X-Cart forums

[PhilJ]

Hi Bullfrog, many thanks for that, some good points.

I'm sure each of your customers have their own reasons for using your templates. Our stores do not use animated features (slide shows, etc) because our customer base is older people and we've gotten feedback that the glitz is a turn-off.

Yes, I quite agree, slider and other eye candy will be optional.

What is most important to me is a smooth, seamless, low confusion checkout that is compatible with X-Payments. I use the Altered Cart add-on OPC package on my 4.4 stores, but could not get it to work right on my 4.5.0 store with X-Payments, so I went back to standard X-cart, which sucks. There is too much emphasis on making an account during checkout. Non-account buyers should be default, not the other way around. The 'agree with terms' checkbox is somehow invisible to some customers who complain about not being able to check out. OPC makes that an option, whereas X-Cart checkout does not. If these issues are beyond your template making, please excuse my rant.

I have been mulling over the best checkout strategy, bearing in mind that the new template needs to be mobile friendly. OPC is tricky to get right for mobiles and can be considered 'overkill' for the average punter. So I may be recommending the fastlane checkout instead (which does support xpayments as of v4.5.5). OPC is the ideal, but I'm not sure QT have got the interface as good as it should be.

This post highlights the problem... http://uxdesign.smashingmagazine.com/2013/03/14/designing-a-better-mobile-checkout-process/

The image area of product pages needs to be proportionately larger. I'm always having to edit templates to make that so. Making it into a simple setting would be a good thing.

This is done in the new template.

You seem to have avoided going to a low-contrast format style. Please do not give into the current style mania of low contrast text, box borders, etc unless you make it easy to change. My sites are for real people, older demographic, not style critics.

Again, I agree on that, I am trying to go for a middle ground on the contrast. Themes can be 'toned down' if you wish by editing the theme CSS.

Your templates have had lots of color scheme choices. Please continue that.

There will be 10 preset colour themes, with a theme and Google font previewer.

I like the cufon font setup. Please keep that.

Cufon won't be used, but Google fonts will (over 600 to choose from and hosted on the Google CDN).

I'm currently waiting for the the 4.5.5 Ability template upgrade. Will the new template be out before that? If so, and it looks good, I make jump to it if I can get another multi-site license. But I really want to start my upgrades asap. The checkout/X-Payments fiasco cost us sales last holiday season, and I want all my sites upgraded this summer.

Ability is compatible with v4.5.5 Gold now, so if you want the files just ask. The new template will be open-source, so you can use on as many stores as you want.

[bullfrog]

I'll send in a request within 24 hrs for the Ability 4.5.5 update. That should help my 4.5.x stores. I'll consider the new template for my 4.4.4 Smart Template stores upgrade. Thanks again.

[elmirage001]

Hi Phil,

While I don't want to leave the Ability template, a template that I've spent an incredible amount of time tweaking... I fully understand where you are coming from. I have a couple of questions and then I've listed the Ability template options I'd like to see in the new template.

1. Can X-Cart Mobile and your new template function together? X-Cart mobile normally decides which template to use. I'm thinking that this could give you the best of both worlds. A responsive template for users that only want one template and a template that can be used along side a mobile template.

2. Will your paid mods such as your Testimonials and Thumbnail Candy work with your new template?

Requested Features To Stay From Ability Template

Theme Option
- Request All Options Stay

Header Options
- Header search box size

Category Menu Options
- Horizontal category menu style --> Tabbed Custom Menu

Homepage Options
- Homepage promotions --> Responsive Image slider

Products Display Options
- Products display --> Smart Columns
- Grid, 3 Rows, option to hide layout toggle button

Product Page Layout
- Request All Options Stay

Footer Options
- Keep scrollable box feature

Addons
- Keep Advanced breadcrumbs
- Accordion style FAQs on contact us page
- Gallery link
- Search by price

Advanced Minicart
- Enable advanced minicart --> Display in menu box
- max height option
- Display thumbnails in minicart

Miscellaneous
- Menu & dialog box sytle
- Enable menu promo boxes

Keep Tooltips
Keep RSS
Lightbox

[big pine kenny]

Phil or anyone know how and where In the Ability templet to put a google button when clicking the checkout button at the top there is no google button. If you click on view cart there is a button. I have put a message in Phil site but no response even offering to pay with no contact from him.

[David-Allan]

Originally Posted by big pine kenny

Phil or anyone know how and where In the Ability templet to put a google button when clicking the checkout button at the top there is no google button. If you click on view cart there is a button. I have put a message in Phil site but no response even offering to pay with no contact from him.

Hi Kenny,

I would like to help if I can but not exactly sure what you mean by a Google button at the top?

Have you tried using web master mode to find the page it references to?

[PhilJ]

Phil or anyone know how and where In the Ability templet to put a google button when clicking the checkout button at the top there is no google button. If you click on view cart there is a button.

Ensure this code exists in skin/ability/customer/content.tpl

{if $main ne "cart" and $main ne "checkout" and $main ne "order_message"}
        {if $gcheckout_enabled}
          {include file="modules/Google_Checkout/gcheckout_top_button.tpl"}
        {/if}
        {if $amazon_enabled}
          {include file="modules/Amazon_Checkout/amazon_top_button.tpl"}
        {/if}
      {/if}

[Readerm]

Hello Phil,

I appreciate you're still in business. We sent you over a week ago a support ticket requesting files for the 3 mods we purchased from you for www.istok.net. We were supposed to switch to a newly bought Platinum version last week, but were unable to do this, because we didn't get from you any response. We want to reinstall these mods on the new platform ourselves. If you recall, at the time we bought them, we paid you for installation and, thus, we do not have the installation files. The 3 mods in question are X-Cart Customer Testimonials Displayer & Manager v4.x, Watermarked Images and Smart Comments v4.x. We understand that only Watermarked Images may need an upgrade to 4.5.x. We'd be happy to pay the upgrade fee.
Please find a minute in your busy schedule to handle this customer request.

[PhilJ]

Hi Phil,
While I don't want to leave the Ability template, a template that I've spent an incredible amount of time tweaking... I fully understand where you are coming from. I have a couple of questions and then I've listed the Ability template options I'd like to see in the new template.

1. Can X-Cart Mobile and your new template function together? X-Cart mobile normally decides which template to use. I'm thinking that this could give you the best of both worlds. A responsive template for users that only want one template and a template that can be used along side a mobile template.

Yes, there's no reason why not, but you will have a better 'non-mobile', yet responsive, site framework to work with. Ability and Adapt was a huge learning curve for me and the new template should be a vast improvement.

2. Will your paid mods such as your Testimonials and Thumbnail Candy work with your new template?

I will eventually release a testimonials mod for the new template and give it away free. A free thumbnail promo mod may also be released at a later date, but not a priority.

[jrsvsp]

Originally Posted by kevbentz

I've edited the code and the error went away...

code should read:

$cart_categories1 = func_query("select categoryid, category from  $sql_tbl[categories] where categoryid in ('".$cat_list."') order by  category");

I am also getting the 1064 error from ability_minicart_content.php. However when I try and edit the php file to make the correction that kevenbentz identified it looks like it is encrypted so I can't edit it to manually correct the syntax......

I am on version 1.03 of Ability - don't particular want to have to re-install the whole thing if I can help it.

Any ideas how I should proceed ?

Error message

[22-Mar-2013 18:29:49] (shop: 22-Mar-2013 18:29:41) SQL error:
Site : http://svsponline.co.uk
....
SQL query : select categoryid, category from xcart_categories where categoryid in () order by category
Error code : 1064
Description : You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near ') order by category' at line 1
Request URI: /login.php
Backtrace:
/home/svsponli/public_html/include/func/func.db.php:303
/home/svsponli/public_html/include/func/func.db.php:203
/home/svsponli/public_html/include/func/func.db.php:483
/home/svsponli/public_html/ability_minicart_content.php(1) : eval()'d code(1) : eval()'d code(1) : eval()'d code:21
/home/svsponli/public_html/ability_minicart_content.php(1) : eval()'d code(1) : eval()'d code:1
/home/svsponli/public_html/ability_minicart_content.php(1) : eval()'d code:1
/home/svsponli/public_html/ability_minicart_content.php:1
/home/svsponli/public_html/include/common.php:98
/home/svsponli/public_html/login.php:54
-------------------------------------------------

[big pine kenny]

Google button. All that is in there but its not there what I want. In the view cart the button is there but when you just click on checkout its not there.