Hi,

Please use this thread to post ideas/suggestions for 3.1.0.

The old topic: http://www.cubecart.com/site/forums/index.php?showtopic=2053 has now been closed but we have read it thoroughly and beared every suggestion in mind so there is no need to repeat anything.

As I am sure you can imagine we want to include 90% of suggestions but this simply isn't possible unless 3.1.0 is released in 8 years time. As a result we will prioritise everything and forumlate a short to long term road map.

Thanks.

Well...

First of all - fix existing bugs.
There is an embarassing bug related to shipping (I submited it a long time ago) that hasn't been fixed in 3.0.8

Second - Template E-Mail system.
I saw this in other carts and it is a work of beauty.
If you have no idea what I am talking about, just look at Actinic
http://www.actinic.co.uk/products/shopping-cart-software.htm

Third - Resolve Shared SSL issues.
I know it's a pain and wrong, but many users don't want to purchase dedicated ssl certificate.
Some of the carts got around the problem.

That's about it

Proper shop Stats similar to CC2! Very Important

Wow posts before the announcement officially made.

Keep the ideas coming... You may not get a direct response but all will be noted.

Personally I'd like to see a few refinements... some of these may have already been mentioned, so apologies for that.

- Ability to control the category list order
- Search order change (latest products listed first)
- Ability to unpublish categories and the products within.
- Ability to unpublish products when the stock level reaches 0 (if required).
- Document list order
- Ability to unpublish documents
- Initial City Link shipping module
- Ability to control the automated emails sent out for digital products (following the recent fraudulent activity)
- In the product editor, inserting an image. Making the popup dialog boxes wider for listing images and their previews.
- Make the RTF editor area taller in all areas where the RTF editor is used without having to minimise the toolbar.
- Standardisation on pagetrail functionality (See bug 470).
- A simple contact form

That's all I can think of for now.

So we're basically buying built in mods?
Are we going to be able to select exactly what we want or will there be packages?

Does this apply to customers already licenced?

As a licence holder i would have thought that i should have priority support!?
Does this mean if i have a problem then, tuff, as there are 10 others who have paid more?
It's not like people are fighting in the forums to help people out anymore is it without offering a mod for sale ( few exceptions )

You're gonna finally make me upgrade from 3.02 aren't ya?

Hi - good news re:CC 3.1.0

Having used it for about 2 months now, I've for the following wish list:

- Product Options: These are a bit strange, and not like other stores I've used.

- Sub-directories for product images in upload. Even with my 101 products, its getting a bit slow to manage them, so I don't know how people with hundreds or thousands get on.

- It's not as quick to place an order as with other carts. I'm thinking about the current sequence:
cart.php?act=cart (view basket)
cart.php?act=step1 (log in or register)
cart.php?act=step2 (view basket again!)
cart.php?act=step3 (verify shipping address & view basket)
cart.php?act=step4 (choose shipping option & view basket)
cart.php?act=step5 (payment selection)

There are many screens that look the same, and I've had reports that its a bit confusing. Could the pages be combined - ie billing and shipping addresses with a simply tick box to make the same?

- Ignore admin in site stats (based on IP address, or cookie?)

- Form 2 email facility for "contact us". I'm sure there are many examples of PHP scripts, but this should be part of the package.

- Clone Product in Admin

- Export/Import Database. I know this is do-able in PhpMyAdmin, but it has been requested a few times and would be a quick way to backup the most important part of the site.

- Text for categories. I can't see a way of doing this in CC at the moment, but it is fairly normal to want some text to describe a category. If there was a RTE text box, we could add pictures and descriptive text for each category.

Thats all I can think of at the moment.
To be honest, the only serious problems I've seen is dealing with large qty of products (images) and my girlfriend was complaining about the options system.

Regards,
Jason

Not sure if its planned, But i would like to see in the product options an option for a Text Box , So that customer can type into it, say for instance to include a message, or to customize the order, Eg name on pen etc..

Export, remove, add, change and import the products and related with them prices.

Its a pain to go around and change the prices one by one

Everyone is around, i think you will regret the suggestions part lol

@gwizard
have you seen the price of that program?

Way out of my budget, i will stick with CC for now

Im sure if Al bumps the price upto £379 you can get that but at 10 times the cost of cubecart now I think not


I will agree on thing tho I to have had comments made on length of shopping cart process.


Over than that she's a beut mate. and worth every penny

@Vrakas and EvilDude

I think you misunderstood my intent.
I didn't meant that this other cart is better or something (it is written in Perl and I hate it), only that it has cool email template system.

I remember one other cart besides the one I mentioned that is open source and also has email template system. In fact, it is the only thing it has.

Just imagine your clients getting beautiful html email with your logo, designed text and all the bells and whistles. Imagine you can edit, design and switch in run time templates.

Is this cool or what ?!

At the moment if you want to add a description page where you don't want to sell stuff but just describe a product or process or instructions you have to use a site doc and mess about trying to add link in a box.
I would like to see an easier method of adding a Html page with link in the menu.
See Bay Tree Florists have a look at the Weddings page, I had to use a site doc and mess about making boxes and links in the code.

Frank

I'd have to totally agree with that.

Cant wait to get my mouse and keyboard on it, hope there is a manual update instructions with it

Hi
I have a few ideas I would like to see in the next versions, maybe they have all been mentioned but here goes

1. I would like to see more affiliate script integration for example Integrating with Post AffiliatePro
2. A way to batch upload productupdate.csv files and automatically it would update prices, categories, products, etc.. Generally import/export from admin area

3. It would be really cool if there was an additional skins added
4. In Adding products an optional field which allows us to add delivery charges on individual items if need be
5. An option to exclude shipping charge on certain products or categories
6. A way to set skin colour from Admin area... I think that was in Version 2
7. A field in General setting (Admin) which allows you to upload the store logo and other bits of graphics like buttons, banners
8. Next and previous product on the main page like for example if there are more than 10 latest products it places a next button at the bottom and allows the customer to scroll through like a front page catalogue
9. An option to enable and disable certain boxes as tick boxes in admin and also to select the order they are listed in and position like we can have a tick box and a drop down menu top, middle, bottom vertical and left center and right for horizontal

This way virtually most of the customisation can be done within the admin area without touching the CSS template files

10. definatly more payment gateways, any idea of the best and cheapest provider for accepting Credit cards??

11. Ahhh how about a Live chat box the adminstrator adds his MSN email address and if he is logged in MSN the customer would be able to click and chat to the store owner

12. In search maybe a little option where the customer can select the range price of products like between £1 to £5 then the search result would product only items between the range of £1 - £5
Maybe something like search by price, search by manufacturer, search by product name, search by product code etc..

13. How about more product type options for example at the moment we accept Tangable and digital products, how about rentable products for those whom rent hosting, property or any services, memberships which may take recurring fees

14. In the customer registration form maybe have an option to take Banking details, paypal email address and even allow the customer to add their own photo, maybe even select their prefered method of payment (in the customer registration form)

15. A lot of the popular mods should come as standard with Cubecart

16. Maybe have the Featured product change every 30 seconds

Ok basically that is me on my way out now but I hope one day to see some of those ideas in later versions and definatly...Integrating the POst Affiliate Pro & PHP Affiliate with store replication so that when a customer signs up as affiliate they get a replicated site like www.domain.com/cubecartshop/xyzaffiliatename would be awsome

Sammy

Not much then



I do this already? I have 3 html templates saved and depending on to whom and subject involved depends which one I copy n paste into source code.



I think what was meant here is improved support where as at the moment if you have a license you can submit a support ticket there may be and extra part for telephone support (remember cubecart is growing)

@ umicom - some nice ideas here but remember this has to be for everyone across the world i think what you are asking basically is to build a cart just for you.

I can't give you any answers to questions like this as nothing has been finalised. Strictly speaking a purchase for a license key doesn't include support at the moment. It's more good will as the price was not designed to reflect support. This is why we have no service level agreement.

As it says in the announcement though existing license keys will work on 3.1.0 for copyright removal. You will only gain features with upgrading so I cant see why anybody would be disapointed.

I don't think people who want to buy CC will want to have to keep purchasing different things to get a great cart. What I mean is I don't want to pay to get the copyright off then see that if I want other features of the cart to be enabled to pay a fee for that too. Why not just put all the bells and whistles together including copyright removal and just up the total price? And say if you don't want to pay anything you can get the basic CC without all the extras and cannot remove the copyright. And if you have allready purchased CC then just pay an upgrade price to get the latest and greatest CC.

Just my two cents.

I second that. Having to use the tabs mod for the time being. Very nice website by the way

I would really hope that anyone who has purchased cubecart allready will be grandfathered in and not forced to pay more for the new features. I have allready put a very large investment in implementing most of the features you say will be in 3.1.0 -- and I would be very dissapointed to have to basicly buy these again to make my cart compatiable and up to date.

I think we should wait for more conclusive details before jumping the gun and assuming the worst.

Maybe I'm missing something... but how about the following:

1 - Ability to charge different Tax based on State and or Zip Code instead of just charing one set tax to everyone.
2 - Clone products
3 - Cleanup the quirky options section
4 - Ability to sort categories (without a mod)
5 - Products in Admin section broken down by catagories
6 - Import / Export into excel
7 - Ability to add boxes via Admin section
8 - Ability to arrange boxes via Admin section
9 - Ability to grant Free shipping once a certain amount is reached in cart
10 - Ability to upgrade from 3.08 to 3.1 without a major restructure, DB update or fear of ruining the current site

I think a lot of people would agree that being able to update with csv files built into the system would be a great plus and help those of us with very large inventory of products. I myself have been hand adding my products for three days and that’s about how many categories I have in place so far. This adding one at a time is bad. And it’s no help with the mod because it don’t work in 3.0.9
Also I seen a post earlier in this forum about adding the mods and then charging access to use them like a fee for each mod you want. I think that would be like cookie cutter script and would cause problems. CC is pretty close to the best now so just add the new features and don’t stick it to people to use them. I mean CC is the best now and at a very low price. I would like to see CC keep that and not go crazy like your competition has.

built in seo mod

better search now if you search for something it brings up pages of stuff that has nothing to do with what you want

Better Stats including can see if they have anything in there cart and what it is view stats updates every refresh

Sale by category

Purchase Without An Account built in

Testimonials

Category Description Option

Choose which items you want to have show on front page

Google Sitemap Generator

Wish List

Ship by Value

All Products Page

Links Manager

How Did You Hear About Us on register

Product Options to Sell Cases as well as singles of products

Email to customer when order placed

cross sell

quick price search

re order categories


Theres A Few Suggestions for ya

Please introduce a plain old textbox option for editing pages. The rich text editor in 3.0.8 and 3.0.9 is extremely problematic for me as the pane is not editable, and instead encapsulates the 404 error page for my Web site.

The URL, while it exists is at:
/_cc309_test/admin/includes/rte/editor/fckeditor.html?InstanceName=copy&Toolbar=Default

Hi

What i like to see is quick check out with out the user not needing to Registration to buy goods from the shop.

Also i like to see so you can put logo's at the botton on shop through admin panel.

Also i like to see Protx gateway updated/

Also more UK couriers mods add like city-link , DL , TNT ect

I think, regarding FCK, that it can safely be replaced by TinyMCE or even HTMLArea.
Both are much faster, have better browser support and produce nicer code in the end.

HTMLArea was discontinued, and then another team started developing a fork called Xinha. Not as fast, but much better.

EDIT: HTMLArea was discontinued for a while, but has now been resurrected it appears.

Hmm, didn't know that,

Xinha is no good. Slow as hell and it has like 100000 files to upload.
It took me more then 30 minutes to upload it on 64kbps adsl.

TinyMCE, on the other hand is very fast, small and efficient.

Thanks I'll consider this. However I have already added the function to turn FCKEditor on and off.

Im not sure if its already been suggested somewhere else, but when a customer orders something...they dont get an email sent to them saying their order has been placed and will be attended to asap....

Because when you order something..it doesnt confirm it or anything, that i know of, i havent used cc all that much yet

This may be difficult to implement, but it would be good if the stock level applied to the product attributes and not just the products. So, for example, is a customer sold out of a particular colour or size of an item it would simply be removed from the product options for that product.

As mentioned, email confirmation and possibly HTML emails as confirmation messages.

I would also like to see more advanced statistics. Daily, weekly, monthy, and annual sales figures. Average order values and such.

I'm setting up my first e-commerce store with cubecart right now, and after firstly trying to get to grips with both Osc and Zen, I can thoroughly congratulate you on creating the most intuitive and mod friendly e-commerce solution available.

I am however, a little apprehensive regarding the future plans for Cubecart. Don't get me wrong, I think it's totally right that the people who have invested time in the product be financially rewarded, but I'm currently at a cross roads of either buying in a number of mods, or waiting for 3.1. The basic things I need are VAT price to be shown, and search by manufacturer. However I don't want to find they will become redundant in about a month, as CC now includes them as standard.

My other concern is regarding the purchase of a license. If I purchase a license, is it then good for all future versions, and if I also purchase the deluxe edition of CC, will that be good for all future versions, or for at least all releases relating to the current release (i.e if I buy the deluxe edition for 3.1 will it also be good for 3.1 - 3.9).

I realise I'm probably jumping the gun a bit with these questions, but as I'm about to invest a lot of time and effort into my cubecart shop, I need to be fairly certain upgrading will be within my price range, and that I'm not going to have to continually invest 100's of dollars just to keep up with the functionality provided by open source alternatives.

As I say, I love cubecart and it would take a price north of $100 per annual release for me to seriously consider going back to the alternatives, but the more estimates and information you could give us at this point, would really help me know where and when to invest my money.

Again, thanks for all your excellent work with cube cart

What I consider more a bug report than a feature request needs to happen. The weight of all the products in a cart is summed and then shipping is calcuated. So if someone buys multiple heavy items that are individually less than the 150 lb UPS weight limit, they get summed and CC then caclulates all of them as a single item which in my case can easily exceed the 150 lb weight limit thus halting the sale. I understand this would require you restructure the shipping system, but as it is now, it does not correctly calculate the shipping cost. There are several threads with the UPS module caclulating the shipping lower than if they go to UPS and get a quote. This may have something to do with it. I know two 5lb packages costs more to ship than one 10lb package.

Lastly, there needs to be more stats and reporting. Someway to find out what your sales are over a specified time period would be a start. You should be able to specify a time period for the stats as well. If I run an add for a certain product, I want to see if there is a spike in traffic for that item over a certain time frame. At least let us export it to excell w/o manually doing it in mysql, building our own tools or having to buy a mod.

This all to me seems like a 1.0 type feature request, so we'll see what happens. I shouldn't have to mod CC to get what I consider basic functionality. Zen/OSC can do all of this, but it's slow as mud and terrible to administor. I have CC now because it's easy to use and runs fast. I just wish it could do more.

I would love to have ALL displayed elements in templates, rather than the co-mingled logic and code. For example, I would love to have more detail shown on the View Products screen, but because the program logic and display elements are mixed together, it's a huge job to modify ... so I gave up.

How handy it would be to just have a template format and a list of variables that can be used for whatever section of the cart you are customizing.

Take this a step further for a reports module ... plus a little guidance ... and everyone can create reports to their own liking with only a template file and a list of variables.

Hi
A few suggestions:
Totally agree with the comments about the number of clicks necessary to reach the end of a checkout - way too many and may be quite confusing.

*Change the output in the checkout process under tax and shipping from n/a (which to me means "not applicable") to "At Checkout". I've done this in my store but think it may benefit customers who think they aren't going to be charged for either but are on the final checkout page.

* In the "Tax" output, include an option to show "Tax included in Total Price" or similar (in brackets) that is shows the amount of tax included/paid but does not add to the total. In Australia, it is common practice for GST (Goods & Services Tax) to be shown so that companies etc have the ability to quickly include the amount in their records for taxation purposes. As it stands I need to set "include tax in prices to "No" so the tax is added at checkout - and the amount paid known - although it would be preferable to include tax in prices yet still show the amount of tax that is paid.

It would be great if this could be an admin option under taxes preferably. I believe other countries (e.g. Canada) would welcome the feature.

A related issue - when you amend the Tax Class in Admin, it would be great if this would automatically amend the text output on checkout/print order form etc. i.e. If I amend the Tax Class from "Tax" to GST, at checkout with this feature you would see "Total GST" Not "Total Tax" and save amending the lang.inc.php and other files.

* I think it would be great instead of the Print Order Form, You had a "Direct Deposit/Internet Banking" Form and a "Credit Card Order Form" and a "Pay by Cheque/Money Order", rather than including all the info in the Print order form.
i.e. There could be a Credit Card Order Form
a Direct Deposit/Internet Banking Form
a Cheque/Money Order Form
so that stores that choose totally manual processing had at least 3 options showing rather than 1 Print Order Form, which may be a little ambiguous when customers are greeted with that option.

* An auto email to customer using the above forms including a tax invoice and full details of the order, plus a thank you message.
* Second the Admin Backup Database option.
I love CubeCart and would be prepared to pay more for a feature rich solution.
Cheers

Thanks folks keep the ideas coming. Development is going well...

when can we get some idea of anythign thats gonna be included and whats gonna need to be paid for

Another suggestion.
The base Cubecart install on logout by a customer shows "Your session has been destroyed". Sounds like an atomic bomb just went off or their computer has been hacked - very tactless in my humble opinion.

I've changed my message to "You have been successfully logged out. Thank you for shopping with Store Name Here!"

Very much more friendly IMO.

Hello,

As was stated in the official announcement, the New CubeCart pricing model has yet to be decided.

An official announcement will be made when a final structure is in place.

Please sit tight.

Thanks.

Some more ideas for 3.1.0+


For people whom own multi-type business or operations in multiple countries

Example for Muti country store
If I had two website one for the UK and one for US customer, both have different categories and products at different prices and a different store logo


example for multi-type store
If I had a company which is into property letting, DIY wholesale, Computer accessories, food stuff
having one site with so many diverse lines could look messy so a simple drop down menu of all the different departments would be really cool, again when the user flicks through it would have a different range of categories, products, prices and different store logo

what would be common between all is one Admin, one checkout, one registration form process


Definatly for payment methods, I feel it would be amazing if we have
Direct Debit bank purchase order form, taking bank account details for subscription based products
Credit card processing or manual credit card should come as standard


For affilate mod
more alternatives like integration with POst Affiliate, PHP affiliate or any other affiliate scripts


Product editing/adding section
The ability to choice the type of product for example having Tangible, Digital ( you already have) how about adding Services (subscription(daily, monthly, annual) & non subscription based )


If I see any or some of this in 3.1.0 I will definatly jump over the moon

Something I've heard from several people.

Nested and expanding site docs so you can use CubeCart to not only to sell from but also use as a website. Most people use CubeCart as an extension to an already existing website. It would be nice for people that don't know a lick of coding to be able to achieve a full website all within CubeCart itself.

Jen

Actually, I though of turning CC to a full scale CMS not so long ago. It was mainly to my frustration with existing solutions and the extremelly bad Hebrew support.

Maybe there is a point in offering 2 licensing schemes, 1 for shop and 1 for cms ? Just an idea.

Talking about languages, Greek was a pain to get working but managed it in the end

In CC ?!
What's so difficult about it ? The fonts ?

I mean, Greek is like all the "normal" languages out there (left-to-right) while Hebrew is right-to-left.
For Greek you don't have to reverse the screen, making virtually all free themes not usable without further customization.

Why me ?

After paying for it, it seems like were goona keep paying for it again.

suggestion for cc3 v3.1
Reviews and ratings from customers
site counter

I also vote for this idea.

Improve the site documents feature a bit and add a news manager to the core release and CC would almost be a shopping cart CMS. And have the search function search products, docs, and news. And add a PHP "snippets" feature (ala Etomite) that allows you to insert any script into a site document to exponentially increase possible functions (and create a whole new category of mods).

Currently I use a CMS app for non-store sites and CC for store sites - this way I might not have to choose.

The shipping feature you're requesting is (in my opinion) anything but standard. All carts have problems with things like this, since there's no one-size-fits-all solution. I don't know of any cart that can intelligently split up packages, but I'm sure that this could be addressed as a mod depending on the specifics of your situation.

I would argue against collecting stats in CubeCart also. This is the type of feature that slows your page response down dramatically and expands your database exponentially. It's also not a trivial addition, since doing stat collection and reporting right (not just throwing some useless numbers and graphs up on the screen) is a real challenge.

I suggest that folks who want real and useful user statistics either install a local stats script (I recommend TraceWatch) or use Google Analytics (new and untested, but very promising).

I do agree with you about showing more cumulative sales and product view stats in the admin area (like osCommerce) - that's something all my clients would like to see. A lot of people who are happy with their online shopping cart program use it for all their sales. We can't expect CubeCart to become QuickBooks, but a bit more reporting would be nice and wouldn't slow it down much in my opinion.

I would like to have multiple stores on my site so that each vendor can add their own products? Is there anything available or bound to be available soon?