Newest KB Articles

Upgrading a CW2 site to CW3

Fri, 09 May 2008 11:26:10 GMT

Upgrading a CW2 site to CW3

Updating an existing CW2 site to a CW3 site depends on a number of things, so let's make a few assumptions...

Let's say you have a CW2 site where the Cartweaver function files, meaning all those in the cw2 folder are bone-stock, you haven't touched them, you've just added CW to your site and populated your database.

OK, if this statement is true, updating you CW2 site should be a pretty straight forward process.

1. Back up your entire site!
2. Back up your database!
3. Extract the files from your CW3 zip file
4. You will find the database upgrade script available as a free download if you log into the customer page on the Cartweaver site. Follow the instructions and run the file to add the new database tables and fields to your database. This script will not overwrite any of your current data, it will just create the new elements you need.
5. Take a copy of the entire CW3 folder and copy it to your site
6. Hide your cw2 folder by placing a ~ in front to it - once your all done you can just delete this.
7. On you presentation files find the CW2 include files and change the cw2 to cw3
Like this - change <cfinclude template="cw2/CWIncDetails.cfm"> to <cfinclude template="cw3/CWIncDetails.cfm">

Once you have gone through and update the presentation files, head for the new admin - located now in cw3/admin and set your new settings.

There you have it.

Now, like I said, this is for a bone stock CW2 installation, if you've done modifications to the files in the CW2 folder, whether you want to update is up to you. You'll have to weigh the trouble against the benefits.

"Some items outside SSL" warning message

Fri, 09 May 2008 11:24:08 GMT

This happens when items on the page, be it images or includes are from outside your SSL protected folder/s - to avoid this 1. do not use a shared SSL but purchase one for specifically for the site - they only cost between 50 and $90 and are well worth it. This post to our blog goes into a little more detail why -

http://blog.cartweaver.com/index.cfm?newsid=5

Next, if you do have an SSL for the site, have your host install it into the root directory of your site, thus protecting the entire site, images and all. This will get rid of the warning you mentioned.

Reset Application Variables

Fri, 09 May 2008 11:22:26 GMT

When doing updates to your site on the server it's always a good idea to reset your application variables to be sure all the necessary variables have been set based on the latest code. Here's how you do this...

Enter this URL variable on the end of you site address...

?resetApplication=YourDebugPassword

so it would look something like this...

http://www.yoursite.com/index.cfm?resetApplication=YourDebugPassword

This will force ColdFusion to reset your application variables.

How is shipping calculated

Fri, 09 May 2008 11:19:35 GMT

The shipping is set up in three stages:

1 – Methods. You create the methods that the shopper will be allowed to select, for these methods you set a rate. This rate if the base rate that is charged on every order regardless of where it’s going or how much it costs or weighs, any other shipping charge is added to this rate.

2 – Range. The ranges are set up to charge different amounts based on which range the total weight of the order falls into. You set ranges for each shipping method, for each country you ship to. The key thing to remember when setting up this part is to be absolutely sure that you have ranges set for all shipping methods and that there are no gapes between ranges that an order may fall into. This charge is added to the “Rate” in # 1 to come up with a sub total.

3 – Shipping extension. This is a multiple charges based on where the shipment is going. Say California is -0-, all shipments shipped to California will be charges the “Rate” plus the fee for the “Range” into which the order falls. That’s it. Now say you find that to ship to New York costs 40% more than it does to ship within your home state of California, so you would set the Shipping extension for the state of New York to .40 What will happen then is, say the total of the Rate and Range for an order comes to $30 and the order is going to Ney York – the shipping would be calculated like this…

30 X .40 = 12

30 + 12 = 42

The New York Order would be charges $42 for shipping.

I hope this helps.

Hosting an ecommerce site with GoDaddy

Fri, 09 May 2008 11:17:37 GMT

We get more "my site works locally, but not when I upload it to the server" from GoDaddy that from all other hosts, worldwide, combined!

You see, unfortunately, even though they "say" they support ColdFusion they disable a number of vital CF Functions such as <cffile>, <cfdirectory>, and allowing CF to create an object which is a Java Function. Their reason for doing so is "security"... Bunk! A knowledgeable host knows how to configure CF Sandbox security to use these functions safely and 99% of the CF hosts out there do. We unfortunately are considering adding a post to our website stating a "swim at your own risk" policy about GoDaddy because of this. If you want validation of what I've said here, feel free to post a "what do you think of GoDaddy" topic to our newsgroup... There won't be much love in the room when you do. Please be aware that this is not a Cartweaver only issue – this applies to all but the most basic of dynamic sites. GoDaddy just isn’t set up with the infrastructure or the tech support to be a viable host for dynamic, income-generating sites.

So where does that leave you? If you have chosen CF as your platform - good choice by the way - I would strongly recommend moving to a Qualified, Knowledgeable CF host. I can recommend HostMySite.com and Crystaltech.com as a couple of excellent choices. There is also a long list of CF hosts to be found on Ben Forta's site - forta.com

I know this is not an answer that you were expecting or looking for, but please know this is not a Cartweaver specific problem. GoDaddy is a cheap host for the masses, that's their target market. When it comes to hosting commercial, dynamic websites, be it PHP or CF they fall way short.

My host doesn't support ColdFusion, or PHP or...

Fri, 09 May 2008 11:14:03 GMT

What we tell folks is "Never let a host make your choice of development platform for you" - Choose what you want to use, or feel will work best for you, then find a host that supports YOUR choice. This would be like saying "I really want a Ford, but my dealer only sells Chevys" - you'd never say that, you'd just go to a Ford dealer. Selecting a web host is no different.

Your choice to go with ColdFusion is a good one. Not that PHP is a "bad" choice by any means, but CF is much easier to learn and for the long term, when you consider all that Adobe is doing with CF8 and future releases... Let's put it this way, Up is just going to be a lot hight for CF than it is for PHP. PHP is a great web development language, CF is that and it is also becoming an ultra powerful application development platform that seamlessly integrates with Flash, Flex, AJAX, Adobe AIR, PDF and more. If you are going to invest the time and effort to begin learning a platform, CF just offers more all the while being easier to learn.

For hosts, I can highly recommend, either HostMySite.com or Crystaltech.com. Both are outstanding hosts with top drawer tech support.

Hope this helps. Thank you for your interest in Cartweaver.

Shorten Customer ID or Order ID

Fri, 09 May 2008 11:04:47 GMT

To shorten the Customer id and Order id, edit the following file - CWTagCustomerAction.cfm

Line 79 sets this ID, you can change -9- in this part - Left(IDstring,9) - to something shorter, but be careful, the shorter you make it the more chance there is of creating duplicates, which the database would reject and would crash the transaction.

------------------------------------------------------------

CWTagProcessOrder.cfm

Line 127 you could change this -
<cfset variables.ThisOrderID = CreateUUID()>
to
<cfset variables.ThisOrderID = Left(CreateUUID(),16)>

Again, the same warning applies to not making it too short.

Hope this helps.

Can Cartweaver act as a catalog and not take orders?

Fri, 09 May 2008 10:43:40 GMT

Yes Cartweaver can be set up this way, in fact this is the default setting. The credit card portion of the transaction is disabled and hidden until you select a payment gateway in the Cartweaver set up. In its default setting credit card data is not collected or required to complete the transaction. The reason for this is to allow initial set up and testing to be done without having to worry about interacting with a payment gateway. So, if you like, you can simply leave Cartweaver in its default setting and not activate the payment gateway. Orders will be taken and recorded in the database and confirmation emails will be sent as expected, with our collecting credit card data.

Importing products into Cartweaver database.

Fri, 09 May 2008 08:56:27 GMT

We do get quite a few requests for this. It is something we have been looking at, but to develop it in such a way that it will work with as many possible data sources, and making it work with the three different versions of Cartweaver and the three different databases the various versions support, well needless to say the import plug in could end up costing nearly as much as Cartweaver itself. We just don’t know if this is something folks would be willing to pay for. So, were on the fence with this one.

What many do is use MS Access’ import features to bring in as much of the data as possible. Of course you’d have to import the data in proper order due to referential integrity constraints – Products first then SKUs and so forth, and there’s bound to be some tweaking necessary but the vast majority of data can be brought in this way. Then when you’re done and have tested the data to be sure everything is in order and working you can “Up size” your database to MS SQL server or MySQL is you plan to use one of these. It may take a little trial and error to initially get the procedure down, but once you have it figured it can be a pretty fast straight forward process.

Set up on a Mac

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 16:50:15 GMT

What we usually tell folks who are new to dynamic development is, “you don’t need to know code or databases to use Cartweaver to create ecommerce sites, but you do need to be willing to learn some new things.” Cartweaver make developing a standalone shopping cart / ecommerce site about as easy as it can be, but there is going to be a learning curve. You will need to learn how to set up a dynamic development environment and create a DSN (data source name) to connect to the database, and in the case of the Mac that database will need to be MySQL, so you will need to install and set up MySQL and get familiar with a MySQL GUI admin, I’d recommend CoCoaMySQL as a free admin, I can also highly recommend Navicat, it cost about $90 but it is really about the best there is and is very user friendly. Cartweaver has a script that creates all the tables and fields you need for Cartweaver, so you don’t need to know databases, but you will have to become familiar enough with MySQL and the admin tool to be able to run the script.

Please note: The above is not a Cartweaver specific process, this will be necessary to develop any dynamic database driven web site on your Mac, be it a shopping cart application or even a simple “Hello World” script. The good news is that, even though it’s a little more involved setting up a dynamic development environment on a Mac, once done the Mac can serve as an excellent development platform! So it’s worth the effort. Additionally, once you actually gotten your development environment set up and working, and actually get to the Cartweaver part of things you will be very pleased at how easy Cartweaver is to set up and use!

Here are some resources for you to look at…

An article on setting up ColdFusion on the Mac

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/coldfusion/articles/mac_osx.html

MySQL for the Mac download page:

http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/5.0.html#macosx-dmg

GUI downloads:

CoCoaMySQL - http://cocoamysql.sourceforge.net/

Navicat - http://www.navicat.com/

As a follow up, Lynda.com has this course:

http://movielibrary.lynda.com/html/modPage.asp?ID=433

This covers installing and testing CF8 on a Mac and should be helpful. Fortunately, this part of the title is free, so you can view it even if you aren't subscribed to Lynda.com!

Hope this helps. Let me know if you have any more questions.