• New features in V2.5
• New features in V2.4
• New features in V2.3
• New features in V2.2
• Forums Module

There are a lot of improvements made into V2.5. The page editor has been completely rewritten in JQuery. As a result you will notice a significant performance improvement when using page editor. Blog module has been enhanced as well. We added new blocks such as Tag Cloud, Article Archive, Recent Comments etc.

I had people asking how to disable some UI pieces in some pages. Here are some detail questions and my answers.

1) how do I disable the action buttons e.g. "Ask a Question", "Update Alert", "Tell a Friend" in product detail page?

In web\store\ProductAction.aspx, find <asp:ImageButton id="btnAskQuestion", <asp:ImageButton id="btnUpdateAlert", <asp:ImageButton id="btnTellFriend" and put visible="false" inside the tag.

2) Remove register link

In web\controls\blocks\LoginMenu.ascx, remove line <li><a href="<%=SiteNavigation.RegisterPage %>">Register</a></li>.

In web\controls\core\Login.ascx, remove these lines.

<td class="logincell">

In web\controls\core\Login.ascx.cs, remove these lines.

btnRegister.OnClientClick = string.Format("window.open('{0}{1}', '_self'); return false;",

3) Remove customer Reviews in product detail page

In web\store\Product.aspx, remove those lines

<tr>

In web\store\Product.aspx.cs, remove those lines

prvReview.Product = product;
prvReview.DataBind();

4) Remove Redeem Gift Certificate in shopping cart page

In web\store\Cart.aspx, find <asp:Panel id="pnlGiftCertificate" runat="server"> and put visible="false" inside the tag.

Visitor source capture has been improved in V2.4. If you use Google Analytics to track your site trafic, this matches with GA to capture visitor source without any configuration. When visitor registers or places order, the source will be automatically recorded. You can then run report tool to show metrics.

We are now doing the feature planning for V3. If you saw our roadmap before, you would probably notice that we have some high level parts.

• Multi-language support
• Integrate Silverlight into site admin
• Live Talk

Lot of people like our page editor. I really want to see the page editor to support drag and drop. If you know Popfly, you will know what UI it should be. Doing it in HTML is really hard to implement and maintain. So the current plan is to use Silverlight for the next version page editor. The chart reports stuff will be implemented in Silverlight as well.

Ads tracking and integration is another feature in my mind. I recently checked GA (Google Analytics) and found out it is very sleek. You can use it to track other online ads not just Google Adwords. So I think we will just keep our user tracking and statistics at very high level. You can view these when you log in to the store admin. If you need full detail then log in to GA to find out more. We will probably provider in site search report to give you some insights how people search inside your site.

Live talk is another usefully tool to engage with customers. We will investigate if it's worth to implement it.

Another very important feature for ecommerce is able to do A/B test on pages or maybe a group of pages such as multi-page checkout or one-page checkout. This is probaby over the scope of V3. But it's must-have feature to survivie in the modern ecommerce contest.

Let us know what features you would like to see in the V3.

In the new version 2.3 we improved one page checkout process. Now the step indicator can guide customer via the checkout process. If customer is not happy with the one-page checkout, he can switch back to the regular multiple-page checkout.

In the new version 2.2 we added new features such as page group, SEO improvement, multi select product attribute, digital downloads, user referrers and two new server blocks: download button and content group list.

Forums module has been created on top of DotShoppingCart CMS platform. Our DotShoppingCart Forums have also been migrated to the new Forums module.

DotShoppingCart CMS page is comprised by the server blocks, which are the pre-built server side controls. The out of box software comes with a handful of common blocks. The article is going to talk about creating your own server block.

Notice: read this blog entry for DotShoppingCart V2.5+.

1) Create the Standard ASP.NET stardard User Control and derive it from DotShoppingCart.OpenSource.Core.BlockUserControl

In the Page_Load method add the following code.

 public partial class YourCustomControls : BlockUserControl {
    protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) {
        EnableViewState = WebUtils.IsPageEditorEnable();
        editor.BlockUserControl = this;
        if (ShowEditor) {
            pnlBlockContent.CssClass = "BlockEditPanel";
            editor.BlockTitle = string.Format("Your Custom Control {0}", BlockId);
        }
    }
}

In the ascx file add the following code.

 <%@ Register tagprefix="dsc" tagname="BlockEditor" src="/Controls/Blocks/BlockEditor.ascx" %>

A simple example is to check web\controls\blocks\Search.ascx and Search.ascx.cx files.

2) Hook up the new block in DB

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')

Insert a new entry to dbo.DSC_Block_Type_Group_Block_Type_Map

Download from here. Check out the V2 new features.

I had many people asking how to add return policy or other information to the checkout page. Here is the video shows how to do it.

Page editor is the new feature to V2. It enables you to customize the look and feel of every single page of your site. View Demo

In Global.asax, the following code starts the orderpipeline when application starts.

    void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e) {
        OrderPipelineController.Start();
    }

It would load DataRefresh task defined in your web.config.

    <taskConfiguration defaultProvider="">

        <providers>

            <add name="DataRefresh" type="DotShoppingCart.OpenSource.OrderPipeline.DataRefreshTaskProvider, DotShoppingCart.OpenSource.OrderPipeline" />

        </providers>

    </taskConfiguration>

DataRefresh would update your category  counter every 2 hours.

    protected override void RunTask(string host, IConfigurationSource cfgSrc) {

        Category.UpdateProductCount(host);

    }

Click to see how easy you can create a post via our CMS implementation.

An install guide video has been uploaded to our server. Watch to see how easy it can be set up.

Check out the V2 new features.  Read more

In version 2 we added a new page designer with pre-built server blocks and a CMS framework. The eCommerce now becomes a module of the CMS framework.