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New features in V4.5

By lukezy on 6/2/2011

New Features • News and Announcements • Whats New 2 Comments

In V4.5 we made the huge changes to implement the multi-vendor feature. We also added List Module and upgraded to ASP.NET 4.0.

DotShoppingCart Suite V4.5 is released.

By lukezy on 5/15/2011

News and Announcements • General 2 Comments

DotShoppingCart Suite 4.5 is now available for purchase. The major features include Vendor Management, Multi-vendor support, upgraded to ASP.NET 4.0 etc. See the full feature list.

Upload flash video to your site

By lukezy on 9/27/2010

DotShoppingCart Blog

Uploading flash video to your website is very easy. First you need to decide which page you want to upload the flash to. You can create a new page if needed. Enable page editor for that page. And then add a HTML box to where you want the flash located. Open HTML editor and click the flash icon from the toolbox.

Click "Upload" tab in the "Flash Properties" window.

Click "Browser" button and locate the flash video file in your local hard disk.

Click "Send to the Server" button and wait until the transfer is done.

Click "Ok" and you are upload the flash to the site.

Add a Page Editor Enabled Custom Page to DotShoppingCart

By lukezy on 7/8/2010

Customization

Adding a custom page to DotShoppingCart is as simple as adding a page to any ASP.NET website. You can just create a page in folder that you like and start customizing your own content. If you wish to add a custom page that is integrated with DotShoppingCart e.g. page editor, theme etc, you will need to follow these steps.

1) Decide where you want to put the new page and create an entry in table DSC_Block_Type_lkp . And then retrieve the blockTypeId for the entry that has just been created.

e.g INSERT INTO DSC_Block_Type_lkp (Type, VirtualPath) VALUES ('My Page', '/Controls/Core/MyPage.ascx')

2) Add an entry to web\module.config to wire up the page url.

<pages>

</pages>

</add>

3) Create a usercontrol under the path that you decided in step 1 e.g. web\controls\core\MyPage.ascx and make sure it's derived from PageBlockUserControl . You can take a look at any existing pages e.g. web\controls\UnSubscribe.ascx.cs for reference.

New features in V4.1

By lukezy on 6/13/2010

Whats New • New Features • News and Announcements 14 Comments

In V4.1 we added a few new features and several bug fixes. Check the following for the major new features.

New features in V4

By lukezy on 12/18/2009

News and Announcements • New Features • Whats New 2 Comments

You can take a look at the list of new major features in V4 below. V4 also comes with a long list of bug fixes.

DotShoppingCart Suite V4.0 is released.

By lukezy on 12/10/2009

General • News and Announcements 17 Comments

DotShoppingCart Suite 4.0 is now available for purchase. The major features include Silverlight charting report, Form module, Photo block, XML bulk product export/import, templated product detail page etc. Check the full new feature list.

Add a Terms Agreement Checkbox In The Checkout Page

By _DSCRoot_ on 9/24/2009

Customization

In Store\OnePageCheckout.ascx add the following code after the line "<div><h3><asp:Literal runat="server" text="<%$ Resources:Common,ReviewInformationAndSubmitOrder %>" /></h3></div>"

<div>

<asp:CheckBox id="chkTerms" runat="server" text="I have read and agree the your terms." />

<asp:CustomValidator id="cvdAgree" runat="server" clientvalidationfunction="IsChecked"

onservervalidate="cvdAgree_ServerValidate" validationgroup="checkout" errormessage="The term agreement must be checked.">*</asp:CustomValidator>

function IsChecked(obj, args) {

var checkbox = $("#<%= chkTerms.ClientID %>");

args.IsValid = checkbox.attr('checked');

}

</script>

</div>

In Store\OnePageCheckout.ascx.cs add the following code

protected void cvdAgree_ServerValidate(object source, ServerValidateEventArgs args) {

args.IsValid = chkTerms.Checked;

}

Enable Ampersand &amp; in URL in IIS7

By lukezy on 4/1/2009

ASP.NET Tips and Tricks 2 Comments

If you use & as part of URL e.g. use & in category name, you will get message "HTTP Error 400.0 - Bad Request ASP.NET detected invalid characters in the URL" from IIS7 server. This is because IIS 7 implements UrlScan 2.5 and disallows the ampersand (&) in the request for security reasons. As discussed here, you will need to do the following two in order to fix this.

1. AllowRestrictedChars http://support.microsoft.com/kb/820129

2. Enable VerificationCompatibility http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;826437

Create Telerik alike menu in DotShoppingCart

By _DSCRoot_ on 3/31/2009

Customization

I had one person asking how to implement Telerik alike menu in DotShoppingCart. In this post I will describe how you can use the dynamic image creating feature in DotShoppingCart along with some basic CSS tricks to archieve this.

1. Start off the Legacy Theme

2. Change Accent colors.

3. Update the menu CSS and add search box CSS in the Legacy Theme "App_Data\Themes\Themes_Template\Legacy\Default.css"

div.mainmenu div.tab a:link, div.mainmenu div.tab a:visited {

background: url('/dyimage.axd?type=boxHeader&width=120&height=30&cornersize=0') no-repeat;

float: left;

margin-right: 1px;

width: 120px;

height: 30px;

color: %Accent Fore Color%;

font-weight: bold;

text-decoration: none;

text-align: center;

}

div.mainmenu div.tab a:active, div.mainmenu div.tab a.selected{

background: url('/dyimage.axd?type=boxHeader&subtype=highlight&width=120&height=30&cornersize=0&gradient=False') no-repeat;

color: %Accent Highlight Fore Color%;

}

div.mainmenu div.tab a:hover {

background: url('/dyimage.axd?type=boxHeader&subtype=highlight&width=120&height=30&cornersize=0') no-repeat;

color: %Accent Highlight Fore Color%;

}

td.searchBar {

background: url('/dyimage.axd?type=boxHeader&width=1&height=30&cornersize=0') repeat;

vertical-align: middle;

padding-left:10px;

border-right: solid 1px %Border Color%;

}

.searchShell {

background:transparent url('/web/images/searchBoxBg.gif') no-repeat scroll 0;

}

.searchInputBox {

height:13px;

line-height:12px;

margin-left:10px;

padding:0;

vertical-align:middle;

width:172px;

border:0 none;

}

.searchButton {

background:transparent none repeat scroll 0 0;

cursor:pointer;

height:22px;

vertical-align:middle;

width:23px;

border:0 none;

}

4. Update the search user control "Controls\Blocks\Search.ascx" to use the new search CSS.

<asp:Panel id="pnlBlockContent" runat="server">

<asp:Button id="btnDoSearch" runat="server" cssclass="searchButton" />

</div>

</asp:Panel>

And finally you will get this.

New features in V3.1

By lukezy on 3/16/2009

Whats New • News and Announcements • New Features 8 Comments

There are a lot of bug fixes made into DotShoppingCart V3.1. Along with the bug fixes you can find a few new features as follows.

New features in V3.0

By lukezy on 1/9/2009

New Features • News and Announcements • Whats New 1 Comments

The full multi-language support is the major feature in DotShoppingCart V3.0. You can now translate it to other language easily or create a language pack. Other features include unlimited product custom fields, product bulk import, site admin UI improvements etc. Check below for more details.

DotShoppingCart Suite V3 is released.

By lukezy on 1/8/2009

News and Announcements • News and Announcements • General

DotShoppingCart Suite 3.0 is now available for purchase. It has tons of stuff that people are waiting for. The major ones are the full multi-language support, unlimited product custom fields, product bulk import, site admin UI improvements. Check the new features in V3.

Add a custom ASP.NET UserControl into the DotShoppingCart (V2.5+)

By lukezy on 10/23/2008

Customization

There was an old blog entry talking about adding custom ASP.Net user control to DotShoppingCart. From DotShoppingCart V2.5 the page editor has been rewritten by using JQuery. As the result the way to integrate the custom ASP.NET user control is simplified.

1) Create a Standard ASP.NET stardard User Control and derive it from BlockUserControl

Check "Web/View/Blocks/TagCloud.ascx.cs" for the example.

using DotShoppingCart.Commercial.Core;

public partial class View_Blocks_TagCloud : BlockUserControl {

2) Hook up the new block type in DB

a) Insert a new entry to dbo.DSC_Block_Type_lkp table

e.g. INSERT INTO DSC_Block_Type_lkp (type, virtualPath) VALUES ('My Block', '/Controls/Blocks/MyBlock.ascx')

b) Insert a new entry to dbo.DSC_Block_Type_Group_Block_Type_Map

e.g. INSERT INTO DSC_Block_Type_Group_Block_Type_Map (BlockTypeGroupId, BlockTypeId, SortOrder) VALUES (3, <id that is created in step a>, 10)

To add your custom user control to page, just enable page edior and click "+" sign. Find the custom block in the proper group (which you add in the step b above).

New features in V2.6

By lukezy on 10/22/2008

Whats New • New Features • News and Announcements 1 Comments

Product bulk import is the major feature in V2.6. Now you can work on the products offline and then import it into store admin easily. Several admin UI interfaces have been cleaned up and made consistent throughout the admin site. There are also several other admin improvements including File Management and user ghost feature.

Customize Product Summary Grid

By lukezy on 9/24/2008

Customization

DotShoppingCart allows you to customize the product summary easily. To do that just go to any product summary page and enable the page editor. Click "Edit" in the dropdown menu of the product summary block. See the image below.

Update the html code in "Product Summary Template". Notice there are tokens wrapped by %% e.g. %%ProductName%%. These tokens will be replaced by the product properties during the runtime.

Migrate DotShoppingCart Suite V2.1 to V2.5

By lukezy on 9/23/2008

General

Before you apply these migration steps please make sure you back up your database and files web\web.config & DSC.config.

Here are the manual steps to migrate DotShoppingCart Suite V2.1 to V2.5.

1) Migrate database

Download migration SQL script and apply it to your V2.1 database.

2) Update web.config and DSC.config

a) Replace string "OpenSource" to "Commercial" in web.config and DSC.config

b) Remove table based shipping and table based tax configuration (see yellow background below) in DSC.config

<addenabled="True" sortOrder="0" name="Table Based Shipping" type="DotShoppingCart.Commercial.Shipping.TableBasedShippingProvider" />

</providers>

</shippingServiceConfiguration>

</providers>

</taxServiceConfiguration>

c) Compare web.config and DSC.config in V2.5 to the existing ones and bring the new changes in V2.5 to the existing ones.

d) Go to Store admin and configure table based shipping and table based tax again

Replace Dynamic Block Header Background With the Customized Static Image

By lukezy on 9/20/2008

Customization

In DotShoppingCart themes and skins are dynamic. When you change the colors in site admin, all the images in the themes are created again by using GDI+ API.

Check the areas surrounded by the red rectangles below. These background images are created dynamically.

and

The bottom ones are called block headers. This article describes how you can replace the block headers with your customized static images.

The css class for the block headers is "blockHeader". If you search the "blockHeader" against your entire solution, you will find one in Default.css

div.blockHeader {

text-align:center;

font-weight: bold;

}

div.blockHeader a {

text-decoration: none;

}

and the other one in web/controls/blocks/BlockContainer.ascx.cs.

header.Attributes.Add("class", "blockHeader");

header.Attributes.Add("style", string.Format(BlockHeaderFormat, buc.HeaderData.Height - 6, buc.HeaderData.Width, buc.HeaderData.Height));

header.InnerText = buc.HeaderData.Title;

blockDiv.Controls.Add(header);

To use your customized static image as the block header background, please do

1) Add your background image to the div.blockHeader css style e.g. background-image:url(<your image url>);

2) Remove the code adding the inline style

header.Attributes.Add("style", string.Format(BlockHeaderFormat, buc.HeaderData.Height - 6, buc.HeaderData.Width, buc.HeaderData.Height));

Here is an example of the customzed header blocker.

Create FAQ Page By Using Hierarchy View

By lukezy on 9/16/2008

General

For things like FAQ, knowledge base or online documentations DotShoppingCart has a built-in module "Hierarchy View" for these. In this article I am going to describe how easy to create a FAQ page.

In your site admin, go to Content -> Content and click "Add" button to create a content group.

Make sure you change the Default View to "Hierarchy". See the arrow sign above.

After you create the FAQ content group, click "View" button and you will be brought to the FAQ page. Check the URL of the FAQ page. It will be something like <your site>/View/Hierarchy/FAQ.aspx. You could use the relative link "/View/Hierarchy/FAQ.aspx" in any page or menu.

You can see the FAQ page that was just created.

Then you can use the highlighted the icons above to start creating the entries in FAQ.

If you need a live example of FAQ page, check DotShoppingCart FAQ.

Bulk Import Tax Regions

By lukezy on 9/15/2008

New Features

Many people asked if there is a tool which can do bulk import tax table since tax table could be hundreds of tax regions. We have implemented the bulk tax import feature in the next version.

In Site Admin -> Store -> Tax, you will see the "Import Tax Regions" button.