With all the pitfalls of unlocking phones especially iPhones I thought I would mention the excellent service that I received from iPhoneUnlockUK recently.

I am now the proud owner of a iPhone 3GS 16GB which I love but the original owner was under contract to o2 and I wanted to use Vodafone which I have found to be the best reception over the UK plus they do an excellent value sim only package that with vat would cost me 2/3rds of what I was previously paying for my BlackBerry.

I was recommended to iPhoneUnlockUK by an existing client that had already used their service and trusting a personal recommendation more than my internet searching I gave them a try.

First thing their service is not cheap, it cost me £57.99, but and this was the clincher for me the unlock is an official factory unlock processed by Apple. When I received an email that my iPhone's IMEI had been processed by Apple, I simply connected my iPhone to iTunes which then completed the unlock and I am able to use my iPhone on any network worldwide!

They also offer a 100% Satisfaction Money Back Guarantee

My experience of the process was excellent, all my questions were answered promptly and courteously by the support staff and a payment mix-up (the payment processors fault not theirs) was sorted instantly which is always a good measure of a company.

All in all I couldn't be happier with their service and my new iPhone.

I should also point out that they offer a cheaper software unlock (jailbreak) but I wanted the official factory unlock so that I could link to iTunes without any issues down the line to synch my media library.

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Came across a really weird issue with the customer account login form on one of the sites I manage yesterday. Because this is a small form with only 2 fields and an image for the submit button Internet Explorer does not send the value of the submit button so because I was checking for that value to fire the login it never worked !

The answer was to check for the current page to have been submitted and a post array exists.

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I needed to get the full URL of the page being viewed today in my Very Simple CMS to insert into a database table for tracking page views, so I thought I would put the function I came up with here to remind me when I need it again in the future !

<?php
/*
Get Current Page Full URL
----------------------------------------------------------
*/
function i8_GetFullURL() {
// start concatenating the url
$currentURL = 'http://';
// add Server Name and Request URL
$currentURL .= $_SERVER["SERVER_NAME"].$_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"];
// return the current page url
return $currentURL;
}
?>

To print the URL to your page simply use this code:

<?php
// print current pages url
echo i8_GetFullURL();
?>

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We have relaunched the Cotswold Kitchen & Bath site today featuring new product lines such as Gessi Just, Mina Corniche and Zucchettii Faraway. The ever popular range of Newform products has also been updated.

Technical enhancements include:

• Recently Viewed Products now appear at the foot of every product page
• The ability to add related products in the admin which also appear at the foot of every product page
• Updated URL structure with SEO Friendly URL's and full redirection from the old site

These updates will help Cotswold Kitchen and Bath improve their already strong search engine performance.

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DM Car Care Centre's new site is the second site in the initial launch to use our new Very Simple CMS and serves as a brochure for DM Car Care’s customers, giving them information on the services and products available in one easy to use website.

Our new Very Simple CMS allows:

• SEO Friendly URL's
• Auto generated navigation menu, you choose which pages you want to display
• Simple drag & drop page hierarchy
• Insert images and other media into your pages quickly and easily

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L.I.F.E. or to give them their full title Long Itchington and Surrounding Villages For the Earth are a local organisation that raise awareness locally and show people how, by taking often simple steps, they can reduce their carbon footprint and, in turn, their impact upon our environment, thereby helping to combat global warming.

I took on the task of developing a site that could be easily updated so that their members could be kept in touch with the latest news and events and after trying several popular CMS systems none of them seemed a good fit as all we needed was a simple page creation and information entry system without all the whistles and bells that lead to complicated interfaces and so our Very Simple CMS was born and this is the first of two sites that form the initial launch of the system.

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I have added a new Brands Section to T Shirt Town to showcase their new range of really cool t shirts, check it out there are some fantastic new designs there and even hand painted t shirts !

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I would like to wish everyone out there a happy new year and remind you if you are in the UK and operate a e-commerce store that charges vat that you need to change the rate charged on January 4th to comply with the new regulations, for more info see the HMRC Site.

We also have an exiting new addition to our services in the works which will be announced shortly !

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Have not had time to post recently as I have been working hard at adding a Kids section to the T Shirt Town site in time for the christmas rush, check it out you just may find the perfect christmas present !

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A question I have seen quite a lot on the Web Assist Data Assist forum is how to integrate a Date Picker into a DataAssist generated search form. Well with jQuery is is very simple using a very simple plugin written by Ted Devito. I have included the plugin and css file in the download file which contains a working example (just click anywhere in the Order Date text input box).

First obviously generate your DataAssist Pages and that will give you a search page with a form something like this:

In the head of the document locate the css links and add the calendar css file included in the download like so:
<link href="WA_DataAssist/styles/Refined_Pacifica.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
<link href="WA_DataAssist/styles/Arial.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
<!-- add calendar css file, make sure you link to the file stored in your site -->
<link href="css/calendar.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />

Now add the necessary jQuery files, also included in the download, like so:
<!-- add jquery files, make sure you link to the files stored in your site -->
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/jquery-1.4.2.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/cal.js"></script>

Finally you need to call the plugin like so:
<script type="text/javascript">
// <![CDATA[
$(function() {
$('input.calendar').simpleDatepicker({enddate: '<?php echo date('m/d/Y',time()); ?>'});
});
// ]]>
</script>

I set the end date for the search to today via PHP as I do not want to search in the future but this can be left out if you wish. A full run down on the options is available on the plugin page.

I have put a working example (just click anywhere in the Order Date text input box) on my site and I have included the plugin and css files etc. in the download which again is available on my site.

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Twitter user @skileraarinfo messaged me this morning and asked if I could share an example of the jQuery superfish mega menu proof of concept that I did back in May 2009 which has long since disappeared off my site so I have resurrected it here or you can download a working example

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Here in the UK if the goods that are being sold are subject to VAT and the company selling them are registered for vat then the carriage charge is also subject to VAT, but what if there are also goods being sold (in the case of the site I am working on children's clothes) that are not subject to VAT, how do you get eCart to add the VAT correctly ?

First of all you need to have a column in your database that denotes whether the product is vatable or not and a column in the eCart object to store this value in as per Jason Byrne's (WebAssist Technical Support Manager) advice in this thread

Also make sure that the include shipping in cart subtotal when calculating sales tax checkbox under the shipping tab is checked.

When shipping to an address within the EU you must charge vat so I have a tax rule called EU Tax Calc that checks the for the existence of the session variable $_SESSION['eCartCheckoutForm_country'] and then checks the value to see whether the country being shipped to is within the EU. If the address is within the EU then we have to charge VAT

So the first rule in the Tax id the Standard Check that the number of unique items in the cart is greater than zero and then we check the session variable as described above.

For the Calculation choose Flat rate and paste this code into the box
((($this->GetTaxableTotal()) - ($this->ConditionalTotal("TotalPrice", "Taxable", "0"))) * 0.175)

What this code does is subtracts the non vatable portion of the order from the taxable total and then calculates the VAT due on the remainder (plus shipping)

I hope that helps somebody else who finds themselves in this situation.

The entire eCart rule should look like this in your eCart file
//eCart Rule
function WAEC_eCart1_EUTaxCalc() {
$totalTax = 0;
if (true && ((sizeof($this->Items) > 0) &&
(isset($_SESSION['eCartCheckoutForm_shipping_country'])) &&
((isset($_SESSION['eCartCheckoutForm_shipping_country'])?
$_SESSION['eCartCheckoutForm_shipping_country']:"") == "GB") ||
((isset($_SESSION['eCartCheckoutForm_shipping_country'])?
$_SESSION['eCartCheckoutForm_shipping_country']:"") == "BE") ||
((isset($_SESSION['eCartCheckoutForm_shipping_country'])?
$_SESSION['eCartCheckoutForm_shipping_country']:"") == "BG") ||
((isset($_SESSION['eCartCheckoutForm_shipping_country'])?
$_SESSION['eCartCheckoutForm_shipping_country']:"") == "CZ") ||
((isset($_SESSION['eCartCheckoutForm_shipping_country'])?
$_SESSION['eCartCheckoutForm_shipping_country']:"") == "DK") ||
((isset($_SESSION['eCartCheckoutForm_shipping_country'])?
$_SESSION['eCartCheckoutForm_shipping_country']:"") == "DE") ||
((isset($_SESSION['eCartCheckoutForm_shipping_country'])?
$_SESSION['eCartCheckoutForm_shipping_country']:"") == "EE") ||
((isset($_SESSION['eCartCheckoutForm_shipping_country'])?
$_SESSION['eCartCheckoutForm_shipping_country']:"") == "GR") ||
((isset($_SESSION['eCartCheckoutForm_shipping_country'])?
$_SESSION['eCartCheckoutForm_shipping_country']:"") == "ES") ||
((isset($_SESSION['eCartCheckoutForm_shipping_country'])?
$_SESSION['eCartCheckoutForm_shipping_country']:"") == "FR") ||
((isset($_SESSION['eCartCheckoutForm_shipping_country'])?
$_SESSION['eCartCheckoutForm_shipping_country']:"") == "IE") ||
((isset($_SESSION['eCartCheckoutForm_shipping_country'])?
$_SESSION['eCartCheckoutForm_shipping_country']:"") == "IT") ||
((isset($_SESSION['eCartCheckoutForm_shipping_country'])?
$_SESSION['eCartCheckoutForm_shipping_country']:"") == "CY") ||
((isset($_SESSION['eCartCheckoutForm_shipping_country'])?
$_SESSION['eCartCheckoutForm_shipping_country']:"") == "LV") ||
((isset($_SESSION['eCartCheckoutForm_shipping_country'])?
$_SESSION['eCartCheckoutForm_shipping_country']:"") == "LT") ||
((isset($_SESSION['eCartCheckoutForm_shipping_country'])?
$_SESSION['eCartCheckoutForm_shipping_country']:"") == "LU") ||
((isset($_SESSION['eCartCheckoutForm_shipping_country'])?
$_SESSION['eCartCheckoutForm_shipping_country']:"") == "HU") ||
((isset($_SESSION['eCartCheckoutForm_shipping_country'])?
$_SESSION['eCartCheckoutForm_shipping_country']:"") == "MT") ||
((isset($_SESSION['eCartCheckoutForm_shipping_country'])?
$_SESSION['eCartCheckoutForm_shipping_country']:"") == "NL") ||
((isset($_SESSION['eCartCheckoutForm_shipping_country'])?
$_SESSION['eCartCheckoutForm_shipping_country']:"") == "AT") ||
((isset($_SESSION['eCartCheckoutForm_shipping_country'])?
$_SESSION['eCartCheckoutForm_shipping_country']:"") == "PL") ||
((isset($_SESSION['eCartCheckoutForm_shipping_country'])?
$_SESSION['eCartCheckoutForm_shipping_country']:"") == "PT") ||
((isset($_SESSION['eCartCheckoutForm_shipping_country'])?
$_SESSION['eCartCheckoutForm_shipping_country']:"") == "RO") ||
((isset($_SESSION['eCartCheckoutForm_shipping_country'])?
$_SESSION['eCartCheckoutForm_shipping_country']:"") == "SI") ||
((isset($_SESSION['eCartCheckoutForm_shipping_country'])?
$_SESSION['eCartCheckoutForm_shipping_country']:"") == "SK") ||
((isset($_SESSION['eCartCheckoutForm_shipping_country'])?
$_SESSION['eCartCheckoutForm_shipping_country']:"") == "FI") ||
((isset($_SESSION['eCartCheckoutForm_shipping_country'])?
$_SESSION['eCartCheckoutForm_shipping_country']:"") == "SE"))) {
$totalTax += ((($this->GetTaxableTotal()) - ($this->ConditionalTotal("TotalPrice", "Taxable", "0"))) * 0.175);//Result
}
return WA_eCart_FormatNumber($totalTax, $this->ForceDecimalsC, $this->DecimalPlacesC);
}
//eCart Rule

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Since taking over the development of this site we have completely revamped the look and feel of it in conjunction the T Shirt Town's in house designer.

The site features “search engine friendly url's”, comprehensive site search system, previously viewed and you might also like product modules as well a completely new product viewing system that enable the customer to see as many products and as much detail as they want.

But the most development time has gone into the administration system of the site which has been completely rebuilt to enable ease of entering products whose input time has been reduced dramatically, along with custom reporting, order tracking and dynamic discount/coupon module makes looking after this site a pleasure and not a chore.

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Estelle Weyl has the most comprehensive HTML Entity List I have ever seen on her site

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Yesterday the new Hidden Valley Handcrafts was sent live, designed by Andrew Harrisson it show cases the successful range of unique handcrafted natural soaps, candles, skin care products and gifts.

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In conjunction with Murray Summers we have launched a site for The Dalee Book Company who provide a full service bindery that has been reliably serving the scrapbook, photo album, specialty book and corporate community for more than 40 years.

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On 21st January 2010 all merchants who want to process Maestro transactions using UK Website Payments Pro must upgrade to the 3-D Secure process to continue using Maestro. (This does not apply to transactions processed via Virtual Terminal.)

You can find more information on 3-D Secure here and I am almost finished putting together a solution that can be implemented into a standard eCart site or customised as required. If you are interested please contact us for more details, demo or a quote.

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There seems to be a lack of decent API's for UK carriers, noticeably absent is our dear Royal Mail, what have you used successfully in the past ?

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