NEXT RELEASE

[anupht]

I am very familiar with oscommerce... love the features of oscommerce but not a big fan of php.   I think this product is a great idea and would definitely use it...  Here are some thoughts after testing it for a few hours.....

1. there are  few bugs in the admin section regarding reports....  also, if I use a port different from 8780 the main status report gets a 404 page not found error.

2. I had trouble running program using database name other than oscommerce... even after following instructions in other posts.  Changing to a different database name is not intuitive.

3.  Would love to see a templating system similar to oscommerce where I can change the look/feel/design of website to my own but utilize the underlying db access and methods.

4.  Needs to support other widely used payment processors... i.e. authorize.net, linkpoint, etc.

[john]

Hi,

Thanks for the feedback...  Addressing each comment in turn...

> 1. there are  few bugs in the admin section regarding reports....  also, if I use a port different from 8780 the main status report gets a 404 page not found error.

I do not know of any bugs (except for a problem, on some platforms, connected with locating the database parameters - a solution in a forum post is provided and is completely fixed in the next version). Can you be more specific?  This sounds like a configuration problem.  If you change the port number you have to configure KonaKart to match.   This should all be explained in the reporting FAQ at http://www.konakart.com/reportingfaq.php   The port number should have been set by the installation wizard anyway.  Did you install with the wizard or manually from the zip file?


> 2. I had trouble running program using database name other than oscommerce... even after following instructions in other posts.  Changing to a different database name is not intuitive.

Again this sounds like a configuration error.  With the database connection parameters defined in properties files (one for konakart and one for konakartadmin) it's difficult to make this any simpler.  How would you make it simpler or more intuitive?  Which aspects did you find were unclear - perhaps we can improve the documentation?   Again, the database parameters should all be set automatically in all the right places by the installer.  (In the next release the installation wizard validates your database connection then, optionally, loads the database script ready for running KonaKart so it's a lot easier to get started)


> 3.  Would love to see a templating system similar to oscommerce where I can change the look/feel/design of website to my own but utilize the underlying db access and methods.

Yes, agreed.  We have plans to provide something like this to make it very easy to change the look and feel.   Indeed there are some people out there who have been talking to us about creating such things for KonaKart themselves.

> 4.  Needs to support other widely used payment processors... i.e. authorize.net, linkpoint, etc.

KonaKart has a framework for adding these very easily.   We provide the source for the existing payment modules so they are easy for people to add themselves - and we welcome contributions that we might be able to share with others.   Having said this, we will add various additional payment modules ourselves over time.

Thanks for your interest.   If you have specific questions about the set-up or configuration, please don't hesitate to ask.

BTW...  the next release should be available towards the end of next week.

Regards,

John

[paolo]

> 3.  Would love to see a templating system similar to oscommerce where I can change the look/feel/design of website to my own but utilize the underlying db access and methods.

Our aim is to make KonaKart more easily "skinnable" than it is at the moment. However there are many features that already exist that enable you to change the look and feel without roo much effort:

1) Our application uses Struts and Tiles. Tiles enables you to easily reconfigure the layout of all of the application components that you find within the 3 columns (i.e. Categories tile, manufacturers tile, what's new tile, Bestsellers tile etc.). You can do this by modifying tiles-defs.xml and MainLayout.jsp, to change the number of columns and the positioning of the tiles.

2) By modifying stylesheet.css you can change the actual colors, fonts etc. of the application.

3) The KonaKart application uses the KonaKart API for *all* of its functionality. This means that you can completely redesign the application using whatever technology you see fit. We provide an example of this with the Catalogue Inspector Demo ( http://www.konakart.com/konakart_cat_inspector/main.swf ). The API is very powerful and also exists as a web service. It allows you to seamlessly integrate KonaKart into your current application and we always aim to keep backwards compatibility to make upgrades as painless as possible. At the moment, one of our users is integrating KonaKart into his OpenCMS application using the SOAP web service API. This enables him to use all of the KonaKart functionality whilst retaining the look and feel of the current application.

We'd love to hear how you would like your ideal templating system to work since this is something that we are planning to improve for a future release and all constructive comments are welcome.

Thanks,

Paolo

p.s. Since John mentioned that the next release is coming soon, here are some of the main new features to look out for:

-Support for two additional databases, bringing the total to 5
-One page checkout screen using AJAX technology
-Search engine friendly URLs and other SEO features

[mark]

Tableless Design

One of things I would love is to be able to ditch the three column layout and move to modern tableless design practices. (Actually tableless design via elegant css is many years old now, so it's not that new.)

It is possible to do tableless desing with oscommerce and the sts contribution  but it ain't easy. You basically have to recode all the php boxes.

Tabless desgin has many adavantages: less code therefore better performance, more search engine friendly, once you get the hang of it it is far easier than messing around with tables, much easier to change designs and layouts,  plus lots of other benefits.

Anyway, do that and that would be something.