We have been hosting Zen Cart sites for years and have found that the ability to customize Zen Cart with the many readily available open source add-ons and modules to be of great benefit to our customers.

Tying Zen Cart and Amazon together

When one of our customers decided to outsource his product fulfillment to Amazon the free module, “Checkout by Amazon Zen Cart Plug-in”, caught his eye.

Amazon in the marketplace

Amazon is really a friendly 500 pound gorilla when it comes to e-commerce. Not only do they hope that other merchants will sell products on-line, they make it easy to take payments and get your product delivered too. In reality these are two separate features which work differently.

Checkout by Amazon

Checkout by Amazon allows you to process your payments via Amazon’s credit card processing system. It expects the merchant to fulfill the orders.

Fulfillment by Amazon

Fulfillment by Amazon adds a fulfillment service to Checkout by Amazon. This allows merchants to accept payments via Amazon’s credit card processing system and also leverage the delivery and warehousing power of Amazon. This allows you to maintain control of content, SEO and marketing of your products using your own website, and have Amazon do all the grunt work.

It’s all in the name

At first glance it appeared that the “Checkout by Amazon Zen Cart Plug-in” would handle this for him, but during actual implementation we found otherwise. After trying several things to get this Zen Cart add on to work we realized that “Checkout by Amazon Zen Cart Plug-in” does not support Fulfillment by Amazon. This was documented in a small one line comment in one of the module files using the acronym “FBA”. In other words this module was doing exactly what it’s name implied, “Checkout by Amazon”.

A minor tweak

After researching how this module talks to Amazon and what Amazon expects we came up with an easy solution that requires minimal modification to the add-on and your products. Here are our notes as to what we changes need to be made to the following plugin for Zen Cart.

Base Module: FULLFILLMENT by AMAZON – CHECKOUT BY AMAZON PLUGIN v1.0 FOR ZEN CART 1.3.9e
These changes to Checkout by Amazon will allow you to use Fulfillment by Amazon instead of just Checkout by Amazon.

In order to use Fulfillment by Amazon instead of Checkout you will need to make the following changes after you install the add-on to Zen Cart.

1. We ignored the option to call the module via a cron job as all orders fulfilled by Amazon end up at Amazon in their order system.
2. In your Zen Cart Products each model number must match the Amazon Fulfillment Part number. This is set or assigned at the time you add the part to Amazon’s Fulfillment System.
3. Make the following changes to the installed add-on.

In file: checkout_by_amazon/checkout_by_amazon_constants.php, after Line 39 add 1 line:
Before:
// types of fulfillment
define("MERCHANT_FULFILLMENT", "MERCHANT");

After:
// types of fulfillment
define("MERCHANT_FULFILLMENT", "MERCHANT");
define("AMAZON_FULFILLMENT", "AMAZON_NA");

In file: checkout_by_amazon/button_generator.php, make the following changes:
Near line 93:
Before:
$xmlBuilder->Element('SKU', substr($item[id], 0, MAX_SKU_LEN));

After:
// $xmlBuilder->Element('SKU', substr($item[id], 0, MAX_SKU_LEN));
$xmlBuilder->Element('SKU', substr($item[model], 0, MAX_SKU_LEN));

Near Line: 127
Before:
// FulfillmentNetwork settings - Hardcoded for merchant fulfillment as we do not support FBA at present
$xmlBuilder->Element('FulfillmentNetwork', MERCHANT_FULFILLMENT);

After:
// FulfillmentNetwork settings - Hardcoded for either merchant fulfillment or Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA)
// $xmlBuilder->Element('FulfillmentNetwork', MERCHANT_FULFILLMENT);
$xmlBuilder->Element('FulfillmentNetwork', AMAZON_FULFILLMENT);

Limitations

1. At this time ALL products sold and processed via Fulfillment by Amazon must be fulfilled by Amazon.
2. The Model number MUST match Amazons Fulfillment number.

Future possibilities

It may be possible to have both Fulfilled by Amazon and Merchant Fulfilled items in one order. This has not been investigated and is left as an exercise to those who follow.

Disclaimer

Unless otherwise stated, the software, scripts, code snippets or code modifications on this site are provided “as-is,” without any express or implied warranty of merchantability or fitness for any particular purpose. In no event shall Plateau Ltd. dba Active-Server.com, be held liable for any damages arising from the use of the software, scripts, code snippets or code modifications.

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IMAP, POP and SMTP Protocols

These are  three different methods or protocols used to handle email. The are used to either receive (IMAP, POP) or send (SMTP) email.

Receiving email – a simple overview

When someone sends you an email it moves from their email client to their mail server. Their mail server then uses the recipient email address to determine where the mail is supposed to go and delivers the email to your mail server.

These two mail servers may exists as part of a hosting package, be provided by their ISP or be a paid for free 3rd party mail service and can even be the same server. They can be around the world or in the same building where you work.

Your mail server stores the received email in a mailbox until your mail client asks for it. This is where IMAP and POP enter the picture.

IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) and POP (Post Office Protocol)

IMAP and POP are the two most prevailing methods or protocols for retrieving email from a mail server. Both of these protocols are supported by almost all popular mail client programs like Outlook, Thunderbird and Apple Mail.

When your mail client reads an email it can either download the email from the mail server to your local desktop and delete it from the mail server, or just allow you to see the email contents, without saving it locally, similar to your viewing a webpage. In the first case, where you download an email to your local machine, POP is used. In the second case, where you view the email, it actually stays on the mail server.

Main differences

POP – Downloads email locally

IMAP – Mail is stored on the mail server

Benefits and disadvantages

There as benefits and disadvantages to using either protocol.

Recommendations

In almost all cases we recommend that our customers use POP for reading their email.
 

Sending Emails

In either case, POP or IMAP, when you send an email you will use some form of SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol), which totally different from IMAP and POP.
 
When you click on send on an email message the mail client contacts the SMTP server that is part of your mail service. The server authenticates you using your login id and password and receives the email message from your client. The mail server then looks up the recipient’s mail server and passes the message to that server. Your mail client then places the sent email in either your local sent mail folder or in the case of IMAP the sent email folder on the server.
 

** Benefits of Hosted Exchange Server

Our unlimited Hosted Exchange Service works similar to IMAP in that you keep all your messages on the mail server. It overcomes the quota limitations as well as the offline reading of email, when used with the latest version of Outlook (free with Hosted Exchange). You can also share a mailbox and allow others to send email on your behalf.
If you want large mailbox quotas, need to share a mailbox or want to be able to read email anywhere then we highly recommend moving to our Hosted Exchange Service.

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Back in the day when a hacker was a computer geek who did no evil and spam was a meat product popular in Hawaii and rural America one could send email through anyone’s mail server without them caring.

Those days are gone and almost every mail server requires some sort of authentication. Even so at times it becomes necessary to send email without authenticating, like when using a document scanner that does not support email authentication.

Possible Solutions

1. Upgrade the firmware in your scanner to allow authentication when emailing documents.
2. A few ISPs still have a mail server, called a smarthost that allows sending email without authentication. This mail server is only available to their customers and you may need to call their helpdesk in order to be able to use it.
3. If you need to send email to a single user, setup the scanner to send mail as that user to that user and then use that user’s mail server as the server you connect to when the scanner sends email.

When Nothing Else Works – Make a Limited Open Relay

If none of the above are feasible then you can enable Sendmail to allow unauthenticated relaying from a specific IP address. This of course requires that you have a static IP address.

These instructions are specific to our Linux Virtual Private Servers and Linux Managed Private Servers.

ssh into the server and su – root    
cd /etc/mail    

*** Create a bacxkup copy of the file sendmail.mc ***

edit (using your favorite editor, like vi):  sendmail.mc 

look for  the line:    
dnl FEATURE(`relay_mail_from')dnl 

change it to read (or add it if it is not in the sendmail.mc file):    
FEATURE(`relay_mail_from')dnl 

Save your changes 

Recompile your Sendmail configuration file by typing: Make 

Edit the file “access” located in the same /etc/mail  folder. 
Add a line that reads:    Connect:XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX                     RELAY 
Where XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX is the IP address for your internet connection 

Hash the file so it can be used by Sendmail, type:
makemap hash < access access.db 

Restart  Sendmail using
   service sendmail restart 

Next, setup your scanner to use your Linux Virtual Server to send mail.

Test your changes by seeing if you can scan and email a document

Be Careful

A few words of caution:

• If your local IP address changes it will stop working.
• Doing the above may allow a sophisticated spammer to relay mail through your mail server.
• Your mail server may get blacklisted.
• If your mail server because an open relay you may be forced to remove the above changes or in a worst case your Linux Virtual Private Server could be disabled or terminated.

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Facebook has over 500 Million active users and at least one of this is one of your customers. By adding a Facebook page for your business you are giving yourself an opportunity to reach out to these customers and also find new customers. Social Media is a large part of SEO and Facebook is just one part of it, so think of it as a billboard on the super highway.

If you already have an account you want to use, skip to step 3, otherwise let’s get started!

1. Create an Account on Facebook: If you do not already have a personal account, or wish to use a separate login from your personal account create a new account on Facebook. Note: having multiple accounts on Facebook is a violation of their policy.
2. Skip all the profile setup pages: You will want to come back and adjust your security settings, but for now skip all these steps.
3. Create a Page: At the bottom of your Facebook page there is a menu item, “Create a Page”, click on it.
4. Page Type: Facebook currently presents you with 6 types of pages. For most businesses one of the 1st 3 will work best.
    

   Facebook Pages for Businesses

   	Local Business or Place	Company Organization  or Institution	Brand or Product
   Basic Info	Business Category  Name; Address	Business Category  Name; Address; Founded	Business Category  Name; Address; Founded
   Detailed Info	Hours; About; Description; Prices Range; Parking	About; Description; Mission; Awards; Products;	About; Company Overview; Description; Mission; Awards; Products
   Contact Info	Email; Phone; Website	Email; Phone; Website	Email; Phone; Website

    

   Facebook Pages for Individuals, Groups or Causes

   	Artist, Band or Public Figure	Entertainment	Cause or Community
   Basic Info	Personal Info	Name; Address	About
   Detailed Info	Biography; Awards; Interests; Gender	Personal Information; Birthday; Biography;Awards; Affiliation; Interests; Gender	Description
   Contact Info	Email; Phone; Website	Email; Phone; Website	Website

    

5. Use Facebook as a page: Once you have created you page you can “use” Facebook as a page.

   This will allow you to edit your information or the page.

6. Tell ALL your friends and customers.

Additional to do items:

1. Promote your Facebook page with a “like” link on your website.
2. Promote your Facebook page on your emails, letters, invoices, etc.
3. Using facebook aps to promote your business.
4. Advertising on Facebook.

References:

1. Facebook active users – press room statistics
2. Facebook for Websites
3. Facebook Samples and How-Tos

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One way to protect your email address is to use Contact Privacy with your domain registration. This allows official domain related emails to get to you while blocking spammers from getting your email address. If your domain is registered through us you can have contact privacy added at no additional charge. This is something you control via the domain control panel.

Effective today, we’re making a minor change to how domains protected by Contact Privacy appear in public WHOIS records. This change will have no impact on the way Contact Privacy functions.

The listed registrant for domains protected by Contact Privacy will now appear as ‘Contact Privacy Inc. Customer #####’ (where #### is a unique numeric string associated with each registrant). Previously, the listed registrant was simply ‘Contactprivacy.com’.

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Pros

• Absolute control of the cost. If your budget is $0.00 and you have a lot of time on your hands this may make sense
• This allows you to exercise your creative talents which can be a reward in itself.
• Your site will look and feel exactly the way you want it to look.
• If you must have it done right now this may make sense.

Cons

• A poorly designed site looks amateurish and may turn away customers.
• Site navigation may not allow your customers to find what they are looking for.
• Web design requires a complex skill set including the use of HTML tags, search engine optimization and tools.
• Profession web design tools can be expensive.
• You have to know how to upload your site and any changes via FTP.
• The learning curve – if you don’t know what you are doing it might never get done.

Tools

Tools can be broken down into 3 categories: Page or HTML Editors, Graphic Design Programs and Publishing Tools. There can be overlaps in some of the tools like Page Editors and Publishing Tools. The following lists include both free and commercial tools
.

HTML or Page Editors

• Komodo Edit $0.00 – While this free and open source editor makes writing code easy it may not be the best tool for a beginner.
• CoffeeCup HTML Editor $0.00 to $49 – Designed for those getting started in Web Design the free version is only a text editor. To get the full WYSIWYG experience you need to purchase the Full Version CoffeeCup HTML Editor
• SeaMonkey all-in-one internet application suite $0.00 – Supported by the Mozilla Foundation SeaMonkey includes a browser, mail client and web design tools.
• Amaya Web Editor for WIndows, Mac and Linux $0.00 – Hosted by W3C the organization which sets the standards for Web Design and Applications.
• Adobe Dreamweaver $399 – This is the most popular web development tool with professional web designers.

Graphic Editors

• Photoshop $699 to $999 – The tool of first choice for graphics artists.
• Adobe Illustrator for the Web $599 – A professional tool for designing vector graphics.
• Paint Shop Photo Pro $99.99 – Many designers start with this tool and then upgrade to Photoshop. There are many tutorials available for using it for web site graphic design.
• Free Graphics Software list at About.com

Publishing Tools (FTP Software)

• FileZilla $0.00 – This is what we use when we need to FTP pages outside of our development environment. The price is right and it does everything most web designers need. Versions for both Windows and MAC are available.
• Comparison of various other FTP software at Wikipedia

Skill Sets – Learning how to do it

The following list gives links to several websites which provide HTML design tips, tutorials and advice. This list is not complete and will probably be added to as time goes on.

• Getting started with HTML
• Web Design Basics at About.com
• w3schools free tutorials
• W3C Web Design and Applications
• Smashing Magazine
• Net Tuts+ Tutorials
• Web Designer Wall – Tutorials
• A List Apart

This is too much for me!

Overwhelmed by all this? We can help you with small changes to an existing site, a design of a new site or a complete redesign of your existing website. Contact contact our Help Desk and let us know what needs to be done. Someone will get back to you within one working day to provide a free quote.

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Once you have WordPress installed and setup as a both a CMS and blog you need to think about your website design, Look and Feel. There are several ways to go about this, but they all start with your deciding what you want your site to look like.

If you already have a website and just want to move it to WordPress as a CMS you will need to create a theme for it, which is a little beyond the scope of this article. The WordPress.org site offers substantial theme documentation.  If you need assistance with this we have web designers that can do it for you, just contact our helpdesk. If this is a new site design your job is a little harder as it takes time and effort to decide how you want your site to look. Luckily there are resources out there that make your job easier as many sites provide WordPress themes at little or no cost.

Some WordPress theme resources:

• The WordPress Site – over 1,200 themes to choose from
• WordPress Lover’s Site
• Free Theme Layouts
• Google Search – Free WordPress Themes

Related posts:

1. WordPress as a CMS? Maybe, maybe not. (Intro)
2. Word Press as a CMS (Part 1)
3. Word Press as a CMS (Part 2)

The following updates will be sent out to all Apache shared hosting servers beginning on Jan 27, 2010.

Email Messages Routed to Spam Bug Fix

Code updated so that blacklisted email addresses do not result in all email messages from that domain to be routed to SPAM. Now, when a customer adds an email like Joe@a_real_domain to a blacklist, other email messages from that domain will make it past the blacklist. Previously, when a customer added Joe@a_real_domain to their blacklist, email messages from others like jack@a_real_domain would go to trash. This update fixes that problem.

MySQL V5 UPGRADE PROCESS—NEW INFORMATION

We have added a knowledgebase article on how to

upgrade to MySQL 5

SpamAssassin EMERGENCY Patch

(Already implemented)

SpamAssassin had a scoring rule bug that caused some email messages sent after January 1, 2010 to be incorrectly labeled as “spam.” This fix ensured that the spam scoring for all customers returned to 2009 levels. It was patched on January 6, 2010.

Calendar 8 Rollback

Due to an unresolved bug in Calendar 8, the feature has been pulled from this release. An upgraded version of Calendar 8 will be offered in a subsequent release.

Added Gallery2 to Control Panel Features

The Gallery feature on the Control Panel has been joined by Gallery2, so customers can manage picture files using MySQL (Gallery1 does not use MySQL). For more information about Gallery, see: http://gallery.menalto.com/. VSAP updated for this feature.

Note: Gallery 2 requires MySQL to function. It will not be visible in accounts that have MySQL disabled. A few strings were added to the English and Japanese versions to the website.xml and global.xml files in association with this feature.

Upgraded Site Search

The Swish-e feature (Labeled as Site Search on the Control Panel) has been updated to version 2.4.7. This version is available to any customer that is not using Site Search at this time. Current Site Search users will have to delete the following files to use the new version:

/usr/home/userid/index.swish
/usr/home/userid/swish.conf
/usr/home/userid/www/htdocs/sitesearch.html
/usr/home/userid/www/cgi-bin/query.pl
/usr/home/userid/www/cgi-bin/query.pl

Customers will then go to their Control Panel to install Site Search again. After deleting the files and redoing the install, customers can use the newer version. For more information about Swish-e, see: http://swish-e.org/

Note: The files strings/website.xml and strings/global.xml were modified in association with this feature.

Update phpMyFAQ

Updated code so that customers could upgrade to phpMyFAQ v2.5.4. New phpMyFAQ customers will get this version when they install the feature. Current phpMyFAQ customers must back up their phpMyFAQ content before installing the current version. To perform the upgrade, current customers must access phpMyFAQ through their Control Panel, uninstall phpMyFAQ, and then reinstall the application to use v2.5.4. For more information, see: http://www.phpmyfaq.de/changelog.php

WordPress Bug Fix

Updated code so that WordPress will not display if MySQL is disabled for the account.

FTP Latency Bug Fix

Updated code so that there is no long wait time when a customer initiates an FTP request and when the Control Panel allows them to actually use FTP.

Urchin Default Settings Update

Updated code so that customers can set the default installation locale of Urchin in the Branding System.

Upgraded ShopSite Update Button

Customers can now click a link in the Control Panel to upgrade their ShopSite 9 accounts to ShopSite 10. Once a customer upgrades to ShopSite 10, they will not be able to roll back to version 9. For more information about ShopSite, see: http://shopsite.com/news_10_0_released.html.

Changelog

Updated the “What is New” file.

File Manager Updates

Added a feedback message and character rules to File Manager so customers will know if they fail in their attempt to create a directory. This fix also includes a change so that the following characters cannot be used in a file name: | : * < > ? / ” \

Fixed a bug where File Manager was allowing double quotes in a file name. A customer now sees an error message when they attempt to create a file name with double quotes.

UserID Field in Web Access Bug Fix

Code updated so that customers cannot use double quotes when creating a userID in the WebAccess feature.

View CSR in Digital Certificate Bug Fix

Code updated so that customers can view the digital certificate CSR without scrolling to the bottom of the page.

Apache Error Logs (Lumberjack) Bug Fix

Lumberjack Error Logs were not being populated in certain accounts. This fix corrects the issue.

Note: Apache Restart is needed for this fix.

Email Updates/Bug Fixes

Updated rc.whitelist, so that customers can create a WhiteList entry that will not be blocked by the RBL settings.

Updated Blacklist so that the proper Whitelist entries make it to the customer’s IN box; when a Blacklist entry is made, the entry was causing email messages associated with certain whitelist entries from making it past the filters.

Updated Code so that qmail-smtpd will check tmlocals AFTER it checks locals.

Updated Code so that email addresses with multiple periods (…) display correctly in Webmail.

Updated dovecot mail log size to 100mb, enabling the logs to rotate out less frequently.

Customize Account Feedback Message

Customers can now brand the feedback message for a new string in associated with Task Manager, in account.xml

HTML Tags in Welcome Message

Customers can now add HTML code to the welcome message in the Control Panel.

Note: This notification reflects the best knowledge of code and feature updates for this release. Changes may occur and those will be documented in new notifications. These updates may reflect code changes/additions or edits that increase the accuracy of this report. We might make improvements and/or changes in the product(s) and/or the program(s) described here at any time.

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I am going to assume you have WordPress installed on your virtual server which can either be done via the control panel or manually.  This posting is focused just on setting up WordPress as a workable CMS and a blog. I am not going to delve into plugins, the template design, menus or other Word Press settings.

1. Create a page called “Home” which will be your website’s main or home page.

   

   By way of example, if you were to browse directly to our Linux Virtual Private Servers site using just the URL: http://www.linux-virtual-servers.com the “Home” page will be displayed.

2. Add a second page called “Blog” which will act as a placeholder for your blog, which will then be located at:

   http://www.yoursitename.com/blog/

3. Next you have to tell WordPress what pages to use for your CMS Home Page and also where the blog is located.
   1. Under Settings select “Reading.”
   2. Click the “Static Page” radio button.
   3. Select “Home” for the FrontPage.
   4. Select “Blogs” for the Posts Page
   5. Click on Save Changes.



WordPress will now display the “Home” page as your sites “Home” page.
It will display your blog entries at:  /blogs/

4. There is one more step needed, which is to set your permalinks custom setting.
   There are several options which can be used, such as:
   /blog/%postname%
   or
   /blog/%category%/%postname%
   or
   /%category%/%postname%
   There is a link at the top of the Permalink Settings page to that shows many other options.

This is really all there is to it, your Word Press install is now both a CMS system and a Blog. To add pages to your site just create a new page and publish it.

Related posts:

1. Word Press as a CMS (Part 1)
2. WordPress as a CMS? Maybe, maybe not. (Intro)
3. WordPress as a CMS (Part 3)

Problem: WordPress  versions 2.85 and below allow unrestricted file uploads and arbitrary PHP code execution.

Impact: It is possible for a hacker to upload scripts that can be run on the server, view website source code which could allow them to see passwords and then gain access to databases.

Versions Affected: Very possibly all versions of WordPress including current hardened stable release 2.8.5 and beta versions.

Solutions:

This is fixed in version 2.8.6, make sure you are running the latest version.

LEGAL NOTICES
————————-
The information contained within this advisory is supplied “as-is” with no warranties or guarantees of fitness of
use or otherwise. I accept no responsibility for any damage caused by the use or misuse of this information.

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