can open the file in Excel or OpenOffice Calc, edit the spreadsheet (ie. products, quantities, and other attributes), and the re-upload the file. Easy Populate will update your online inventory with the data in the spreadsheet. The one caveat with Easy Populate has been adding custom fields to the export/import data. This has been discussed in the Zen-Cart Forum, but I wanted a better solution than always having to edit the code.

Continue reading Zen Cart Easy Populate