One of the most common X-Cart tweaks I am asked to develop for the order management section, is to provide colour labelling for the order statuses.
So have have put together a download module packaged and ready to use in xcart 4.4.x and above.
Click here to be taken through to the download page.
Also Checkout our other X-Cart modules here.
This gallery contains 3 photos.
After 3 years since their last redesign Dave Friston of Zone1 Creative has redesigned the beadazzle.co.uk site. The site is built in Digi shop and the zone creative developers re-themed the site but kept the underlying Digi shop code. Tell … Continue reading
We have just put live a number of deals for Beadazzle.co.uk customers this christmas. When customers checkout they will be given different free Pandora gifts depending on how much they spend. This campaign is accompanied with a newsletter and facebook promotion too to ensure all current customers are aware of the deals this christmas.
Why is Amazon so popular? Is it that they have a slick interface, clean information about what you want to buy, simple shipping methods and charges?
Look at a product page on Amazon and you might as well as throw the design handbook out of the window. I might as well as get Dave trained in how to make a badly structured 1980′s website. Continue reading
Just received 10 Google Adwords vouchers from Google this morning. Anyone Zone1ers interested in trying Adwords for the first time.
The vouchers expire at the end of teh year and involve setting up an acount with £25 and google will top it up to £100.
On the site www.cainefashion.co.uk site the Mens category page contains 170 images totalling 1.9mb. The full page including html and javascript totalled 2.2mb.
The recent site redesign gives the customer the benefit of large thumbnails but this in turn increased the full page site by 700K. Especially were the page has so many images. To help improve the performance you can include pagination but the site owner really did not want to have this feature, as the click through rate for next page was very low. Continue reading
We have just completed integration of the f-commerce module from X-Cart which allows Facebook users to browse your products in from X-Cart in Facebook. They can also add to basket and stay in Facebook. When they are ready to purchase they will be sent through to the X-Cart checkout to complete the order.
Checkout the application working live for Beadazzle Boutique. Live Site | Facebook Site
The new f-commerce product tab in facebook
Dave has been working hard over the last couple of months getting Caine Fashions new site design implemented in X-Cart.
New functionality includes homepage slideshow, animated menu’s, New site look and foooter, RSS feed from social networks showing in footer, Larger thumbnail images, new pop up dialogues for size guides and delivery information.
Here are the before and afters:
Here is a tutorial on how to show an RSS feed on your X-Cart Homepage without javascript. This allows google to see that your homepage is showing updated content regularly.
1. firstly you will need to download the latest version of SimplePie from the simple pie website. http://simplepie.org/downloads/
2. In your X-Cart directory create a folder called ‘simplepie’ inside the modules folder. ie, /modules/simplepie
3. Upload simplepie.inc and LICENSE.txt from the simplepie archive to /modules/simplepie
4. Create a folder called cache inside /modules/simplepie and give this file 755 or 777 file permissions.
5. Edit the file /modules/simplepie/simplepie.inc and find
1 2 3 4 5 6 | /** * @var string Cache location (relative to executing script) * @see SimplePie::set_cache_location() * @access private */ var $cache_location = './cache'; |
change this to
1 2 3 4 5 6 | /** * @var string Cache location (relative to executing script) * @see SimplePie::set_cache_location() * @access private */ var $cache_location = './modules/simplepie/cache'; |
6. Now create a new folder called rss in the modules folder ie, /modules/rss
7. Create a file called rss.php and enter the following information.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 | <?php if (!defined('XCART_SESSION_START')) { header("Location: ../../"); die("Access denied"); } include_once($xcart_dir . '/modules/simplepie/simplepie.inc'); $feed = new SimplePie(); $feed->set_feed_url("http://www.zone1creative.co.uk/blog/feed"); $feed->enable_cache(true); $feed->init(); $i = 0; foreach ($feed->get_items() as $item) { $rssitem['title'] = $item->get_title(); $rssitem['url'] = $item->get_permalink(); $rssitem['description'] = = $item->get_description(); $rss[] = $rssitem; //set value to how many feed items to show if(++$i > 4) break; } $smarty->assign_by_ref('rss', $rss); ?> |
Change the line http://www.zone1creative.co.uk/blog/feed to your rss url.
Upload this file to /modules/rss
8. Download and edit /home.php
Find
1 2 3 | if (!empty($active_modules['Gift_Registry'])) { include $xcart_dir . '/modules/Gift_Registry/customer_events.php'; } |
and add below it
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 | if (!empty($active_modules['Gift_Registry'])) { include $xcart_dir . '/modules/Gift_Registry/customer_events.php'; } if ($cat == 0) { include $xcart_dir . '/modules/rss/rss.php'; } |
Upload the file again.
9. We now need to edit the smarty template file /skin/{your skin folder}/customer/main/welcome.tpl
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 |
We have just put live the site upgrade to Ackerman Music based in East Sussex, UK. The site runs on X-Cart 4.2 and includes a new mega menu navigation menu along side live branch availability for individual products.
With 30K plus products on this store, this site is by far the largest store we have seen on X-Cart.
