osCommerce Tips

If you have read my previous posts about Leapfrog, you will know that I am quite keen on Flex.

Flex is a new programming language by Adobe, developed to convince the world that Flash is not just about cartoons and animation.

It’s aimed at serious developers who want to harness the ubiquitous nature of the Flash Player, installed on over 98% of internet enabled desktops in mature markets (Abobe.com, 2006), and create powerful internet applications with beautiful interfaces.

This article ponders about the idea of creating an osCommerce store in Flex.

Continue reading ‘Musing About Flex and osCommerce - A Step Backwards or Leap Forwards?’

In part one of this three part series, I explained what Subversion is, and why it is useful.

In this part we will setup a small project and then use TortoiseSVN to manage it for us. This will involve making minor changes to a vanilla version of osCommerce 2.2 MS2. We will not be installing or running the store, so there is no need to have a web server or mySQL installed to complete this tutorial.

The examples used have been geared towards osCommerce developers, but will still be useful to others.

Continue reading ‘How Subversion Can Solve Your Development Nightmares – Part 2 of 3′

Imagine this…

You’ve just spent several hours upgrading your client’s store. Everything looks great on your test server, so you push the changes live.

Firing up a browser, you visit the client’s live store to marvel at your work, only to be presented with a series of error messages.

Uh oh.

The store is broken, your client is losing sales, and you’ve got no idea how long it’s going to take to fix. What do you do?

Continue reading ‘How Subversion Can Solve Your Development Nightmares – Part 1 of 3′

This three part series is for osCommerce developers who want to manage and organise the way they work. Using revision control software you can make your life easier and save yourself from potential problems.

• Part 1 - An introduction to Subversion and TortoiseSVN.
• Part 2 - Manage a small project with TortoiseSVN in this walkthrough. Covers creating a repository, importing a project, checking out code, commiting changes and reverting to a previous verison.
• Part 3 - Expand your knowledge by getting to grips with branching, merging and tags.

Whilst working on my Power Pack, I discovered two limitations of the osCommerce install process.

The default osCommerce package comes complete with a SQL file containing all the tables and sample data needed to populate a database. This file can be found at catalog/includes/install/oscommerce.sql.

I wanted to add extra SQL commands that were needed by my contributions into this file, so the installation process would do everthing.

This way anyone installing my osCommerce Power Pack would not need to perform additional tasks having been through the default install process (great for new users who aren’t all that technically savvy).

Having added my commands to the end of oscommerce.sql, I proceeded through the default install process only to find some of my commands were not being executed.

Hmm…

Continue reading ‘2 Caveats To Be Aware of When Creating Your Own osCommerce Package’

The ability to watch what your store visitors are doing is very important.

So much so that I included a user tracking contribution in a recent article. But understanding the ebb and flow of visitors is difficult because the data is always presented in a very dry format. Plus you have to keep refreshing the page to see if anything has happened recently.

I decided that what osCommerce really needed was a dynamic, realtime, funky visitor tracking contribution.

So I built one. Its called Leapfrog and it’s quite addictive to watch!

Download it for your site, have a play and let me know what you think.

Continue reading ‘Leapfrog - A Realtime Visitor Tracking Contribution’

You know you’ve been using osCommerce too long when:

1. You have the osCommerce support forum as your home page
2. You’re thinking chmod 777 when trying to unlock your front door
3. You know how to say ‘Welcome Guest! Would you like to log yourself in?’ in English, German and Spanish
4. Any mention of SSL sends shivers down your spine
5. You have nightmares about padlock symbols
6. You never want to see ‘There’s Something About Mary’ or ‘A Bug’s Life’ every again
7. You can relate to all of the above!

And seven of my favourites from the osCommerce forums:

1. You begin signing your name prefixed with tep_ (by custodian)
2. You feel a sense of urgency when you have difficulty accessing forums.oscommerce.com (by custodian)
3. Your osCommerce store can do more things than eBay, even though you only have 10 things in your entire product listings (by custodian)
4. You download every contribution just in case you might need it one day (by Java Roasters)
5. You refer to your day planner as configure.php and your spouse as application_top (on a good day) (by GraphicsGuy)
6. Your children are “includes” (by GraphicsGuy)
7. You have a dog named footer.php (by GraphicsGuy)

Got some more? Submit your own in the comments section.

What’s the difference between online and offline shoppers?

You can’t see online shoppers. They’re invisible. And if you can’t see them, you can’t answer the following questions:

• Where are they from?
• What keywords are they using to find your site?
• Which products are they looking for?
• Was all that hard earned cash you spent on advertising really worth it?

Google Analytics will answer all these questions and more. It acts as a spotlight that illuminates your visitors by secretly gathering vital information about them. Vital information that you need to make your store a success.

Here’s how to install it on any osCommerce store in just 5 minutes.

Continue reading ‘How to Install Google Analytics in 5 Minutes’

What’s a sure-fire way to improve your osCommerce store and generate more sales?

There are over 3,800 contributions listed on the offical osCommerce site, every single one designed to enhanced your store’s functionality and features. Imagine how much more successful your business could be if you installed only a handful of these.

But you’re busy. You don’t have the time to trawl through and decided which ones are good, and which ones are just plain bad. What you need is a no-nonsense list of must have contributions. Contributions that no savvy store owner would be caught dead without.

So, here are 3 top contributions you really should install if you are serious about selling online and generating more sales.

Continue reading ‘3 Contributions Every osCommerce Store Owner Should Install’

Why are there over 125,000 members on the official osCommerce forum?

Chances are if you’re reading this you want to start selling online. But which software solution should you chose?

Over the years thousands of people have realised that osCommerce is the correct e-commerce solution for them, and successfully make money with their stores.

So here’s all the information you need to decide whether osCommerce is the software that will make your online business dreams a reality.

Continue reading ‘Everything You Ought to Know About osCommerce as an E-Commerce Solution’