jamd

Thanks for taking the time to post this Alan. Reassuring to read it. :(

I guess my main concern is wanting to ensure that their version of cubecart is kept up to date with security patches or bug fixes - but not really knowing how often I'll be needing to do this, and whether it'll be simple replacement file uploads, or spending ages going through the manual change log (because of 3rd party mods) or getting someone with more solid coding knowledge than me to do it. With so many unknowns, it's hard to identify a likely maintenance cost for keeping their site up to date. Does that make sense?

Thanks Roban. Yeah this is kind of the way I was planning to go. Apologies if this is a daft question, but what kinds of changes would you say qualified for ongoing "technical support" for a Cubecart site? Would you include Cubecart upgrades as part of this maintenance agreement, or would you be inclined to charge per-hour for these?

So the cubecart shop you built for your client has been signed off and is live. My two main questions are: 1) what do you think are then the important ongoing maintenance tasks, and 2) what's the usual arrangement you come to with the client for handling them? Do you set up a maintenance contract? (monthly? yearly?) And if so, what do you include in it? - That you'll keep the shop updated with every new CC update? - or every security update? - regular graphical preparation for new products? - ? Or do you just keep tabs on CC releases yourself, and inform your client when there's something to update - charging them on a per-job basis? I know there's no right or wrong answer to these questions, but I'm just curious to hear how some of you handle the ongoing maintenance arrangement.

Erm, me too. I really need a way to set a certain category to be exempt from shipping costs. Has anyone managed to do this or anything like it?

Yes, all the things Subten said. Plus... and this is gonna sound really cheesy... but for me there's just something about the "experience" of using a Mac that I prefer. It goes beyond the fact that it's aesthetically pretty. Apple really seem to have put a lot of thought into the way the operating system, well, operates! Probably really tiny things that you don't even consciously notice, like how forgiving the margin of error is when you click from a menu to a submenu - loads of little things like that, which somehow all add up to make the user experience that much smoother. ALso they've traditionally been much more consistent with their style guidelines in a way that Windows hasn't, so various tasks are more intuitive. But yeah, looks-wise, OSX kicks a$$ too (and that's to say nothing of the hardware!) I remember when XP came out, it was clear MS was trying to copy Apple, but whereas, say, Apple's titlebar gradients were subtle and elegant, Windows used nasty stark ones - kind of like letting a kid loose with Photoshop for the first time, and they go overboard with all the effects! (Sorry, I should stop this now, this thread's supposed to be about Vista! )

That Vista screen showing a diagonal stack of photos is being printed everywhere! Will be interested to see what it's like. I very much doubt it'll turn me away from the Mac though. (Leopard's due out April/May I believe... now that's something I'm looking forward to... )

Just curious - when there's going to be nobody around for a fortnight to fulfil online orders, what do you do? Do you replace the ADD TO CART buttons with a small holiday notice? Or just mention it on the homepage? For those who have designed carts for other people... do you how they announce it (if at all?)

I'd be interested to know if there's a fix for this too as I was just about to start my first Cubecart store (and I have to use Protx Form as the gateway... )

Hi, I'm a relative CC newbie and would really appreciate it if someone would offer their input below as I'm not sure if I've correctly grasped how adding extra pages in CC works.... I would like my site to contain a number of unique-looking static pages that use a different layout to what I'm using for my Site Doc pages. I know there's a mod that lets you have more than one set of Site Docs, but I want to create this particular set of pages from scratch and upload them to the server as actual pages, rather than creating them as Site Docs in the Admin CP. I don't fully understand PHP and sessions/cookies, but I know that I don't want users to lose their session when they go to these new static pages. I want them to be able to dart around the site, between product pages, Site Docs and these other pages I'm creating, and to remain logged in and with their cart contents intact. So my question is: is this possible, or do I have to create them as Site Docs to avoid breaking the session? If it is possible to link to an actual static HTML page without breaking the session... - can the page be .htm or does it have to be .php? - does the page need to contain any particular code to keep the session? - does my hard-coded link to the new page have to have anything appended to the end of the URL to keep the session? - does the page have to be uploaded inside a certain directory to maintain the session? (e.g. the store directory) (I should point out that I experimented with it in a test area and it appeared to work and keep the session, but in all honesty I'm not confident/knowledgable enough to know if that is correct behaviour that I can rely on to work for most users regardless of how their cookies are set-up, or if it's just my browser settings. So anything to confirm or shed light on the above would be greatly appreciated.) TIA.

Hi I have a question regarding session IDs which I hope you can answer.  Do I need to preserve session IDs on any internal links I place within the site? If I create a document/site page through the admin control panel, how can I link to it (perhaps from within the text of another site page) without breaking the session ID? For example, if I have an 'About us' page and want to mention a particular product or another site page (e.g. "please take a look at our 'case studies' page for further info") and obviously link to it, would I need to somehow preserve session IDs in that link? In other (non-cart) software I have used, I simply add a variable after the link eg: <a href="mysite.com/case-studies.htm$session_id">Cases Studies</a>  I guess the question I am asking is, do session IDs have to be preserved, and if so how do I do that? Thanks for your help