A couple new features:

• I've added both Atom and RSS 2.0 feeds for your active last 10 products and last 10 products.


• Added Store Wide and Site Wide feedback


• Updated a couple admin screens to add additional info
• 
  

We are proud to announce another new feature on the CongoCart site -- the simple FAQ, it has the ability to group by category and allows you to put html in the answers.

We have also added the ability to show the feedback on the products or the products that have received feedback.

In addition, we have done a little bit of cleaning up the template editor preview/save check mode so that it recognizes all the valid commands that the real template system does.

Also, ability to assign a discount to a category, and all products in that category the discount is applied too.

I am happy to announce that a new easier to create template conversion system has been installed, not only does it allow you to use any html program you like; but you can also convert several of my competitors templates into CongoCart templates with little or no modifications required to them. (More Info)

As a designer you can create a complete theme and then you or your client can just upload it and it will apply the images, css, js, favicon, and any templates. (If you are a designer and want a FREE store to develop templates on for your clients please let me know).

In addition since the last post we also added:

• the ability to download your theme or templates, upload css & js files.
  
• Ability to set how many characters the short description uses
  
• Ability to choose if you want pull down lists or free form Country fields
  
• Simplified the Template System Menus
  
• Cleaned up a couple templates
  
• Allowed favicon.ico to be uploaded and visible from the site wide images
  
• Selectable Processing & No Processing on Category Images
  

Been a while since I've blogged. Been too busy to blog, but I decided to take a few minutes and post some of the new things...

Lets see if I can remember all the enhancements in the last couple months.

• Several browse/list screens now have sorting on them
  
• A couple new fields showed up on some of the browse screens
  
• The Order Editor screen can be printed, and it prints out order packing lists for end users now!
  
• Template editor now supports backup all, and download all
  
• You can sort your customizations (w/ ability to automatically sort by the alphabet)
  
• You can upload Category images w/o any processing
  
• Several screens where cleaned up to be a bit nicer to look at
  
• Template editor now has a DIFF view, to see what the differences are between your template and the master template
  
• New Store/Congo checklist has been implemented
  
• Country Editor has been implemented
  
• Feedback system has been implemented
  
• Product Rankings has been implemented
  
• Ajaxified several features
  
• Contact us messages are now also stored in the database so you can makes sure you didn't loose any emails.
  
• Stats screens has more stats!
  
• And probably a ton more I'm totally forgetting about!
  

Well, better get back to coding; I have several more things in the fire...

- Nathan

   Wow, this has been a REALLY busy week, as we iron out the all new features. Not only have we added several smaller requested features like Lotteries to both Products and Auctions; add added a new product based discount to the discount system. We still had time to work on several other features that are almost ready to announce.

But the huge announcement today is we now have, as far as I know, one of the first implementations in a cart ever of:

-= PER-Custom option Quantity tracking. =-

What does this means to you?
Well it should allow you much better inventory management, and easier customization of products.

An example; if you sell several designs of t-shirts, you can create the following customizations;

• 10 X-Large
• 20 Large
• 30 Medium
• and 20 Small shirts

as a select list (we support, checkboxes, radio's, free form text and selects). Then you can link this group of options to each of your shirt designs.

   Now, if Milly checks out with a Large T-shirt of Design A, then when Beth goes to checkout Design B she will see only 19 Large shirts in stock. The QTY is tracked on the actual custom option, if you run out of Large Shirts, that option will automatically vanish from customers list. If you run completely out of T-Shirt sizes, then the Product itself will not allow you to add it to your cart (or check it out since it will be considered out of stock)

   The custom options quantity is tracked very carefully to make sure no overselling is possible; just like we have done on the actual products since our initial version of the cart.

   Hows that for a new feature announcement?

Just finished the system wide Time Zone support -- all administration and customer screens should be updated to use the new timezone code. This will allow you to set your time zone and then all dates will be put into your local time. In addition to a per-user time zone, the "site" has a time zone so that those that haven't put in their time zone it can use the sites time zone as default. Second, we have just added the ability to view past items. You can now set the item as "Past Item" instead of disabled and the item will show up in the past items list. The system supports site wide and per-store past items. The Automatic system has been adjusted to add the ability to move the item to become a past item in addition to the other methods it has.

Got the image sorting code done for Auctions, Products, and Galleries. If you see somewhere else you think image sorting needs to be added let me know. ;-) Also added a Countries editor so you can maintain your own countries. Fixed a couple spelling mistakes, and a couple minor glitches in the admin.

Couple new features worth mentioning this week:

• Added a new email that is sent when a person checks out using paypal; it now includes a link to "retry" their payment in case they crash or paypal is having issues.
• Paypal Order timeout email now has the same link.
• Added Robot/Spider automatic detection code; to detect other robots that have not been classified yet and automatically remove the items in their basket and not let them "add" items to the checkout.

We have been busy, busy busy; look what the cooks cooked up today:

• Revolution Money Exchange now will put each stores totals in the email (w/ the store RME address) and on the screen
• Direct Deposit will also now put the stores info in both the email and screen
• We added Request Totals because quite a few clients wanted to manually handle the money -- this means the system takes the order and lets you handle how to get the money.

A couple new things this week:

• We have added support for Revolution Money Exchange to CongoCart; see the forums for details on enabling it for your site.
• Full RME support including supporting and allowing per-store, per-customer, per-site enable/disabling just like all other money types.
• We are now allowing you to set which money types globally you accept or don't.
• Added some code to try and eliminate some paypal errors (that were occurring on Paypals site, not ours!)