There has been a lot of good discussion regarding a new feedback system for HC.
There was the original thread
A thread discussing an entirely different system
And I’ve just posted a poll to gauge your overall opinion of our different choices Now’s the time to make your thoughts known and help shape the future HC feedback system.
Thanks!
Hi everyone,
As HC keeps growing, it feels like it might be time for a professional re-design and also an integrated feedback system. I’ve started two threads on the forums to discuss these changes:
Re-design: http://hyenacart.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=65438
Feedback system: http://hyenacart.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=65441
I would love to have your input and ideas.
Thanks!
So, looking back, I see I am delivering this at least 3 months late. Hopefully, late really is better than never 🙂
The HC Multi cart now has the capability of tracking inventory on individual choices. This means if you have the same item in small, medium, and large, but limited quantities of each, you can now combine them all into one listing. However, this is still not a good choice for high-demand items. Anything OOAK and high demand should still be listed via Buy Now, Hold, Auction or Lottery.
As you probably noticed, I took my own sweet time testing and re-testing this code. Now that it’s live, there’s still some possibility that bugs exist. If you find one, please post about it here.
To use this new feature, just go to your item listing page as usual. You’ll see on choice 1, that there’s now an extra field for quantities. Note that if you leave this field blank, the code will function just as it did before this change. If you fill it in, however, notice that the sum of the quantities you fill into that field will now overwrite the total available quantity for that listing. In other words, if you are listing the quantities of “sm, med. lg” items as “1, 3, 2”, then the overall quantity for your listing will be overwritten as 6. Hopefully that makes sense to you.
If you have 1 red small, 2 green mediums, 1 yellow medium and 2 blue larges, you will need to enter these as 4 separate choices within Choice 1 (as opposed to having Choice 1 be size and Choice 2 being color). Just throwing that note in there as you think about how to consolidate your listings.
Where all the extensive testing came in was ensuring that if you have only 2 larges available, the shopper can’t place more than 2 into her cart. The other thing to check during your first purchases is that your inventory is being adjusted correctly after payment is made. As I said, I tested this as thoroughly as I could, but no one tests the code as thoroughly as you guys!
Also, I know some of you have lots of choices you’d like to be able to offer in one listing. If you find that the fields are too limited in size, please contact support at hyenacart.com with your storename and a request to have your fields lengthened. An estimate of how much longer you think the fields need to be would be helpful too (twice as long, just a bit longer, etc.)
Finally, I edited the code for both HC Multi and HC Standard so that when customers check out with discount codes, the name of the code they used is now recorded in the database. Some of you had mentioned that you use your discount code names to track where shoppers come from and I had never thought of that use before.
If I have time this morning, I will also be adding a “Lost Password” function for HC Multi users. If not today, it should show up in the next few days.
Thanks everyone! Have a great weekend 🙂
I bet all of you who have ever complained about the minicart on HC Multi messing with your web design thought your words were falling on deaf ears. Well, guess what? It may have taken a while to get here, but now there’s an option that will allow you to fix that issue.
If you go to your Shop Config page and scroll all the way to the bottom, you’ll see a couple of new options. One of these is “Minimize Cart.” Change this to “yes” and that pesky little minicart will be reduced to a tiny little table right under the date / time which simply lists the number of items in your customer’s cart as well as their current total.
The two other new options on the Shop Config page don’t do anything yet. But they will… hopefully someday soon.
Hi all,
I know some of you are eagerly anticipating the inventory control on choices for HC Multi. I thought it was just about ready, but have needed to go back to the drawing board on a few more things. Unfortunately, I don’t have an estimated finish date. I am having to take time as I can find it lately. I was messing around with files this morning. Everything should be back to normal, but if not, please email to report and weirdness.
In other news, note that there is now advertising space on Spots’ Corner. You can buy space in your Banner Manage account.
Finally, I just wanted to point out that there are two new forums for you to check out. One is “I want it!!”, where customers can post things that they want you to make 🙂 and “Wahm Business Marketplace”, where you can post business-related classifieds and info.
Thanks for hosting your shops on HC!
Hi all!
First off, I will be away from my computer from this Friday, 8/10 through next Saturday, 8/18. I’m going to disable the store sign-up pages starting Thursday night, so if you or anyone you know is wanting to get a store started in the next few weeks, please get your sign-up done before Thursday. Other than that, though, the rest of the awesome HC team will be around to help out with most questions.
Next, you may have already noticed, but I’ve added the capability for sellers to be able to view all lottery entrants and delete them, if necessary. For HC Standard users, just go to your product listing page and click on the number of lottery entrants. For HC Multi uers, go to the product listing page and click on the word “Lottery” under Stocktype.
Also, Spots’ Corner has a great new look, thanks to Michelle 🙂 I’ve also added a search field. It’s not yet ideal — you can’t search for a word *and* click “Show handmade only” or “Show available only”, but we’ll get there.
Jen at Blue Hollow Design has written this awesome HC design tester for both HC Standard and HC Multi: http://hyenacart.com/testyourdesign.php . Give it a try if you want to test out a new design and don’t want your customers to get a preview until it’s finished.
Finally, the capability to add inventory control to choices on HC Multi is close to being done. I won’t install it until after the 18th, but you can anticipate its arrival shortly thereafter.
Thanks everyone!
Hi all,
I have finally made a change to the stocking calendar that I believe everyone has been wishing for. Your store can now appear once per week on the monthly and weekly calendars, period. None of that last week, this week, next week stuff. You can appear once per week. That means those of you with weekly stocking times can show up on every Tuesday (for example) on both the monthly and weekly calendars. I hope that clears up confusion on your end and your customer’s ends 🙂
That’s all. Thanks!
Karen
I’m happy to announce that Trista of Olive Branch Baby has agreed to join the HC support staff 🙂 Trista will be helping out with personal relations and conflict resolution. So if you have any issues in those areas, you can email her at trista at hyenacart.com or contact her via the helpdesk.
So, you may wonder, what does Karen do now? I have a few things on my plate. I’m going to work on re-coding the calendar so stores can show up once a week, not once in a rolling three week period the way it is now. This will cut down on confusion about showing up on the calendar, and address the issue of dropping off of the current week’s calendar when previewing items for next week. This is a pretty big change, so I can’t promise it will be done for at least a week or two. After that, I understand there’s an issue with tags disappearing on listings. If anyone’s noticed a pattern as to when this happens, please drop me a line at karen at hyenacart.com. Finally, I’ll be adding the capability for sellers to delete lottery entrants and auctions bids from their listings. Again, timing on this is a bit out there, let’s shoot for the end of July.
Thanks everyone!
OK — so I think we’re starting to settle in to this server. Java image uploading should be working for both HC Standard and HC Multi now. There was also an issue with banners not uploading properly in BannerManage, but that should be fixed now. There may be something not quite right about purchasing advertising time via Paypal. I think I’ve fixed it, but if you pay and the payment doesn’t go through, please submit a support ticket to support at hyenacart.com. In fact, you can go ahead and start submitting tickets about anything that’s not working right.
Thanks for your patience as we’ve worked through this whole thing. Hopefully you won’t mind if tech support slows down a bit this weekend. As much as I love it, I need to take a bit of a break from HC!
This was mostly posted on the Yahoo group, but I’ve updated some information:
Welcome to your new server! It’s bigger, better and faster
than our old one. I’m hoping we all see an even great performance
increase than we saw last time we upgraded (less than a year ago!)
First of all, I want to apologize again for the downtime. I don’t
think the previous host will ever figure out exactly what’s wrong with
it. I’m able to access it now, but it still throws out a lot of errors.
Second, I have a laundry list of items I wanted to go over:
1) The site is currently at about 80% capability. I’m still working
through getting everything configured and working on the new server.
2) There was some data lost in the move. The databases were backing up
every evening. However, as the server crashed, it became unable to
create the backup files. I took the most recently created backup files
I could find to restore the site on the new server. Please understand
— it is impossible to make database backups every minute of the day,
so when something like this happens, some data will inevitably be
lost. I am now able to access the very latest database info so if you
lost a lot of listings or info, please submit a support ticket to
karen at hyenacart.com for a database restore. Remember though, that
this will set you back to last Friday, and anything that’s happened in
the database since yesterday will be lost instead.
I realize this isn’t ideal, and that items are being re-sold, order
info has been lost, etc. This is pretty painful for all of us. If you
feel that you need some compensation for time and effort lost, please
open a ticket at karen at hyenacart.com and we’ll see what we can do
to work it out.
In the meantime, check your store for items that sold Friday and may
be showing available again and take them out of stock. Please email
customers who’ve purchased sold items and let them know the situation.
They can contact me if they have questions.
It’s not practical for me to go back and restore all the latest
databases at this point. It takes several hours to do this, and in the
meantime, changes are being made on the currently available database
that would be lost at the restore. Our best bet is to keep moving on
at this point (although, like I said, I can restore parts of the
database on an ad hoc basis as requested). Unfortunately, in a site as
dynamic as this, there just isn’t a way to make a perfectly clean
transition.
3) THANK YOU for your supportive words and emails. This is an amazing
community and all of your encouragement has really helped me get
through this. So thank you for your understand and patience. I really,
really appreciate it!
4) Don’t panic if you still can’t access the site. It takes up to 72 hours for
the new server information to be communicated across the whole internet.
Everything should be accessible in another day at most.
Thanks,
Karen
