indieCart Seller's Blog

OK — I found some great articles this weekend on optimizing servers and code, so I’ve been doing some fiddling.

The main thing you’ll notice is that if there are over 100 shopper in a store, the number of shoppers simply reads “100+” now. I think the server was spending too much brain power counting shoppers, so I’ve changed it so that if there are more than 100 people in a store, the server stops counting people and starts concentrating on the stocking. I am really hopeful that this will help resolve some of our crashing issues. In fact, I’d like to put it to a test. If one of you uber-hyenas would like to help test this out, please email me at hyenacart at gmail.com. We’ll pick a fairly obscure time to test, where, if we do crash, not as many people will be inconvenienced. Let me know if you want to help out!

I made a few other changes, so I’m hoping you find that HC is loading faster and acting zippier than it has been. I’ve turned the comments feature on this blog back on, so feel free to respond via comments and let me know if you notice any differences. Also, if anything is acting funky, please email support at hyenacart.com to open a helpdesk ticket.

Thanks everyone!

I’ve been doing HC stuff too, I swear! I’m just really passionate about this handmade site and want to make it a success 🙂 I’ve added two things that will be of interest to you:

1. Handmade pledge: I’ve added a page where you can sign a simple pledge to consider handmade alternatives for all of your purchases, whether they are for yourself or others, everyday items or gifts. Please consider signing the pledge and really making a handmade lifestyle choice: http://inspirehandmade.org/pledge.php
2. HC store promos: I’ve added a form you can use to promote your HC store in random rotation in the inspireHandmade sidebar. Just upload a little image and enter the last part of your HC store link on this form: http://inspirehandmade.org/linkpost.php

And now I’ll get back to HC upgrades and stuff. Pinky promise!

I hope you’ll agree that it’s important for HC. I spent this weekend coding a new site: http://inspirehandmade.org/ that I’m very excited about. I’m hoping you will all help out and post about what inspires you to buy handmade items, how they’ve affected your life, what’s so great about them. I want to get the whole world infected with the handmade virus. Care to join me?

Work is still going on behind the scenes to upgrade HC to it’s new look and I hope to have more news about that soon.

Thanks everyone!

Hi all,

Just a quick note to let you know I’ve added info pages for HCS users too. Just use the “Info Pages” link in your vendor footer to create up to 5 informational pages. In addition, if you use the image uploading option, I’ve made it easier on your “Edit Gallery” page to include a link to your gallery in your shop. As with HC Multi, for any of the informational pages, you can click the “Show” checkbox to have a link automatically included on your store page, or you can hard code the links with html.

Hope this gives you a warm fuzzy — I love you HCS users too!

Hi all,

Two nights ago, I made a small change to the HCS code. It *should* enable you to stock in quantities greater than 1 and still not oversell. It should also make the Buy Now listings faster, and hopefully able to withstand higher traffic loads. As you test it out, please post to this thread and let me know how it’s working for you: http://hyenacart.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=84930 .

As for HCM users, thanks for all your input on how to handle BiN’s, auctions and lotteries. I am going to put more thought into how to execute the order combinations and let you know when I’m done. I’ll also update the HCM code with the same small change I just made to HCS sometime in the next few weeks.

I also wanted to take this opportunity to thank you again for the wonderful input you gave on the HC surveys. I just chose the two winners (one for the customer survey — trish.mom2five and one for the vendor survey — supershourds). As I mentioned, the vendor survey has already been used to initiate the changes from the last major HCM update. The customer surveys have helped me to prioritize the next few projects:

• Update / modernize / freshen the look of the main HC site
• Improve the search function to include three-letter words, seller names, quantities, dates, etc.

I’ll also be adding some new ways for sellers to promote their stores.

Once our new look is in place, we’ll start advertising and pull in more traffic 🙂 Thanks to everyone for shopping and selling at HC!

Hi everyone,

I’d like to have a discussion regarding how to handle BiNs, auctions and lotteries on HCM. Currently, the way it’s set up, when a customer wins a BiN, auction or lottery, their information is recorded in the ‘buyer’ field on the product listing, but an order is not created until the customer goes through the entire checkout process with the item. I designed it this way so that, in the spirit of HC Multi, the customer could place additional items in her cart and then check out with everything all at once.

This setup has some disadvantages though: 1) it is a bit confusing for the buyers and sellers, who don’t understand why the BiN / auction / lottery has ended but no order is showing up in the order history; 2) the seller is not able to flag buyers if they don’t go through the checkout process and create the order.

That leaves a couple of choices:

1. Leave the setup as-is, but add the capability for the seller to flag the buyer from the product listing page (i.e. in the column where it says ‘buyer’, you would be able to click on the buyer’s email address and flag from there).
2. Change the setup so that the order is created as soon as the BiN button is clicked or the auction / lottery ends. This means that if the buyer did want to purchase other things from your store, she would need to fill up a separate cart and check out in a separate order.
3. Change the setup as above, but also include the capability of combining orders. This would be the most complicated option, of course, and would a) take longer to code, b) still be potentially confusing for customers.

If we went with option 2 or 3, I could probably also add the capability of allowing qty’s greater than 1 on the BiN listings.

Or, if anyone has any other ideas, please feel free to chime in.

I’m taking a poll and encouraging discussion on this thread.

Thanks!

Hi everyone,

I just uploaded a fairly significant upgrade for HC Multi. These changes are based on your feedback as well as your responses to the HC survey (which reminds me, I need to end that survey and draw the $10 winners! We’ll save that for the next email).

OK — so let’s see if I can remember all of the upgrades this includes:

• Customizable shipping options: You can now set the names of your five shipping options to whatever you like. Five is the max, however, so hopefully that will cover your needs. You can set those on your Shop Config page (towards the bottom). I’ve also made the entering of shipping amounts on your product details page more intuitive. There’s a checkbox that grays out the option if you’re not offering it, and the whole 999 thing is not something you need to worry about anymore.
• Insurance: You can now offer insurance on the first two shipping options you offer. The insurance rates will be calculated based on the total dollar amount in the cart, and is based on USPS rates. Whether or not to offer insurance is a store-wide option — you either offer insurance on any purchase, or you don’t. That is also set in your Shop Config page.
• Subcategories: This is a big one, especially for newbies… you no longer have to create subcategories — you can stock items directly in categories! It’s your choice whether you feel you need subcategories or not. And you can have both — categories and subcategories, and stock items in either place.
• Informational pages: There is now a menu option on your vendor pages called “Info pages”. You can use that link to create up to 5 informational pages (Policies, About Me, Order Status, etc.). There is also a toggle which will trigger these pages to be automatically shown in the left navigation bar in your stores. I’ve also gone back and added that same option for those of you who have galleries (i.e., you check the box and a link to your gallery will be automatically shown in the left nav menu). If you’re not using the left nav option, you can hard code the informational page links in your web design — but you will need to be reasonably familiar with html in order to do that.
• Product stock page organization: I’ve organized your main product stocking page and all of the batch editing pages in terms of future items, current items, items ended within the past month, and older past items (note, the past items are determined by whether the end date on the item has passed or not. Some of you may have items in your shop that are showing up just fine, even with the end date in the past. You can change those or not, at your discretion. If you do want to change them, don’t forget you can set them all at once on the ‘Batch edit dates’ page). Hopefully this will make it easier for you to find and edit listings. If you have templates you use over and over again, you may want to give them a future stocking date, make sure the “Show” box isn’t checked (so the templates don’t show in your store) and then your templates will always be at the top of your stocking page, ready to be copied and edited.
• Past items: I’ve finally added a link for your past items. If you would like the link to show, you can set that on your Shop Config page (near the bottom). You can also add an image if you’d prefer to use that rather than the text link.
• Shop organization: For those of you who use the category and subcategory views (rather than the table view), I’ve added some small text underneath the name of the category which lists how many listings there are in that category. That should make it easier for your customers to shop your store.

OK — so, if you have questions or there are bugs, please post here: http://hyenacart.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=83931

I realize that as this cart keeps getting upgraded with new features, it gets a bit more complicated to use. I’ll be adding a tutorial sometime in the future that walks users through how to get things set up. In the meantime, if you’ve had any problems at all with uploading images to Photobucket and having them show in the store, please check out this tutorial.

There’s more exciting stuff coming down the pipeline so stay tuned 🙂

Thanks everyone!

Hi all,

Those of you who have been around a while know that the comments / contact seller form was originally set up as a way for shoppers to anonymously leave constructive feedback for sellers (e.g., your photos are unclear, you have a lot of typos in your descriptions, etc.) As it turns out, hardly anyone uses the form this way. It’s just become an easy way for shoppers to contact sellers, and the shoppers don’t seem to realize that their contact info is not visible to sellers. In addition, it seems that a few shoppers were taking advantage of the anonymity to leave nonconstructive and even hurtful comments for sellers.

So I’ve just changed the form. It now simply sends an email to the seller, with the shopper’s email clearly listed as well as the reply-to field automatically filled in with the shopper’s addy. The shopper is also cc’ed on the message. The correspondence can now take place entirely via email, and the comments are no longer recorded in the database, nor are they accessible via your “View comments” vendor page. In fact, I will probably remove that page in the next little while. So if you receive a comment, you can simply hit ‘reply’ in your email program and it will reply directly to the shopper.

Also note that I’ve added a “Contact seller” form to the Spots’ Corner listing pages as well.

That’s all for now folks. Thanks!

Just a quick note to let you know that I’ve just installed the new feedback system. Sellers can leave feedback for buyers from their SC order history pages, and buyers can leave feedback for sellers from their purchase history pages. Give it a try and see if it works for you 🙂

BTW — any SC feedback that has been left on the forums will also be included on your SC feedback page.

Thanks!

Hi all,

Just a quick announcement and a request:

• We are changing the policy on raffles on HC. Raffles (i.e., any set-up where entrants have to pay for a chance to win — not to be confused with lotteries, where entry is free) are *only* to be run for charity. In addition, if you are running a raffle for charity, you will need to provide proof that it is legal in your geography (state and / or country) to run a lottery. This proof (preferably a link to a website or scanned document stating the legality of the raffle) will need to be posted somewhere on the charity site for everyone’s reference. If it turns out it isn’t legal to run raffles in your location, you may still offer items for charity by lottery, Buy Now, or auction listings. This new policy will be in effect starting May 15, 2008.
• As for server crashes: if you are a seller who has caused any downtime / slowdowns on the server recently (I think you know who you are, lol), would you please only stock your items by auction or lottery for now? I am exploring new options that might enable the server to withstand high-traffic Buy Now sales, but until you hear that these are up and running, please respect this request. It will keep HC working for everyone’s enjoyment. Thanks!

That’s all for now. I have high hopes that the Spots’ Corner feedback system will be installed this week and you’ll hopefully be hearing about other exciting features soon!