Most recent blog entries

Revindex Storefront 2.0 Released!

Sun, 13 Mar 2011 14:58:00 GMT

In this major release, we introduced the concept of price modifier rules where you can dynamically change price based on quantity and custom attributes (size, color, weight, etc.) or any combination of it. We also removed the requirement for Microsoft Distributed Transaction Coordinator (DTC) yet keeping the use of transactions in the code to protect your data. We also improved the URLs for SEO and released several new templates. The full list of changes can be seen here:

Storefront no longer requires Microsoft Distributed Transaction Coordinator (DTC).
URLs now include product and category names for better search engine optimization.
Support for price modifier rule. The new "Standard3" ProductDetail template must be used to gain new feature.
New Cart "Standard2", Checkout "Standard3" and Confirmation "Standard3" templates now displays dynamic form result collected.
Recurring orders now attempt to charge credit card payments automatically.
Display template selection now ordered from newest to oldest.
Add new shipping status "Undeliverable".
Make dynamically add product and quantity to cart from URL link work for legacy Standard1 template.
Trial software takes up to 50 orders only.
Added ProductID node to be triggered in sales promotion and product promotion rule.
Recurring order now tracks dynamic form result.
Place order action rule can now trigger on billing/shipping first name, last name, email and phone.
Fixed update security encryption key per portal.
Fixed recurring order now makes use of promotion price.
Fixed PayPal redirect URL format when friendly URL is enabled.

Revindex Storefront 1.16 Released

Wed, 02 Mar 2011 02:18:00 GMT

In this release, we added the ability to add a product to cart or checkout immediately from the URL trigger. We also made a lot of additions to Place Order Action rules as well as added a new Availability rule on checkout. The list of changes are shown below:

Support availability rule in checkout settings.
Place order action rule can now increment or decrement inventory.
Place order action rule can now set product extension and inventory.
Place order action rule can now dynamically set order status, payment status and shipping status.
Allow running place order action rules on recurring order.
The default selected country in the Checkout form is now determined by user profile, profile definition and locale search order.
Dynamically add product and quantity to cart from URL link.
Track sales order origin for triggering in place order action.
Email receipt and invoice can now trigger against billing email, billing phone, shipping email and shipping phone.
Fixed code behind so it allows a display template to override default list view mode.
Fixed XSL rules now output standard and friendlier yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ss ("s") format as input values.
Fixed product admin not displaying Extension data.
Fixed coupon code textbox doesn't display on checkout page.
Fixed checkout page unable to remove last coupon added.

Revindex Storefront 1.15 Released!

Thu, 10 Feb 2011 23:45:00 GMT

We now support PayPal Website Payments Standard in this release. See full details below:

Support PayPal Website Payments Standard.
PayPal payment gateway defaults to Website Payments Standard instead of Express Checkout for new installation.
Allow space in credit card field.
Fixed Category admin export link button not working in AJAX mode.

Revindex Storefront 1.14 Released

Thu, 03 Feb 2011 22:00:00 GMT

This is a minor release with the following changes:

Checkout and confirmation pages now display total discount.
Email receipt and invoice now display total discount.
Receipts now send to both billing email address and portal registered email address.
SalesOrderDetail promotion rule can now trigger against product name, variant name and product variant ID.
Import product now logs error to event viewer.
Fixed incorrect redirection to home page when login page is not specified.

Requirements:

New Checkout "Standard2" template. Custom templates must be re-created to gain new features.
New Confirmation "Standard2" template. Custom templates must be re-created to gain new features.

Revindex Storefront 1.13 Released

Wed, 26 Jan 2011 22:24:00 GMT

This release adds support for cross selling using related products.

Support related products for product cross-selling.
Support "featured" product to display on product list module control even if a category is selected.
Cash payment method is now enabled by default on installation.
Checkout page checks for valid shipping and payment method before allowing customer to proceed further.
Fixed order email alert setting checkbox appearing twice.
Fixed product review newline spacing.
Minor UI improvement on required product admin tab.
Fixed product review binding twice on product detail page.

Revindex Storefront 1.12 Released!

Sat, 15 Jan 2011 20:33:00 GMT

In this release, we added the ability for customer to write reviews and product ratings. In addition, we continued to make some performance improvements to the store admin screens. The full list of features and fixes are shown below:

Added product reviews to Product List and Product Detail pages.
Added product ratings.
Product reviews can be paged.
Product reviews can be enabled/disabled portal wide or by individual product.
Product List can now sort by Rating.
Storefront admin catalog page now searches ProductID in addition to other text fields.
Improved rendering performance on Storefront admin Coupon, Promotions, Sales Orders, Recurring Sales Orders, Shipping, Handling pages.
Added update progress indicator to Storefront admin module for better usability feedback.
Fixed Ajax Control Toolkit TabContainer not displaying any tab panels if the first tab panel has no data.
Minor HTML fixes to be closer to XHTML compliant.

Revindex Storefront 1.11 Released

Wed, 12 Jan 2011 20:14:00 GMT

This is a minor release with some new features and fixes are shown below:

Add ability to shallow copy a product variant as new.
Improve rendering performance on Product, Category, Distributor and Manufacturer admin screens.
Checkout step now validates credit card number using code algorithm before sending to payment processor.
Fixed gateway processors sending invalid amount due to currency format issue.
Fixed sales order method type not showing repopulating on session restore.

Revindex Storefront 1.10 Released

Fri, 07 Jan 2011 04:44:00 GMT

This release includes the following features and fixes:

Product summary description can now be written in HTML.
Product detail quantity textbox is now disabled when you set the same min and max order quantity values.
Installer page now shows link to refresh page to clear cache after confirmation.
Disabled auto-complete on credit card input fields.

Requirements:

Custom ProductList template must be re-created.

How to install Revindex Storefront on DotNetNuke

Fri, 07 Jan 2011 02:37:00 GMT

See video on how to install Revindex Storefront on DotNetNuke in about 5 minutes. (Tags: DotNetNuke, DNN, Howto, Store, Ecommerce, Shopping Cart)

Revindex Storefront 1.9

Fri, 31 Dec 2010 04:11:00 GMT

See the new features and fixes:

Add ability for installer to create a new instance of module control or reference copy.
Minor HTML fixes to public pages to be better standards compliant.
Fixed ProductDetail not recognizing custom template.
Fixed ProductDetail using custom template not able to add product to cart.
Fixed Dynamic Form extension now correctly wrapping in XML "fields" node.

Revindex Storefront 1.8

Wed, 29 Dec 2010 03:59:00 GMT

See the new features and fixes in this release:

Manage order and recurring order pages now link direct to product variant purchased.
Public page field validators are now localizable.
Validator controls now show more explicit error message.
Fixed installer error when Home tab is not defined.
Fixed gallery in product variant not uploading from bug introduced in 01.07.01

Revindex Storefront 1.7

Sun, 19 Dec 2010 23:35:00 GMT

New release includes these features and fixes:

Added support for custom database schema/owner and object qualifer.
Simplify manage pages to a single My Account page.
Remove tabs in FormulaEditor control for cleaner look and slightly faster rendering.
Unchecking allow internet order also hides quantity text box.

Revindex Storefront 1.6 Released

Sat, 11 Dec 2010 23:20:00 GMT

New release includes the following changes:

New Installer menu to help move or create module controls on to target pages easily.
Product variant in Product Detail page can be uniquely addressed by URL.
Products added to Cart, Checkout, Confirmation page now hyperlinks to the exact product variant purchased.
Dynamic Form Code can now vary by product variant.

Revindex Storefront 1.5

Tue, 07 Dec 2010 03:34:00 GMT

Revindex Storefront 1.5 is released. Please note the following changes.

Allow running place order action rules immediately after successful Checkout.
Added caching to speed up category lookup on public pages.
Release notes now included in installation package.
License agreement now contained in scrollable text box to improve setup experience.
Fixed ProductList data binding twice introduced in v1.4.

New release for Revindex Storefront 1.4

Thu, 02 Dec 2010 05:07:00 GMT

In this release, we introduced paging and sorting functionality to the Product List pages from customer wish list. We also added the ability to display products as a grid or as a list. Tags: DotNetNuke, Shopping Cart, Ecommerce, ASP.NET, store

Revindex Storefront 1.3 Released!

Wed, 17 Nov 2010 05:05:00 GMT

Another great release from customer feedback and features we wanted to get into the software. The biggest highlight is the addition of bulk product import. (Tags: shop, commerce, storefront, store, dotnetnuke)

Revindex Storefront 1.2.0 Released - Ecommerce module

Thu, 21 Oct 2010 00:21:00 GMT

Version 1.2.0 of Revindex Storefront shopping cart module for DotNetNuke has been released. The new release includes support for Anonymous Checkout and Purchase Order. (Keywords: shopping cart, module, store, ecommerce, shop)

Revindex Storefront Shopping Cart

Thu, 07 Oct 2010 16:02:00 GMT

We finally released Revindex Storefront Professional 1.1.10 for DotNetNuke. Over 300 features have been baked and tested to work as advertised. We made the store highly customizable, flexible and robust. (Keywords: shopping cart, store, module, ecommerce, online shop, credit card, visa, paypal)

Package Installer Flow in Module Installation, Upgrade and Uninstall

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 23:31:00 GMT

Starting DotNetNuke 5 and above has an improved module installer. Modules now fall under the umbrella of "extensions". Extension is a unified system that includes module, skin, container, language pack, etc. As a result, the new installer is also better referred to as "package installer" because it can install more than just modules. In this article, we'll talk about the flow of installing, upgrading and uninstalling a module. (Keywords: install, upgrade, uninstall, delete, dnn, dotnetnuke, extension, package, desktopmodule, sqldataprovider, cleanup)

Upgrading DNN 4.x to .NET 3.5

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:21:00 GMT

Upgrade DotNetNuke 4.x to use .NET 3.5 (.NET 2.0, ASP.NET)

How to Find Application Pool by Process ID in IIS 7.0

Mon, 12 Jan 2009 18:08:00 GMT

Starting IIS7, you can find the name of the application pool by process id using the following appcmd. (IIS, Windows)

Easy Upgrade SQL Server 2000/2005 to SQL Server 2008

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 12:26:00 GMT

Easy way to upgrade SQL Server 2005 to SQL Server 2008.

Creating a Scheduled Task in DotNetNuke

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 19:18:00 GMT

DotNetNuke allows you to create a simple scheduled task relying on the DNN framework only. This is useful if you want to keep everything self-contained within a module or you run within a hosting environment that don't allow you access to Remote Desktop. (IIS, ASP.NET, DNN)

DateTime.MinValue underflow in SQL Server

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 09:29:00 GMT

You get an overflow exception when you save DateTime.MinValue into a SQL Server "datetime" column. (.NET, C#, VB.NET, SQL Server, PostgreSQL)

Migrating IIS7 Site Settings

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 09:05:00 GMT

This article shows you how to migrate IIS 7 settings to a new machine using the new appcmd provided by IIS. (Web Server, ASP.NET, Windows)

How to Copy or Migrate MailEnable Configuration and Data from One Server to Another

Sat, 27 Sep 2008 19:51:00 GMT

This article outlines how to copy or migrate a Mail Enable installation from one machine to another. The article assumes that the target server has been installed with an appropriate copy of the MailEnable software. (Windows, SMTP, Email)

Get Approximate Row Count Fast on SQL Server

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 08:51:00 GMT

Here's how to find the approximate row count for any indexed table quickly in SQL Server.

Cycling SQL Server Logs

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 18:55:00 GMT

You can force SQL Server to flush the log to file and cycle the log numbers (SQL Server 2005, 2008)

Bill Gates Last Day at Microsoft

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 18:56:00 GMT

This is a hilarious video of Bill Gates on his last day at Microsoft Corporation.

Synchronising NTP Servers to the GPS System

Thu, 01 Nov 2007 15:46:00 GMT

An introduction to using the GPS system for computer timing applications. It describes the equipment that can be utilised to provide a precise time resource for computers and computer networks. (business, windows, linux)

Microsoft Fiddler Web Debugging Proxy

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 00:33:00 GMT

Here's a great Microsoft tool that deserves more attention than it gets. Fiddler is a free debugger software that hooks onto your Internet Explorer or Firefox browser. It allows a programmer to see the HTTP packets passing through the machine in a nicely arranged way. (asp.net, programming, perl, php)

Never Leave Source Code on the Server

Sun, 09 Sep 2007 17:07:00 GMT

I'm not a big fan when it comes to deploying source code on the Web server especially with the new Web Site projects that comes with VS.NET 2005. If your server got hacked before, you'll understand why source code on the server is a very bad idea. (c#, asp.net, php, perl, security, dotnetnuke)

Who Owns What On The Web

Thu, 23 Aug 2007 16:38:00 GMT

See the list of high tech companies owned by Amazon, AOL, Ebay, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! It's impressive to see the list of the companies and products owned by a handful of media giants. The amount of money poured on to high tech businesses is simply astonishing. (business)

PowerShell PS1 - I Feel the Power But You're Ugly!

Tue, 14 Aug 2007 19:33:00 GMT

PowerShell was previously known as Microsoft Shell (code-named Monad). When the marketing people at Microsoft finally decided to rename Microsoft Shell to PowerShell, they also renamed the file extension to ".ps1". I was perplexed by the odd extension used, so I posted a message in protest to Microsoft. (windows, command line)

Global Catch All Exception in .NET Winform and Console Application

Mon, 06 Aug 2007 18:49:00 GMT

You normally want to catch all exceptions at the highest tier in code so that your program has the chance to display the error message to the user or log it to the appropriate location. Under ASP.NET, you can do so easily by overriding the Application_Error event in Global.asax file. In a windows form or console application, the equivalent global catch all is available by listening to the ThreadException and AppDomain UnhandledException events. (winform, .NET, C#, VB.NET)

Quickly Sort A Collection Using Generics and Anonymous Delegate

Thu, 02 Aug 2007 04:36:00 GMT

One nice enhancement that came with .NET 2.0 is the ability to sort a custom collection quickly by making use of anonymous delegates and generics. In the past on .NET 1.1, you had to create a Comparer class implementing the IComparer interface. (ASP.NET)

How to Send Email To SMTP Server From Command Line

Tue, 31 Jul 2007 07:45:00 GMT

There is a easy way to test your SMTP server from the Windows command line or Linux shell. SMTP runs on the well-known port 25. All you need is to connect to a specific port and send in a series of text commands.

Nested Form in ASP.NET Page

Tue, 24 Jul 2007 20:09:00 GMT

It's common practice on the web to copy and paste a third party HTML code to add functionality to a page. To embed this kind of code is normally a breeze for even non-programmers. What appears to be easy is actually quite complicated to do on ASP.NET pages. The reason is because every ASP.NET page is wrapped in one big HTML Form.

A Very Real Virus Threat

Tue, 24 Jul 2007 06:30:00 GMT

One of my Windows desktop machines got infected with a Trojan virus. Since all my machines are connected in a network, the virus was able to spread and infect other hosts. I have already put together a backup system years ago so it was now time to review my recovery skills. (security, windows)

The Brain Really Reads Between the Lines

Wed, 18 Jul 2007 06:45:00 GMT

If you're a content writer or an SEO, here's a thing you need to understand about how the human brain works. Research shows that the brain does not read every letter in a word. Similarly, most readers will likely understand what a sentence means even if a couple of non-essential words are missing. (Common Sense)

How to Backup SQL Server to a Network Shared Folder

Tue, 17 Jul 2007 16:14:00 GMT

If you try to backup your SQL Server database to a Windows shared folder on a network PC, you're in for a little bit of a surprise. The following command is a valid statement but SQL Server will throw you an ugly exception. There are a couple of solutions you can workaround the problem.

Enabling Execution of PowerShell PS1 Scripts

Sun, 15 Jul 2007 20:30:00 GMT

Microsoft finally put together a powerful command line tool for Windows that makes Bash on Linux looks like small potato. The new powershell runs .NET and understands objects when you pipe from one process to another. Given the power and the things you can do with powershell, Microsoft is rightfully cautious about hackers and script abuse. PowerShell, by default, is very secure and disallows any powershell scripts from running. (security)

Running Subversion as Windows Service

Sun, 15 Jul 2007 20:28:00 GMT

Subversion needs the svnserve.exe executable running at all times to be able to perform source control operations. It's impractical on a Windows machine to have a command running at all times because as soon as you log out, the command gets killed. As of the new Subversion 1.4, the svnserve.exe can now run natively as Windows service...

How to Convert Text Encoding

Sun, 15 Jul 2007 00:30:00 GMT

Text encoding tells the system how a character is represented in bits and bytes. There are several hundred different known encodings. Sometimes you need to convert from one encoding to another because your application can only read certain data encoded in a certain way. Here's how to do it using iconv for Windows and Linux.

New Snapshot Isolation Level in SQL Server 2005

Sat, 14 Jul 2007 13:05:00 GMT

Starting with SQL Server 2005, you can now use Snapshot Isolation to eliminate blocking READ operations and get rid of those pesky SQL locks. Snapshot Isolation is a better choice for OLTP operations where you expect a large number of reads and moderate writes. Your system will be able to scale much higher. Here's how to set your SQL Server database to use the new isolation level...

How to Backup Scheduled Tasks On Windows

Fri, 13 Jul 2007 17:16:00 GMT

Backup procedures tend to use the Windows Scheduler to backup files but IT Administrators often forget to backup the scheduled task itself. Here's how to backup your Windows Scheduled Tasks.

Having Fun Transforming XML Feed with XSLT

Fri, 13 Jul 2007 16:51:00 GMT

I use RSS Feeds quite a bit. It's neat to pull interesting blogs or news feed into my site. Sometimes the RSS feed provided is too long or the default format is not as nice. So I decided to write my own XSLT template to transform the XML from the RSS feed.

How to Create a Self-Signed SSL Certificate

Wed, 11 Jul 2007 01:44:00 GMT

When you're testing a web site on IIS either on your own development PC or on staging, you need a way to generate a self-signing certificate if you don't want to put out a few hundred dollars. In the past, Microsoft made available a tool called SelfSSL inside the IIS 6.0 Resource Kit. The tool works but there is a bug when you try to create more than one certificate on the same machine. You keep losing the first certificate you created. The better way is to use the new Microsoft SSL Diagnostics tool ... (ASP.NET, IIS)

Installing Adobe Flex Builder 2

Sat, 07 Jul 2007 20:29:00 GMT

Build Adobe Flash applications rapidly using Adobe Flex Builder IDE. This article shows you how to install Adobe Flex Builder 2...

Creating Your First Adobe Flash Flex 2 Application

Thu, 05 Jul 2007 10:55:00 GMT

How to create a simple Flash application using Adobe Flex Builder 2. In this example, I'll show how easy it is to create a simple retirement calculator...