CS-Cart 2.2.4 is Released

Today we bring before you CS-Cart 2.2.4. As a minor release it contains a number of bugfixes and improvements, but not only them! Now all CS-Cart editions are integrated with Searchanise, a SaaS service we developed to make search faster and more informative. More details about it will be announced later whis week.

The Twigmo add-on has been updated too. Now it allows you to enable a mobile front-end in your CS-Cart! Visit the Twigmo official Facebook page for more details.

Also, we added PayLeap to the list of the supported payment systems.

As usual, the full changelog can be found on the CS-Cart website.

Update

You can download the latest CS-Cart release on the File area page in your personal Help Desk account.

The upgrade package will be available for downloading in your CS-Cart admin panel soon. Please pay attention that we limit the download number from our server within the first 48 hours.

You are welcome to submit your suggestions and ideas to the CS-Cart Idea Tracker and report bugs to our bug tracker.

The second part of the new CS-Cart release features preview

Customer login via Facebook, Twitter, OpenID and others

CS-Cart is becoming more socialized! The coming release brings on social login — the feature allowing customers to log in to CS-Cart-powered stores using their accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Google and many other social services. Well, ain’t that great?

This feature became possible with the help of Janrain Engage, web-service that gives social networking flavour to arbitrary web-sites with user login. We’ve powered CS-Cart with a special add-on that connects your shop with a Janrain account. Just activate this add-on in the CS-Cart administration panel and perform some initial setup to let your customers enjoy social login right away.

Adding social login is a huge step forward in the evolution of CS-Cart. We’re sure our clients will appreciate it at its true value. You can find full list of the supported services here.

“Back in stock” notifications for customers

Another fresh addition to appear is customer notification about the out-of-stock products getting available again. Easy to configure and easy to use, it is a valuable tool: one click for you to turn it on and another one for a customer to sign up — that’s all it takes to keep them notified and help them not miss their purchase.

The notifications work both for registered and unregistered customers: a customer just leaves their email to get notified without even signing on!

Improved 2Checkout Fraud Protection Service integration

In the end I’d like to say a few words about a slight 2Checkout improvement we’ve done. It’s about payment statuses, which have become clearer and more specific: a payment being validated will receive the Open status until it turns Processed or Declined depending on a fraud check result.

Thanks for reading, hope you’ve enjoyed it :-) Remember, your ideas are always welcome at CS-Cart Idea Tracker.

New features in the upcoming CS-Cart release

The next CS-Cart release is on its way to make us and our clients happy with a set of new shiny features. And while we are waiting for it to come, I am going to give you a short preview of some of them.

New look-n-feel of the admin panel

Administrator area is an essential part of any online store. We do our best to keep the admin panel in CS-Cart an easy yet powerful tool. And we also want administrating to still be fun for the users.

The new admin area design is aimed to present all store functions in an elegant and smart manner while having a nice stylish look.

All tools are now easily accessible through a multi-level drop-down top menu. In the old navigation one had to click on a tab to see the sections inside and at the same time all sections of the tab were being shown even after the desired one had been entered.

By using the new menu navigation we managed to avoid unnecessary clicks and displaying of the information not needed at the time, which in the end has led to better usability.

The Design and Administration tabs have been moved higher along with the Settings section which had been too big to be a subsection of the Administration tab and has been turned into a full-blooded top-level menu item. Now these three elements logically form the Configuration group.

The redesign also touched the bottom menu, which has been narrowed to free more space for content though obtained two elements migrated from the top – language and currency choosers. They have been moved to give room in the top for more often used items.

Improved search in the admin panel

There is a significant change made to the search in the admin panel.

Currently there are three separate search areas (Order ID, Product code and User) for the user to choose.

We now have extended the number of the areas and also put them together. No need to specify where you want to search — give it a request, it will find everything that fits.

For instance, entering “com” as a search request will return customers having “com” in their names or emails, products containing it in its product code, title or description and all orders having the requested characters in the customer’s name or email.

The search box has taken place on top, with the other often used items.

New payment processors integrated: CardSave Hosted, Rocketgate and Merchant Warrior Express

We already support over 50 payment systems and we are happy to announce that three more payment processors will be available since the next release. Customers will be able to use CardSave Hosted, RocketGate and Merchant Warrior Express besides all the other payment services.

This post is only the first part of the features overview. The second one is coming very soon, so do not change the channel. You are welcome to suggest what you would like to see in CS-Cart in our CS-Cart Idea Tracker and please be free to share your opinion on the coming features in the comments.