jerseyjoe

Where is the debug xml file located? I agree with you VERY STRONGLY that the order processing error message should be more informative. The current one is the functional equivalent of a growling dog at the doorway. All that a visitor wants to do at that point is leave. If someone comes up with a mod to insert a more useful error message, I'd like to see that. Regarding getting PayPal Pro to work . . . A check list that I sugest for PayPal Pro configuration is (1) API Certificate Location: is the PP API Cert text properly installed in the tmp file under the correct name? Trusting the CC Admin config message that says it exists there is not enough. The first time I did that config, I went to the server, created the required tmp folder - and even created a file of the required name. But I did not actually copy the API Cert text into it. Crazy time for a while until I looked into the (empty) file. (2) In the PayPal config, is Enable chosen? I accidentally turned it off by being in that field and then nudging the mouse's scroll wheel. That can change the content of an active drop down field. (3) Gateway Server: is it Live (same possoble error as #2. (4) API Account Name: is it the API name - not the regular PP account name? They are definitely different. (5) API Password: same point as #4. The passwords for the API and the regular PP account are - or at least should be - different. And of course, do the above for BOTH PayPal configs. Good luck

After getting to the brink of abandoning CC (with serious regret) I found a valuable tool for getting PayPal to work. I am assuming that it is the result of having "debug" turned on in the PayPal config CP. If it's not, then what is that "debug" selection for? Look on your server in /store/pear/tmp and you'll find a daily log of PayPal transaction. Go thorugh its dog dinner of code to find a failed transaction.. There is a modest but cogent explanation of each error for failed transactions. Fix that error. Test. In my case, the error that no one could find was that my server needed something called "Curl." As soon a s my Tech Support installed it, PayPal worked.

Regarding reports, for me at least, the definition of reports is still a bit vague. But that doesn't matter. Simply download the free CubeCart and install it on a server or put it on a thumb drive or non-Internet connected computer using Mambo - and then look at the Admin CP. The CC reports, while as verbose as any you will see in other Open Source carts probably are not going to satisfy your treasurer or your marketing people. They are, let's say, "adequate." but not as detailed as your questions suggests will be wanted. But since CC is based on MySQL, you can get detailed transactional reports from a CC strore's dB. But you'll probably want more than that. Find a host that offers the Urchin traffic analysis tools. Your marketing staff will want to know all about who is visiting, how they find you, what they do on your site, where they go when they leave you, etc. See the link to Web Traffic tools on the home page of www.buildinghosting.com. An marketing analysis plan based on the combination of MySQL and Urchin should satisfy even the most sophisticated and demanding needs. As for integration with IPB in the manner you describe, my first thought is that you could take advantage of the newly announced feature in CC3.05 that allows multiple stores on the same server, using the same dB. I have not yet looked at it in much detail but it's an intriguing concept and I am talking with a potential client now about building a retail / wholesale store, each based on the same products but each with different prices, different quantity purchasing, different terms, etc, etc. We're talking about doing it with variations on the URL. One store might be clientdomain.com/retail and the other, behind a password, would be clientdomain.com/wholesale. As you probably know, IPB allows you to assign specific users to specific forae. The forae that a member sees are determined at login, based on what your Moderator has set for that Member or group of Members. You could put the links to one store in one forum and links to another store in another forum. Depending on your budget, I know that Charles and Matt (the owners of IPB) have built a highly profitable business around selling the programming of custom versions of IPB. They probably could provide a totally seamless solution that would integrate multiple forae and multiple stores. They might even do it by starting with CC as the store code. Worth asking them. That also may be worth asking of CC's developer. Brooky has done a superb job of seamlessly integrating a current release of IPB with his various support and promotion services for CC. I can't see way he couldn't do a forum / store integration just as well. I know that he is now working on ramping up his staff and that might be a good project for them to take on under his management. Hope this helps.

With your URL we might see it. But right now, I can't :rolleyes:

Thanks for the comments - and my manhood is still safe. Jen, I agree that color harmony would be nice but the many colors are the unavoidable consequence of the various and colorful products. As it is, the pages do have a color theme based on purple and orange. (That's what the client wants; I can't argue with that.) What appears to be gold in the box title bars is supposed to be the same shade of orange as the logo but I'm having a problem with it because the client also wants the 3-d effect that the graduated title bar uses. I've been tweaking it offline and waiting for client approval. When the darker color is acheived, the reverse color text will be required for legibility. Sir William, I agree about the links around the graphics. But that raises a problem, too. I want to remove those but not remove the blue underlining of the text links. Can't see how to remove the former without also removing the latter - and I think that the blue, underlined text links are needed. Otherwise, a user would learn that the texts are links only by accident - and neither the client nor I want to count on that. The graphics being links is a more likely accidental discovery. Do you know of any way to remove the link color box from the graphics while leaving the text decoration? Roban Good point about the page title but SEO page ranking, especially in Google which accounts for some 90% of searches, now is less about page titles or keywords or metatags and more about links and popularity. The client intends an aggressive online marketing, using Google Adwords, to draw traffic, As part of the hosting package, she gets six different web traffic analysis tools, including Urchin (now owned by Google) which does an excellent job of monitoring promotional efforts. Phantom Menace Ahhh - you caught me not finishing the links. There are also two more grahics coming to fill in the third row. I'm waiting for the client OK of the layout before doing the finishing work. I am expecting that the client will want some changes. So I did just enough to show her the layout - and will finish after she has her final say. Again, thanks to all for incisive and intelligent comments. They will come in handy. I'm starting another store project in a few days, just before I leave for a month in Australia and a week in Malaysia. I'll be working off my laptop most of way and may even start a thrird CC store in late November. The learning curve for CC was steeper than I'd expected but worth the climb. Joe Regards, Joe

You point is well taken. To clarify my copyright concern, one of the rotating banners contained a good graphic of Donald Duck and Betty Boops. (now there's a Power Couple!) but it was not an illustration of a product. Joe

I saw a few images (Donald Duck and a few others) in the rotating banner that may be copyright violations. Disney is highly jealous of its franchise and has a history of going to law without much advance warning. Also, I don't agree with building a hi-resolution page when there are still hundreds of millions of people with money to spend who have their screens set for 800 by 600. The forced left-to-right scroll is well known as a session killer. Otherwise, it's a nice clean design, but a bit cramped. Have you considered removing the right hand column of boxes? While they are sometimes useful, I think they are often expendable. To retain them just because they are available is not much in the way of justification.

In the film "Tea and Sympathy" the abused wife of a bullying headmaster seduces an early teenaged student whom her husband has publicly humiliated and called a "sissy boy" because he refuses to play football. Her seduction restores the boy's shattered sense of manhood and gets even with her nasty husband. Before pulling him into bed, she cautionsthe boy, "Some day, when you speak of this to others . . . and you will . . . be kind." With that advice in mind - but without either tea or sympathy or anything else - please look at my first CC. There are products to be added but the look and feel has been accepted by the client, so I think my design work is done. http://www.vikolya.com/store/ Thanks, Joe

In honor of Sir William's contribution of an improved admin email, I am attaching my version of the language file. For those of you not familiar with its function, this file contains many of the words and phrases that the user and an administrator sees during the course of using CC3. I've changed many of the obscure or technical phrases to something more palatable. For example, howlers such as, "Your session has been destroyed" are now a more understandable, "You have been logged out." Also, I've installed American spellings (colour = color). And fixed a few obvious spelling errors such as, "containg" is now "containing." I've corrected punctuation errors, an issue not well understood or appreciated by programmers. "Sorry that is not . . . " is now "Sorry, that is not . . . " and sentences that begin with a condition clause "If you wish that can be blah blah" is corrected to "If you wish, that can be . . . " For those who do not understand why punctuation matters, I strongly suggest they read the funniest and most informative book on the subject, "Eats, Shoots, and Leaves." Split infinitives have been corrected. I've taken a few broader liberties with entire sentences, usually to move them from the passive voice to the active. Enjoy! lang.inc.php

winner? I solved it myself and not happy that it happened in the first place. I cam within a few hours of having refund to my client and losing not only the fee but the many hours I have invested in the project. As it is, in a desperate effort to isolate the problem, I took the store and the MySQL dB totally off the server, abandoning many, many hours of tedious adding of products, installed a fresh copy of 3.05 and then spent too much time, even from 2:00am today through 9:30 discovering and fixing the problem. Now, although the sun is shining out side for the very first time in 14 days of non-stop "cow pissing on a flat rock" rain, I must sit here and reinstall all those photos and products and descriptions. I'm not at all a happy camper because this should not have happened in the first place. CC is still a toy until it has an adequate set of docs that spell out such issues. I did learn one piece of wisdom that belongs in the installation instructions in BIG BOLD LETTERS. FIRST THING TO DO AFTER INSTALLATION IS CREATE A .01 TEST PRODUCT, THEN CONFIGURE THE OPERATIONS OF YOUR STORE (GATEWAYS, SHIPPING, ETC.) - AND USE THE FORMER TO TEST THE LATTER. UNLESS YOU ARE A MASOCHIST, DO NOT INSTALL YOUR INVENTORY UNTIL YOUR HAVE THE CHECKOUT SYSTEM FUNCTIONAL AND FULLY TESTED.

OK, problem solved. No one claimed the $100. The two issues, perhaps of use to someone else, were that lack of "curl" and using the account holder's PayApl account pw - not thye (different) API pw.

I'm putting that offer on temporary hold. But it may be revived shortly. If you are a "taker", subscribe to this thread and you get notice if and when it is. I have made a small bit of progress that may be of use to others. In the Pear folder on the site's server there is a log of PayPal actions. In looking at it, I found each of the failed attempts were detailed. The error message said that the failures are at the PayPal API because the server from which the payment attempt was launched lacks "Curl." A response from CC Tech Support regarding this said, "PayPal API required Curl to be enabled on your server. You'll have to asking your hosting company to enable it with SSL support." (There's yet another argument for a set of docs that would have explained that server configuration requirement.) So that was done. But the payment still did not go through (As I said, minor progress). The error message from PAyPal's API now says that the usere name and passwrod are incorrect. I'm guessing - and hoping that maybe someone can confirm - that the name/pw they are rejecting is what is configured in the CC Gateway page. Now for a sanity check - In the field "API Account Name:" I put the name taken from the PayPal notification of the account setup, obviously based on the payee's email address, something like, "payeename.api01.payeeips.com". That's what I've got in that field. But Paypal is rejecting that. I've also tried it with the plain email address - same error. Sugestions?

See my messsage posting a $100 reward for a solution to "order failed". I'm at a dead end here. CC support says it can't find a reason why and PayPal Merchant Services declines to look at the problem because CC violates the PP TOS that a cart may not require registration.

I will pay $100 to the first person who can debug and fix a CC 3.05 that will not accept PayPal Pro orders. The store has a valid API Cert installed. CC Tech Suppprt says it can find no cause for "your order failed." PayPal Merchant Services will not look at the problem because CC violates PayPal TOS by requiring registration before the payment call is submitted to PP. I am about to lose a client and many hours invested in this project. If you solve the problem before 10pm Saturday night, (Eastern Daylight Time in USA, I will pay $100 immediately on success. No success; no payment. Since this will require giving you access to the server, and I'm not going to hand this out to more than one person, I will need some convincing that you are capable. PM me if you think you can do it and tell me why you are the fixer.

I wish I coud report that the above solved my problem with "the cryptic "order failed" message in 3.05. I've gone through all the seteps above and still get the same frustrating message.

If that is so then there is a serious problem. I have a 3.05 store that will not process orders using the PayPal API. It fails at the PP payment step. The API Certificate seems to be properly installed. CC support says they cannot find a reason PayPal Merchant Support has declined to look at the issue because it violates their TOS. If CC cannot and PP will not solve the problem, I'm at a dead end with a dis-functional store and an increasingly restless client who wants a working store that uses the PP Pro account she is paying for. She has told me that if I can't build her a functional CC store, she wants to abandon CC and build a PayPal Store. Sad, too sad.

That means that the download is invalid or corrupted. Have you tried repeating the download?

I urgently need to remove registration from CC3.04 I have a store installed and PayPal Pro activated. An API Certificate is installed and properly configured (confirmed by PayPal Technical Support (not the same thing as PP Merchant Services). CC Support is unable to tell me why an order cannot be processed. It stops at the Payment stage. I'm getting the error saying only the order failed, which is useless in troubleshooting. PayPal Merchant Services says they will not help because the store requires registration, which they cite as a violation of their TOS. Broky suggests that I upgrade to 3.05 but until I see all the 3.05 installation and upgrade problems that are reported here resolved I don't see any point in upgrading from 3.04. Also, the 3.04 to 3.05 upgrade guide is silent on the issue of confirming that I will not lose all the skins and products and images (we're looking at 50 hours of work there) - more hassle that I just do not need at this point. So I have choice but to remove registration, which I hope will not aggravate the problem. If that can be done, at least there's a chance PP/MS will troubleshoot the problem. BTW, the "we cannot ship to your country" error that CC support fixed in 3.03, is back again because I followed the steps to upgrade to 3.04 by replacing lines in fields and I guess one of them restored the bug. I am one hour way now from a meeting with a greatly disappointed web site owner. All in all, this is not looking good.

I was going to stay out of this thread because the issues appears to be low price and I do not seek out clients for whom price is a major issue. But the remark, "most hosting companies screw you, or have plans that are big budgeted," requires responsible comment. An ignorant remark like that should be consider in the light of the source and the questionable status of the "service" promised. I have been hosting web sites since January, 1994, have clients in 5 countries and a better than 90% retention rate. I am at the high end as regards fees, $240 per year, which I require be paid in advance annually. I provide intensely responsive and personal service. My clients are almost exclusively businesses, not personal or hobbyists' playgrounds, although all get the same level of service and support. Any successful business owner will tell you that a dependable supplier is as equally important as a customer. Price is not the most important issue. Dependability is the last word that I would think of in regard to the offer from the wife's servers. You, sir, are running a dubious business built upon sand. You are proposing to charge someone for the use of her employer's equipment and service. While employee benefits there may be generous to the point of being lax, and the equipment and connection may have high capacity, I doubt very much that the employer approves of you building a business on their servers. The liability issues alone should scare the hell out of someone "upstairs," not to mention security concerns. And if they truly do not care, well wave a red flag high because there will yet be a day of reckoning at that "business." It's just not how a sound business is operated. Further, if your wife loses her job, any web sites she is sheltering probably will be shut down even as Security shows her the door. And it is very possible that this activity could be the proximate cause of that. I am not posting my hosting company name here because I do not need to use this venue for self-promotion.

The upgrade folder for 3.05 contains every kind of an upgrade readme except 3.03 to 3.05. Must I do this in baby-steps, .03 to .04 and then 04 to .05 or is there a way to upgrade directly in one step?

With all the back and forth and sideways in this thread, it's almost impossible to figure out what will solve the problem. May I ask that whoever has done so write a step by step tutorial? > CC3 Admin > Shipping > field ???? etc. TIA

Well, I guess that's the end of that idea. But I think that those Moderators lack an understanding of the purpose of sub-Forums - and seem to be unware of the huge number of misplaced and off-topic posts that clog up the system. As for the issue of flooding Brooky, I did not suggest that. I think the (closed) mindset of those who oppose a reorganization of the forums into something more useful is embodied in that egregious chracterization. Unfortunate. To the contrary, my posting made it clear that the intent was and is to take a burden off him. And the purpose of suggesting input from others is to invite participation in a democratic manner and am offerring to work with those whom Brokky approves of, while avoiding an impression that I was trying to take over. Sometimes I really dislike groups. The opportunity for misunderstanding and posturing is too enticing for some. I'll put on my asbestos pants now before clicking on "add reply."

OK, I know how to do it. I did that by applying a rule that I learned in in the US Army back in 1953. "To remove s**t from boot, read the instructions printed on the sole of the boot." In this instance, the sole of the boot is on the apps Wiki at: http://wiki.fckeditor.net/Developer%27s_Gu...igurations_File Specifically it says: "Important: remember to clear your browser cache when making changes to the configuration files, otherwise you may not see your changes. If you are using Internet Explorer, hitting CTRL + F5 should suffice to fetch the latest versions of the script. No need to manually clear the browser cache. If you are using Firefox or other Mozilla's children, hitting Shift+CTRL + R should fetch the latest version with no need to clear the cache (although this method doesn't seem to work at all times, if this fails clear cache manually)." Once I tilted my boot, or in other words, once I cleared my cache per those instructions, I now have a editor window that is a usable 600px high. Why the default is set for a mail slot is something for another day.

I'm confused. Not that this condition is news to anyone. I can stand through a half-dozen cycles of Walk / Don't Walk, bemused by redundancy in a situation where only one or the other is sufficient. So I opened both of the suggested files. The only setting I could find that might affect the height of the editor window was a single cryptic "height" setting that was set at 200. 200 what? is my first question. 200 kumquats is more than my digestive system can process without abdominal distress. If it means 200 dollars, or better yet, 200 Euros, added to my bank account, that might be OK. Is it 200 furballs? Yech. Without a label, it's 200 nothings. But since it is the only game in town, I changed it to 600. In both files. Installed them on the server, went back to the Editor in CC admin, refreshed . . . and guess what? 200 nothing still equals 200 nothing. The editor appearance was unchanged. Does anyone have specific info on exactly which line(s) must be edited to cause the editor window to grow? Maybe Alice has some of that cookie to share? TIA

On reflection, I agree that my list is way too detailed. A simple split into three to five sub-Forums would be a good start. I've written privately to Brooky offering to help facilitate the re-organizing ansd to try to form a group of experienced users to act as Moderators (the default in IPB for second level administration) who would comb through the CC3 GS forum ands re-assign topics to the new su-Fourms. For those not familiar with administering IPB, it's a pretty simple thing to do, but the work that is needed here can be tedious and repetitous. For that reason, it might be helpful if more than one Moderator work on any specific sub-Forum. I also suggested that the participants in the work be given access to a private hidden form where the details can be worked out amongst those involved. IPB does a very good job of such an arrangement Although I have a great deal of IPB experience, I'm sure there are others here who are more qualified than I and if Brooky wants to appoint one of them to administer the reorganization I would still be willing to help at any level requested by that leadership. His response was that he is extremely busy but did not specifically respond to the offer. It probably would help him look at the idea favorably if he heard that there is a broad base of support from those willi8ng to share the work. Towards that end, those who agree with the need might take the time to send their suggestions to Brooky in PMs. Joe