Expressway

Mysql: Waiting for table metadata lock

2013-02-06T05:34:00.003-08:00

While trying to execute alter table commands; lately it has started taking lot of time and hangs the server. It keeps executing the query and doesn't show any error. It took me a day to figure out a fix for this issue.

If you happen to get similar error then try doing the following:

Run the command "show processlist";
Run 'kill id" which shows this statement running.

This will terminate the command. But this is not the end of solution. Now while running the "Alter table" command; do the following:

Run "show processlist".
Check for all open mysql connections.
Make sure you close all the connection except the one which you are connected by running kill id command.
Now execute the "alter table" command

This worked for me and I hope this will fix your problem of "waiting for table metadata lock" error.

Maintain Session across subdomain

2013-02-04T23:35:00.005-08:00

To maintain your session variable across the subdomains in cakephp you need to do the following:

Open app/config/bootstrap.php
Add "ini_set('session.cookie_domain', '.domain.com');"

By default Cake is creating a cookie for each domain. With this you can use same sessions across subdomains.

GTPay Payment Module Integration with your shopping cart

2012-12-17T00:51:00.001-08:00

I have created a module to integrate GTPay payment method and Interspire shopping cart.

It works on all versions of Interspire shopping cart.

Contact me if you want to discuss the module in detail.

Interspire Shopping Cart - Using max of coupon discount or discount rules

2012-10-08T06:23:00.002-07:00

In Interspire shopping cart; there are various features to provide discounts to customers:

Coupon Codes
Discount Rules
Customer Group Discount

I have worked on a module that checks for the maximum available discount from the above 3 options and applies only the higher discount to the cart.

It works on all the Interspire themes and very easy to integrate.

Contact here if you want to get this integrated on your site.

Maintenance of your Interspire shopping cart

2012-08-06T00:27:00.001-07:00

Interspire has discontinued the following products from July 1st 2012:

Interspire Shopping Cart
Interspire Knowledge Manager
Interspire Website Publisher

If you run a website using Interspire shopping cart and want to continue using the same software, then you can contact me for adding/customizing the features or bug fixing to your existing site.

Try out ecommerce store for free for 30 days

2012-08-05T23:48:00.001-07:00

Its always a good way to try out your online store for free before deciding on buying it.
Shopify offers a 30 day trial period in which you can try out the platform and see the features available before buying.

Also, there is no need to enter your credit card details for the trial version. Only once you are satisfied with the product and wish to purchase; the credit card details are required.

They offer various plan as per your store requirements.

In all the plans available, there is unlimited bandwidth support.

If you sell less than 100 products, then you can choose the starter plan; but there are features like discount code coupon engine or real time carrier shipping which are available in other plans.

You can also upgrade, downgrade or cancel the plans anytime. There is no set up fees for any of the available plans.

If you wish to get started with your online store with Shopify, then signup and you are ready with your online store in minutes.

You can also read my post on "Create your online store in minutes"

Create your online store in minutes

2012-08-03T06:02:00.000-07:00

Want to sell your products online but don't know how?

Create your online store for free
Try out a demo
Reliable Ecommerce hosting service provided
Choose from the wide variety of themes or customize an existing theme
Add your products and images
Shopify integrates with over 50 payment gateways to allow your store to accept credit cards
Unlimited bandwidth support included
Automatic backup support for your data
Includes mobile commerce
Extend the functionality of your online store by choosing from serveral Apps provided

Want to get stated with your store, then sign up here and explore the various features of Shopify

If you need help creating your online store then contact me and I can create it for you.

You can see a demo store as well.

Web server rejects utm_expid

2012-08-03T00:41:00.002-07:00

Web server rejects utm_expid
Your server doesnt support added query arguments in urls

If you receive the above message while validating your Google analytics experiment then try to check the following cases:

1) Open the link which shows the error while validating and do "view source". Check if you can locate the experiment code in the file. If yes, then proceed for step 2. If you are not able to see the experiment code then the code is not mentioned at the correct page.

2) Now add some url parameters to the url. Suppose the url that you are trying to validate is "www.testurl.com", then add few parameters in the url like "www.testurl.com?utm_expid=test&utm_referrer=test". Now see if the page is coming up properly and not going to a 404 or page not found error.
Now, do "view source" and check if the experiment code shows up on the same page as well.

I hope the above two cases will help you debug the issue.

List of PHP IDE

2012-07-24T00:20:00.001-07:00

Here is the list of commonly used PHP IDE:

phpDesigner
PHP Eclipse
Zend Studio
phpEdit
EditPlus
Notepad
Dreamweaver

Must haves on your online store or ecommerce website

2012-07-21T23:54:00.000-07:00

Today, I am sharing the tips that are required on your online store for increasing your produts visibility. The sales will increase when the probability of your products appearing on search results or visibility of the products are more.

A section of "featured products" must appear on homepage.
Keep changing the products listed on rotation basis to increase product visibility.
Have an "All Products" page where customers can see all the products on a single page. No need to provide pagination. This can be sorted by category or in an alphabetical order.
Compare Prices : provide an option to compare prices of similar products from your website or other related websites.
Easy navigation to go back to search results page.
Easy way of adding multiple products together to the shopping cart.
Product information should be listed in a proper manner.
Highlight the key specifications and provide all the possible information that may help customers to make their buying decision easier.
Provide an option of contact in case they need any further information for the product before buying.
The product image should be clear and should be same as that of the product being delivered.
The image should not be too heavy to load and provide more (i.e from different angles rear,front etc.) images of the product.
The page should load faster.

If you would like to share some ideas or incorporate the above tips on your ecommerce website or would like to start you own ecommerce website, then contact me for details.

Create your Website

2012-07-19T02:36:00.000-07:00

Creating a website depends upon a lot of factors and your requirement.
If you want to create a website with 3-4 basic pages then you can have it setup and going in a day's time. However, if you want a website which involves user interaction or where lots of content will be uploaded on a daily basis then you will have to go for a content management system (CMS).

You can opt for a static website where the content doesn't change frequently, for eg: a website with only few pages such as About Us, Contact Us page.

Step 1: Decide your domain name

Choose a domain name that is related to your business, company name, or that relates to the content of the website. Once you have decided on the name, check if the domain name is available. You can refer godaddy.com for checking website availability.

Step 2: Register your domain name

Once you have finalized the domain name then you will have to register the domain name. Almost every registrar provides this service.

Step 3: Web Hosting

This is where your website will be hosted and your web pages will reside. Here, you can setup your emails and use the services provided by the web hosting company like blogs, forums, chat scripts etc.

Step 4: Start Building

If you have decided to make a statuc website, then only HTML is required. However, if you want to have a blog or content driven website then you will have to use a CMS and supporting technology like PHP/Mysql etc

If you need help or have any questions related to making a website then Contact me and I can answer your queries.

Advantages of having your e-commerce website

2012-07-18T04:15:00.002-07:00

Ecommerce website or an online store has many advantages.

You can setup your online store quickly and at a very less price compared to the overhead of a brick and mortar store.
It can be easily managed from home, office or even while you are travelling.
You can reach to millions of customers at once resulting to expanded customer base
Since your store is online, it is open 24 x 7
More number of products can be added on the site which is not possible if you have space limitation or a small store.
It reduces your advertisement and marketing cost
The automation of billing, order details, shipment tracking,customer details reduces both time and personnel required to manage the processes.
You can provide detailed information about the product

The advantages from customer point of view are many:

Customers can easily browse the products from anywhere and anytime
It saves customer's travel time and cost
E commerce facilitates comparison shopping. Customers can compare prices and get the bets deal in lesser time

Set Cron for a url without using CakePHP cron_dispatcher.php

2012-05-22T22:10:00.003-07:00

If you have a url which you want to schedule to run daily, weekly we can use the below command in the control panel cron job settings:

Login to your control panel
Click on Cron Jobs
Add a new cron job
Schedule it for the time you want to run it
In the command tab, put wget http://cron_url_to_run

Australia Post eParcel Integration module with your shopping cart

2012-05-14T04:27:00.001-07:00

Interspire Add on:

I have created a module for Australia Post eParcel and Interspire shopping cart API integration for BigCommerce

It returns a csv/excel files in the format required by Australia Post eParcel to be submitted into their system.

Contact me if you want to discuss the module in detail.

BigCommerce API SSL error

2012-04-15T23:51:00.005-07:00

While using BigCommerce API if you are getting the below error:

" Fatal error: Uncaught exception 'BigCommerce_Api_NetworkError' with message 'SSL certificate problem, verify that the CA cert is OK. Details: error:14090086:SSL "

This is because by default it checks to verify the SSL certificate used by the BigCommerce store.

Adding the below line of code will disable the check.

BigCommerce_Api::verifyPeer(false);

Can't connect to database in Prestashop

2012-03-19T05:58:00.002-07:00

If you are trying to setup database details for Prestashop locally and getting the following error:

"Database server was not found. Please verify the login, password and server fields."

Then try replacing localhost with 127.0.0.1 as hostname. This worked for me.

Include file in CakePHP

2012-03-06T22:14:00.004-08:00

To include a file in your .ctp files, make the path is given from webroot. So if you have placed your file outside the "app" directory then the path will be set as include("../../file.php");

550 SSL/TLS required on the control channel

2012-03-05T02:05:00.002-08:00

When trying to connect through FTP, if you get the following error:

"550 SSL/TLS required on the control channel"

then try adding prefix to the hostname with ftpes://

This worked for me.

Adding additional product attributes to display in Interspire shopping cart

2012-03-04T21:32:00.002-08:00

To add additional product attributes in product details page of Interspire shopping cart we need to add an inteface in admin section to enter those details. I tried the following:

Admin Section: code changes

Open admin/templates/product_form.tpl
Add additional fields attribute in html format as required.
In admin/includes/classes/class.product.php, include the post data for inserting into database and add the fields in database as well.
Search for AddProductStep2
Add entry under lib/entities/entity.product.php

Hope this will work for you.

Customer Rewards Point Module for Interspire

2012-03-01T03:21:00.002-08:00

This is a very interesting feature to bring customers back to your site. I have worked on a rewards point module for Interspire shopping cart.
It works on all the interspire themes and very easy to integrate.

There are 2 sections in the module:

Admin Section

Assign points to each product
Check the status under Orders tab whether orders are paid or customers have redeemed points against their purchase.
Admin can also assign loyalty points to users and assign it to their account
Admin can also set the minimum points against every order or amount spent.

User Section

Users can see the points earned in their My Account section
Users can redeem points against products

Contact me if you want to know the module in detail.

Cannot modify header information - headers already sent error

2012-02-19T21:36:00.000-08:00

This error ususally comes when we are working with session,cookies,redirects. If you are getting this error then try to follow the below steps to resolve:

Session should be started at the begining of the script and it should be written at the very first line.
There should not be any white spaces before session_start();
If you are using any MVC framework then make sure there are no whitespaces in controller files after the class is closed (after the close php tag " ?> " tag).

Popular open source shopping carts

2012-02-15T23:07:00.000-08:00

Paid Version

Interspire

Magento

X-Cart

Free Version

ZenCart

Oscommerce

VirtueMart

UberCart

WordPress Ecommerce

Magento

PrestaShop

Changing the cart quantity in Interspire Shopping Cart

2012-02-08T22:26:00.000-08:00

The Cart "quantity" dropdown when changed to textbox allows only 2 digits that can be entered. To change this I tried the following:

Open the template folder that is being used. You can check in "Store Design" section of Admin about the template that you are using.
Go to Snippets and open CartItemQtyText.html file.
Search for "maxlength=" and change the number or remove it.
Save the changes made.

Please note that the above steps has to be repeated when another template is used.

Changing CakePHP sessions settings

2012-01-23T04:44:00.000-08:00

CakePHP manages its session inside CakePHP's /tmp directory. To manage cakephp session in wordpress integration add the following lines at the start of wp-config.php

$CAKE_SESSION_COOKIE = 'CAKEPHP';
ini_set('session.name', $CAKE_SESSION_COOKIE);
ini_set('session.cookie_path','app/tmp');
session_start();

Integrating wordpress and cakephp

2012-01-23T04:32:00.000-08:00

In one of my recent project I had a task of integrating Cakephp with Wordpress. The content pages had to be in Wordpress and other dynamic features were coming from CakePHP.

While trying to call Cakephp from wordpress or vice versa I was getting errors like "Fatal error: Cannot redeclare __()". These are mainly because of namespace conflict as Wordpress and Cakephp use some functions with same name.

CakePHP defines its functions in cake/basics.php. When Wordpress is integrated the file wp-includes/l10n.php gets included and has the same function names which results in fatal error.

The alternative is to add:

if ( !function_exists('__') ) :
// the function
endif;

for wordpress functions.

But I tried a different work around.
I kept wordpress and app folder of cakephp on root folder. To use same wordpress theme across the website I moved the header and footer.php outside of theme folder and kept in root.
So that the layout of cakephp also calls same header and footer.

Then I changed the .htaccess file to handle wordpress and cakephp related links separately.

This solved the fatal error issue and I was able to use wordpress and cakephp together in my website without any rework.