CF Shopkart Blog

Another update

2012-01-11T22:09:00.000-05:00

I've been working a lot. And I mean A LOT. The new framework for the open source CF Shopkart is in the final stages of testing and modifying. The initial release will NOT be a shopping cart, but a content management system that will be easy to add on to and modify without the need of taking a college class to understand it. No need to learn anything new. If you know CF, you will be able to use my 'framework'....actually I like to just call it base code because that's just how I see it, but technically I guess it could be called a framework. Anyway, it will probably be about 2 weeks before I post it, but it could get delayed longer if I end up getting a project I have been offered that hasn't been confirmed yet. I'll make an announcement here and on twitter when the code is available for download.

Where I have been

2011-07-22T12:25:00.006-04:00

I've been spending a lot of time in doors this past week due to the heat and the fact that the A/C is broken in my car. I dread taking it in next week to hear how much it's going to cost to get it fixed.

Since I'm spending so much time in the house, and I've got a little breathing room while I wait on some data feeds to be set up for a client, I decided to belt out a blog entry. Besides, it's been since January that you have all heard from me (wow does time fly!), so I figured I'd better let everyone know what the heck it is I've been up to before rumors start floating around that Jon Wallen is dead ;-).

I have been quiet because I am working on several different projects as well as trying to keep up with support on CF Shopkart for my paying clients.

Here are a few things I am and have been working on:

HOT DEALS COOL NIGHTS
Just launched, this website will end up growing into something more than just deals in Rochester, NY. It is a Groupon-type website programmed completely in Coldfusion and Javascript. http://www.hostdealscoolnights.com

NETSAVINGLINK.COM
I have been doing a lot of work on the netsavingslink.com website since it launched and they are getting ready to launch yet another major update to the website, which I am working on. Besides this update I am also working on an affiliate program written in Coldfusion, that I may make available to the public.

PROVIBO
I can't provide a link to the beta site just yet, but the current site is here: http://www.provibo.com

The new site is going to take a bunch of tools I am programming and put them together. You'll get all these tools plus hosting for one flat monthly fee. There is an affiliate program already in place on the existing site that is really awesome. Feel free to checkout the existing site. No Coldfusion hosting yet through Provibo, but we are working on that (You can still get CF Hosting though through my website).

CF SHOPKART 6
Some of you might remember about 3 years ago I launched a beta of both a little sitebuilder and a new version of CFShopkart (SE) that I had started on. I pretty much axed both projects after user testing because they were flawed in several ways, including how they were written. Well, I have been testing out a new interface and perfecting some code I wrote to make a flexible Coldfusion 'framework' for me to build pretty much any project on top of. This base-code is going to be the foundation for the upcoming new version of CFShopkart (completely rewritten from the ground up). CF8 will be the minimum version you will need to run this code on. It will not run on CF7. I still have a lot of work to do on this, so I probably won't talk much about it until fall of 2011. Once I have the foundation in place, it is my intention to open this up for other CF programmers to pitch in and help build a better CF Shopkart.

Thanks to all for your support and compliments.

News and Updates

2011-01-24T12:40:00.004-05:00

HOSTING CONTROL PANEL CHANGE COMING
Those of you who are hosting will see a change in February with your HOSTING control panel (not the store control panel). I've had issues setting up new domains in Helm 4, and it has slowed me down in setting up some new websites lately. It's really gotten frustrating. This past week I migrated 20 domains to CF Shopkart standard hosting and I had problems that made it take longer then it should have. Even though Helm is very feature rich, it is complex, slow, and buggy.

So a new, faster, simpler web hosting control panel is coming! The company I am partnered with for hosting services has sent me a demo of the control panel, and it looks fantastic. It feels very responsive, and is so much easier to use. I am finalizing the plan to migrate with them this week and going over some questions I had with them to ensure a smooth transfer.

There should be no interruption in service as we migrate each of you to the new hosting control panel. Those of you who do not access the hosting control panel (not the store control panel) need not even worry about this.

NEWS AND UPDATES
Some of you know I've been very busy lately. I recently joined a partnership out of Chicago and my task is to build a set of tools to help people market their business online. In the beginning these tools will integrate with Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, and their will be a built-in auto responder as well as additional features that I'll list in a later post when some things are finalized. We are on schedule to start closed Alpha testing at the end of this month, with open Beta testing starting sometime towards the end of February.

Though I have been busy with that in addition to my usual work load, an update for CF Shopkart has been being worked on whenever I have a spare moment and I almost have it ready to post for download. Hosting clients have already got the updates, so you guys don't need to worry about it (I try to patch all my hosting customers sites whenever a bug is reported even if they are unaware of it). The update will send out some missing templates that didn't get put into the last release as well as fix a few bugs. I'm also trying to add a couple of requested features into this update. Of course, hosting customers will get the update first.

FORUMS
The forums are currently down, and the forum admin is MIA. I'm working on getting a new forum up and running so in the meantime please just send me an email if you are in need of help and I'll try to help everyone as much as I can.

Important Info about 005 update

2010-10-01T09:32:00.004-04:00

It has come to my attention that for some reason in the latest update, some installation are unable to overwrite the Application.cfm due to permission issues on some servers.

Note: My clients do not need to worry about this. I have done this for you.

First, check to see if you need to update it.

1. Open Application.cfm in the root of your website.

2. If the following lines are missing near the top, then you need to update it:

cferror type="exception" template="#request.absolutepath#errorstop.cfm"
cferror type="request" template="#request.absolutepath#errorstop.cfm"
cferror type="validation" template="#request.absolutepath#errorstop.cfm"

To Update:

1. Download the 005 update on the site here: http://www.cfshopkart.com/support/updates/update55005.zip

2. Extract it and open the folder deploy/

3. You should see the file Application.cfm

4. Upload that to your website, overwriting the previous version of the file.

You can also get the new Application.cfm file from the latest download.

Note: You should also do the same update to the Application.cfm folder located in the /admin/ folder.

Update 005 here

2010-09-21T12:59:00.002-04:00

Well is appears that there was a bug in the 004 update script so some of the last fixes didn't actually happen, though an important security fix did get applied.

I did update the 004 script and re-uploaded it, but many of you have already got the update so I put out the 005 update and just included all the fixes again from 004 just to make sure you all get them.

Here is what is fixed:

Update 5.5 005

- Fixes missing help doc
- Fixes a minor bug when viewing a category

Reapplies the update 004 fixes. There was a bug in the update script and some of the fixes did not get applied.

- Fixed session.productid not found when going to checkout.
- Fixed UPS Shipping calculations script where some variables were not named correctly.
- Fixed bugs in Multiple shipping points and alternate origin shipping address in admin control panel
- Fixed details not showing after product import.
- Updated image import feature when importing on imageurl column to only process 50 at a time to keep server from timing out and possibly crashing due to heavy use of the cfimage tag.
- Fixed a bug in importing categories where the ^ was left in the name of the category and you had to manually delete it from each one.
- Fixed bug when clicking on Clear Gateway settings so that you can now use the shopping cart with just a third party processor.
- Fixed broken image in wishlist widget and broken image in shopping cart widget on Linux.
- Adjusted product detail layout for better formatting as well as a few styles in global.css
- Fixed value for "is item shipped" under settings when adding/editing a product not saving.
- Fixed bug in validation script at checkout where when shipping was not needed it still said the form fields were empty.
- Added a couple more filters for auto-ban features.
- Fixed a couple bugs in the multiple file uploader.
- Fixed a few missing images in the admin on Linux.
- Fixed email item. It wasn't working.
- Fixed error when calculating taxes at checkout.
- Fixed data truncation error in stats logging when logging user agent.
- Fixed qryreviews.cfm error where variable DISP was not found
- Adding missing help document for enable stats logging under settings
- Added errorstop.cfm and extra error handling to Application.cfm files for added protection against vulnerabilities.

URL Rewriting on Windows Hosting (SEO Links)

2010-09-15T14:54:00.002-04:00

I've had some people asking about URL rewriting on Windows since I included URL rewriting in this latest version. Well, you'll notice that I only support Apache in the current version. The only reason that is is because I wasn't able to research that for Windows hosting and test it, and I thought Windows uses a different file for the rewriting.

To my pleasant surprise, isapi rewrite for IIS as of version 3.0 uses the exact same .htaccess file with the exact same syntax! So that means URL rewriting will work fine as is in CF Shopkart on any IIS Windows hosting that supports isapi rewrite ( CFShopkart Hosting supports it! --- hello SEO links!)

I will be releasing an update soon that will patch the control panel so that you can enable it. If url rewriting is not supported on your server, you will simply get 404 errors, in which case just go to your control panel and turn it off again.

Hosting is back and an update!

2010-09-09T12:21:00.002-04:00

Update 5.4 to 5.5 Script

I just sent the final update 5.4 to 5.5 to a few people to test. If you want the script, please email me. I will be happy to send it to you and get your feedback. I'm going to post in a few days once I'm sure it's working 100%.

Update 5.5 Build 004
Update to 5.5 Build 004 will be released today. To get this update, just login to your stores control panel. The update will automatically download and install.
This update does the following:

- Fixed session.productid not found when going to checkout.
- Fixed UPS Shipping calculations script where some variables were not named correctly.
- Fixed bugs in Multiple shipping points and alternate origin shipping address in admin control panel
- Fixed details not showing after product import.
- Updated image import feature when importing on imageurl column to only process 50 at a time to keep server from timing out and possibly crashing due to heavy use of the cfimage tag.
- Fixed a bug in importing categories where the ^ was left in the name of the category and you had to manually delete it from each one.
- Fixed bug when clicking on Clear Gateway settings so that you can now use the shopping cart with just a third party processor.
- Fixed broken image in wishlist widget and broken image in shopping cart widget on Linux.
- Adjusted product detail layout for better formatting as well as a few styles in global.css
- Fixed value for "is item shipped" under settings when adding/editing a product not saving.
- Fixed bug in validation script at checkout where when shipping was not needed it still said the form fields were empty.
- Added a couple more filters for auto-ban features.
- Fixed a couple bugs in the multiple file uploader.
- Fixed a few missing images in the admin on Linux.
- Fixed email item. It wasn't working.
- Fixed data truncation error in stats logging when logging user agent.
- Fixed qryreviews.cfm error where variable DISP was not found
- Added errorstop.cfm and extra error handling to Application.cfm files for added protection against vulnerabilities.

A huge thank you goes out to the team at stratsec.net. They identified a possible vulnerability in 5.5 and I was able to patch it because they sent me a very detailed report.

Hosting is back!
If you haven't noticed, the hosting sign-up form is back on the site, which means I am now ready to take new CFShopkart hosting clients! For the great low price of $19.95 you'll get CFShopkart installed for you and ongoing support! Don't wait, because I could suspend the hosting offer again if I get overwhelmed and people have already started to sign-up! I like to keep my services personalized and of the highest quality, so I only take on as many as I can handle.

Update 5.5 Build 003 Now Available

2010-08-24T13:53:00.001-04:00

This fixes a bug in the Category Import Feature and it also gives you the ability to delete all items from the catalog prior to importing, which is useful if you update your entire catalog with a CSV import from a drop-shipper.

Expanding the Community

2010-08-21T23:30:00.004-04:00

I've been really looking into socializing my website and CF Shopkart. So I've been looking into Google Friends, and this evening I took some time to connect the site to it. It supports a lot of popular social site logins so you can join the site if you have an account on any one of the other websites Google supports. It only takes a few seconds to join and start interacting with the site.

One of the things I really like is the questions and answers box. I figure it will be a great way to get people interacting with each other who use CF Shopkart (or like Coldfusion). If you just don't feel like getting involved with the forum, but want to participate in the community then please join. If you are already in the forum, then consider becoming a member of the site.

To join the site, just visit the Community page and on the right side you will see I added some gadgets. Enjoy!

Update 5.5 Build 002 Available

2010-08-17T18:57:00.002-04:00

An update was released today for Version 5.5. This will update you to Build 002.

Fixes:

- Fixes a small bug in admin login check.

An update already on the way!

2010-08-17T12:04:00.006-04:00

Thanks goes to Ronnie for pointing out an apparent logic flaw in the way I have options inventory being tracked. It works great if you create just a single option for a product, but if you have multiple options for the same product a customer could end up ordering more then you have in stock.

I'm already working on an update to add more capability to the inventory tracking of options, and I began working on it this morning.

The plan is to leave the current feature intact, so that you can create an item and use it as an option for a simple way of tracking inventory. For more complex setups I'm building a new feature into the cart where you will actually build an 'inventory table' that will be used when someone purchases an item with options.

While the current method of tracking inventory will work for most people that just want to be able to track an option's inventory, this new method will work for people with more complex set of options. I will explain more in detail once I have it completed and the demo updated.

I am currently doing some work for a couple of my clients today, but when I have some time later this evening I will be working on this. Please let me know if you see any bugs so I can address those in the update.

Not sure what is going on...

2010-08-17T10:08:00.002-04:00

I was using CFFEED fine for the past few days pulling the latest posts and displaying them on the front page. This morning I find the site was running an error despite the use of cftry and cfcatch. The error was saying "can't connect to the specified port" or something to that affect. I researched it a little bit and found out it has something to do with ports being blocked (possibly my host provider). I noticed that their site is loading a little slow and something was failing in their forum. So maybe it's just a temporary problem. I even tried a CFHHTP request to the atom feed and that worked but it went very slow and the load time was just too long for the front page.

It will be really frustrating though if the feed no longer works because they blocked something and didn't bother to tell me. I see nothing in their FAQ about CFFEED being blocked though. Time will tell. For now the blog posts are off the front page. I'll check later tonight and see if it's working again.

A couple of free cfc's

2010-08-16T14:16:00.002-04:00

I created a new page on the site that will be a place where I will post some Coldfusion code that I write and want to share with you. I posted a couple of cfc's I wrote that you might find useful. Take them, add to them, improve them, and use them where ever you need to. You can see the page here.

CFShopkart 5.5 Available for download!

2010-08-14T17:15:00.002-04:00

Finally, I have it posted! I posted it in three different compression formats (tar.gz, rar, and zip). Read the installation.txt file included on how to set it up. There is just one more step added to setup than previous versions: You need to set a master admin/password, and the default user/pass to get into admin is demo/demo. I am going to working on more documentation in the coming weeks.

Enjoy!

Ok, I have something I have to look at in morning.

2010-08-12T22:03:00.003-04:00

Since people are looking at the demo I saw an error that got logged that deals with a new feature and it had to do with a session variable not defined. I thought I had a check in there for that particular one, but apparently I still have a flaw in the logic there. I am going to take a look at it in the morning and see if I can track it down and patch that before I post the release.

Access to 5.5 Demo Admin

2010-08-12T14:09:00.004-04:00

As of right now you can access the demo control panel. I am still on track to get the download posted later tonight.

List of 5.5 Features

2010-08-11T22:09:00.002-04:00

I have posted a list of features included in version 5.5 here.

I added some more things to the demo and did some more testing and debugging this evening. If you were on the demo and got an error message, that is why. It's looking like I'm going to get this released tomorrow. Any other fixes will come in the form of an update.

Building the Demo Store

2010-08-10T22:46:00.003-04:00

I have begun to build the demo store, which helps me go through and tweak things out before final release. You can see the demo store front on the Demo page. I do not have access available to the control panel yet, but I will be granting the public access within the next couple of days. I need to secure some things first before I go letting just anyone in there to explore.

The download is NOT up yet, because I am doing some final testing tomorrow while I post some stuff in the demo store. If I don't run into anything major, I will compress and post it for download tomorrow night!

Hang in there! :-)

2010-08-04T09:35:00.005-04:00

I'm ALMOST ready to launch the demo for 5.5. Today I'm going through the last couple of payment processors integrated to make sure they are okay. I am also going to check on the help context and add some more where needed.

Tonight I'm going to TRY to get the demo posted, but I need to make sure it's secure so it might not be visible until tomorrow.

I just had a client have me build a new (small) stats application for him since he needed something simple and customized. So I went ahead and put that into the 5.5 release yesterday. I also took some time to clear up the add/edit product forms. I've been adding more and more options to the product settings section and it was looking very disorganized. As I was editing products I realized it was getting more difficult to find settings so I organized them better.

In this release adding new payment processors should be a lot easier. You can now select multiple 3rd party processors and each has it's own settings stored encrypted in the database. I even created a form for the master admin to add/edit settings for the processors (it is hidden for admins and users). I plan to add additional payment processors through updates in the months to come.

Slight Delay on 5.5 for a little change to checkout

2010-07-25T22:36:00.005-04:00

On Thursday I had a great suggestion from someone about the checkout process, and that got me thinking about a question someone had ask me about integrating payment processors into CF Shopkart. I liked the idea given to me, and I also wanted to make it so much easier to integrate additional processors, I decided to try to rush to make some changes before the release. I thought I'd be able to get it posted by Friday evening anyway, but I didn't get to it due to some other things that came up. So there is a little delay, but it shouldn't be much of one. Monday I have to do some things on two projects, but I will find time later to work on it some more, and hopefully finish it up and then release it next week. I will post another blog entry on Tuesday or Wednesday with more info. I thought about just putting it out in an update, but unfortunately it involves too many changes to do that. Thank you all for your patience.

CF Shopkart 5.5 release date set

2010-07-19T14:36:00.002-04:00

I am setting a release date for the next version: this Friday. So far it is working great, but I need to just tweak a few things before the release. After Friday all changes and updates will be sent through the automatic update process. I am working on updating the site over the next couple of days to get it finished out. And, yes, I know the contact form is broken. I will have that fixed too. I will post more updates here when I have time.

Been lazy about posting

2010-07-08T16:14:00.002-04:00

I've been lazy about posting, but my clients have been keeping me busy. In about 2 weeks (and I promise you it will be 2 weeks, or I give up on promising anything lol), I am going to release the next installment of CF Shopkart. This will be now called 5.5. I've added so much stuff, gotten so much feedback, and yes, the new version runs on Linux! It is in final testing at the moment, and should be ready within 2 weeks from today!

I'm also trying to finish up the website, and hosting is going to be coming back too! That will be BEFORE the official release, so you can get it early if you sign up for hosting. And your site will be hosted on a Linux server :-)

Update to the Beta finally coming

2010-03-11T08:50:00.003-05:00

It's been a busy few months since my last post back in October of last year! I've been busy working on multiple projects on top of handling hosting sign-ups and support requests. I've also been quietly working on fixing bugs and combining all these fixes into an update for the Beta. Once I have it posted the current version will no longer be considered a Beta version but will be the current version.

I am also going to be rolling out a new look to the website I've been working on in what little spare time I have had lately. It should be up (I hope) in the next week.

CF Shopkart 5.4 exploit fix

2009-10-01T14:25:00.002-04:00

There has been an exploit identified in the latest version in which a hacker can access your control panel. To fix this:

Open errorprocess.cfm and scroll down to the bottom of that file where you will see some HTML code for the friendly error message displayed on the page.

Copy all the HTML code and then paste it into a new file called error.cfm.
Where the HTML code was put CFLOCATION URL = "index.cfm?action=error" (surround it with <>).

Now open switches.cfm and add to the bottom just above the closing cfswitch tag just had a new CFCASE statement and set it to "error". The template to include will be your error.cfm file you just created.

Basically this will redirect the page when an error is generated and the hacker will not be able to see the information they are getting from the database.

Note: Not all sites are affected, but some who have certain widgets hidden will be, and you should take immediate action just in case. I am still working on an update to the latest version to further enhance security.

cfshopkart.com down for maintenance

2009-08-31T12:27:00.002-04:00

The main cfshopkart.com website is currently down for maintenance and will remain offline for a big part of today.

You can still access the mirror at www.cfhowto.com though I do not have the download for the 5.4 beta release on there yet.

I should have the site back up later today.

Cool Drop Down Boxes with CFMenu

2009-08-19T20:10:00.006-04:00

I've been working on a couple of projects these past 2 weeks since I released the latest version of CFShopkart (which is why some of you haven't gotten responses back to your tickets yet, but I'm getting caught up on them so please be patient-- trying to deal with the more urgent ones first).

Anyway, before I called it quits for tonight I wanted to share something with my fellow CF developers because it's just too good NOT to.

I am working on a web site and in the graphics submitted to me they had a form with a styled drop down box. As any web programmer knows, drop down boxes can't be styled very easily. Most browsers ignore CSS applied to them and you end up with an ugly gray box anyway.

I was determined to make the drop downs look just how the client wanted so they needed to match the rest of the styles I had already applied to the other form fields. So I set out to find the solution. I thought for sure there would be plenty of scripts around the web that demonstrated just how to do it, because I've seen it done on a few sites using styled UL and LI tags. But alas, I found nothing that worked. Oh, I found a couple of solutions that came close, but they would work in one browser and not in another. Sure, I could use a flash form in CF--it's easy to do-- but I just wanted it to be styled HTML; I wasn't about to redo the entire form.

...and I found nothing that worked. Needless to say, I was frustrated.

I gave up for awhile, because I needed to run a few errands, and while I was out it dawned on me...and this is why I like Coldfusion 8 so much: CFMENU to the rescue!

BUT wait, would I be able to make a CFMENU look like a styled drop down box? And could I get it to behave like one? What about passing the form field value to the next page? Sounds complicated, but it's not!

It was easier than I thought! Here is how I did it (link below to example and code):

1. I created a javascript function that would change the value of a standard text input depending on what value I passed to the function.

2. I styled the input box to match that of what the client wanted using CSS. I also changed the styles for the cfmenu to match the site.

3. I created a CFMENU with a sub menu that contained all the data that would appear in the drop down.

4. Finally, I put the input text box I created as the parent of the cfmenu, and for each item on the the sub menu simply called the function I wrote in step one to change the value of the text box depending on what they chose from the list.

Ok, so it doesn't perform EXACTLY like a drop down box, but it's pretty darn close! The client was very pleased with it. The only downside is that you can't put the cfmenu within a cfform tag. I don't know if that is a big deal for you, but if it is, you might be able to view page source and copy the actual HTML and javascript links generated by CF and use that instead of a cfmenu tag.

Maybe they should make something like this for CF9 or enhance CFMENU so it has more options, because there are a few things I would like to do if I had more access to the features within the YUI menu scripts. Reading the website about YUI, I discovered there are a lot of options that just aren't accessible (that I'm aware of) through CFMENU.

You can see a sample and how exactly I did it by clicking here.

CF Shopkart 5.4 Beta Download Available

2009-08-04T23:14:00.002-04:00

You can now download the CF Shopkart 5.4 Beta in the downloads section of the website. Please leave feedback in the forum or on this blog entry. See previous blog entries and the website for more information on what is new in this release.

I will be putting out updates and making this the official release once I'm 100% sure everything is working properly. I will be adding more features and improvements in the weeks ahead.

5.4 will be posted no later than Wednesday night.

2009-08-04T00:29:00.003-04:00

Tomorrow I am doing some final testing on version 5.4, and I will try to post it tomorrow night, but if not then for sure on Wednesday. I was delayed some today because we had a dns server go down on us. So my website was down for awhile.

I still want to add a few new features to 5.4, but I will save those features for some upcoming updates. I have already added the necessary tables and columns into the database schema so the updates should be very easy to implement. I am pleased with the stability and speed of the current version. I am going to post information on the website about what is new in version 5.4 yet tonight.

MS Access Users Will Soon Have Something To Smile About

2009-08-01T10:46:00.002-04:00

I just got done this morning testing CF Shopkart 5.4 with an MS Access database (2007) and all seemed to be working great! I had to change a few queries and fix up the error processing file, but it's all working now. So MS Access will be available and working in this next release.

Version 5.4 Preview Demo is up!

2009-07-31T22:22:00.004-04:00

Today I added just a few more enhancements and improvements, but mostly I tested the heck out of CF Shopkart 5.4 and worked out a few minor glitches. While I was at it, I added the ability to upload multiple images for a product at once.

I added a couple more style classes for the option form fields so you can customize them a little more.

I dropped the access codes feature from this update, mostly because it's not really all that useful, but because it needed work and I really didn't want to spend so much time on a feature that the majority of people will not be using.

You can see the preview demo (no access to the admin, but it's very similar to the cfshopkart 5.3 demo with some visual improvements and of course a few added features) here: http://cfskdemo.cfshopkart.com

Tomorrow later on I should have it posted to the downloads section.

Hosting

I have had "Coming Soon" on the hosting page for the past week. It's probably, unfortunately, going to be until Sunday evening by the time I get that off there and get the order form working. I'm also working with Hostek to get my reseller account all setup properly so that I can start setting up the stores on a CF8 server instead of the CF7 server they had me on. They notified me today that they will be moving my existing sites over to the CF8 server.

I will make an announcement here, on twitter (follow me @cfshopkart), and also on the forum.

Another late night again

2009-07-31T03:04:00.005-04:00

I cannot wait to share CF Shopkart 5.4 with all of you. Everything is running great so far in testing. I've had to fix a few minor things late today, but so far all seems to be going great as far as mysql is concerned.

Tomorrow I am going to test with MS Access and then do a followup on testing PayPal IPN to make sure that it is still working. Someone told me the the other day that it wasn't. I tried to fix it without getting into heavy testing, but haven't heard anything back. Hopefully it's working now. I will know tomorrow.

I finished today with adding CFQUERYPARAM tags to all the queries on the front end and some critical queries in the admin during the login and loading. This should really help big on keeping any hackers from being successful with the mysql injection attacks.

Among other security enhancements I have added in a check for such attacks when the site loads. Additionally, the page request is checked to see if index.cfm is called and if it's not, then it promptly redirects to it. This will keep people from trying to load any of the coldfusion scripts directly into their browser without going through the index file first.

I've also accomplished the following today:

- The email item link is back and working much better than before.
- Fixed a couple minor bugs in the wish lists feature.
- Added ability to turn on and off the wish lists feature in the settings.
- Now when you add a coupon for a specific item, it also adds the item to the cart.
- Coupons can be added via url now:
http://www.yourdomain.com/index.cfm?action=addtocart&couponcode=12345
- Changed the way option form fields assignments are stored in the database (no more list in products table. It's now a separate table). This was necessary for future enhancements.
- Fixed up the options administration in the control panel.
- Improved styles throughout the control panel.
- Completely redid the details page. I've broken up the elements of that page into separate files and changed the layout up some. It should be a lot easier to edit and customize it now!
- I've gone through all the bug reports that were sent and addressed every single one that I was able to.

Again, thanks to all those who submitted bug reports for version 5.3. It's been a BIG help!

A few more notes on the pending 5.4 update

2009-07-29T00:01:00.003-04:00

I had some difficulties figuring out a weird bug with Fedex that was reported to me early today. That's why you aren't seeing the update posted yet. It set me back. Then one of my other clients mentioned how nice it would be if they could export their orders to, say, a CSV file.

Well, I decided that I would try to do the export feature before release, but not only will you be able to export orders, but also customer contact info (matching criteria), and product data.

I also decided to go ahead and fix a few bugs with the product import and change the way it works. The procedure is the same until the very last step where you choose columns. It's completely turned around, and it should work much better (and should be easier to understand).

I'll be working on some projects in the morning (got to pay the bills). When I'm done, I plan to get back to programming the new export feature and testing. Hopefully I won't find anything too major anymore in testing. I've worked through most of the bugs that were reported to me (a couple minor ones are still a mystery, but thankfully they seem to be happening on very few sites).

I've also added some security enhancements to help further reduce the likely hood of xss and sql injection attacks.

Well, that's it for me for the day. It's after midnight and my eyes are starting to burn. Good night everyone!

One more thing....

2009-07-27T21:40:00.002-04:00

After 5.4 is out I am going to concentrate a lot of my time and efforts into documentation. The documentation was put on hold while I worked on a couple of things including the update (bug fixes are more important than how-to's in my book). So in the coming weeks I will be spending time each day adding to the documentation for both CF shopkart (http://www.cfshopkart.com) and the mini site builder (http://www.hostmyminisite.com/

CF Shopkart 5.4 Will Be Out Soon!

2009-07-27T21:12:00.002-04:00

I have been working the past few days on updating CF Shopkart to version 5.4. Besides fixing some bugs, this update is going to add in a few new features.

The biggest addition to this version is the new navigation menu system. Since the beginning of CF Shopkart all those years ago you have had to manually edit the navigation bar at the top of the site just below the header. Well, no more! By default, CFShopkart will continue to use the default navigation menu at the top. But in 5.4 you will be able to choose between a custom HTML menu, a basic HTML menu, a CF8 drop down menu, and a couple of different flash drop down menus. The menus will go 3 levels deep and they can be styled to match your site. You will be able to add page links, custom links, component links, and links to specific categories on the menu.

Another key new features is the ability to create multiple index files so that you can use different templates or layouts throughout your site. This new feature makes it so that you can tell the application to load a different index file for a specific page if you need to change the layout when a certain page is loaded.

Also included in this update is the long awaited ability to attach files to a product that a customer can download after they checkout. In previous versions of CF Shopkart I had the ability included to upload one file for a product. However, I had removed this feature when I released version 5 because I had started to rewrite it, but unfortunately lost the code I started working on when I had a hard drive fail. To make a long story short, I got busy with other things and eventually was able to begin programming the feature back into the application about a month ago. And it is way better than before. The new file attachment feature will lets you upload several files at once so you can have the customer download one or more files depending on what they purchase. Plus when you upload the file a nice status bar comes up to let you know how long it's taking (thank to swfupload).

One more notable feature is a much needed improvement to the filemanager. You can now upload multiple files at once and watch their progress, because I have integrated swfupload. You can select multiple images now and upload them to your images folder instead of one-at-a-time in the image manager.

This will PROBABLY be the last MAJOR update to version 5. I am going to focus more on version 6, which will be a cf8+ shopping cart system. It will make more use of CFCs and many of the awesome features built into CF8. I will continue to support and make updates to version 5 for quite some time yet so don't get worried. CF Shopkart 5 hasn't ran it's full course yet.

In the months ahead you will be seeing a Version 6 Alpha release posted to the site.

I will make an announcement on twitter (@cfshopkart), here in the blog, and on the forum when version 5.4 is posted. It should be within the next 24-48 hours. I just need to finish tweaking and testing it and making sure I didn't miss a couple of bugs.

Which, reminds me: thank you all who have been submitting the error reports in your control panel. That addition to CF Shopkart 5 has been a HUGE help, and I've been reading and addressing as many as I can whenever I have the chance. This next update is going to fix many of the ones that have been reported. So thank you again for taking the time to click that button ;-)

CF Shopkart News and Updates

2009-07-13T17:15:00.000-04:00

I am in the process of rolling out a new service at www.hostmyminisite.com so I've been busy with that the past few weeks.

I am also working on an update to CF Shopkart (5.4) and it will have a few new features, but most importantly it's going to have some bug fixes as well as some more security fixes.

I am also going to offer more CF Shopkart hosting. I am partnered with Hostek and am a reseller for them. I am going to be setting up any new accounts on there. The first thing many of you will notice is the price increase. I set the price higher because I am not only providing you with hosting (which carries some expense), but I am also installing it, providing important updates, and giving you my full support. I want to be able to provide the best support possible and at the pricing level I had it at, this just wasn't possible. As I grow I want to be able to afford to hire others that can program in CF and provide support too and this will help provide better service overall.

Look for the new hosting sign up which is already in progress on the site. I should have it ready by this weekend and I will also be posting an update.

CF Shopkart Update 5.3.0.3 Now Available

2009-04-21T15:46:00.000-04:00

I have posted the update archive in the downloads section of the website. I have not yet written an update script so there is no notification in the control panel yet. But I will be in the a few days. Those that are following along though in the forum, twitter, and this blog now have a heads up. You can download the update now.

The CF Shopkart main archive has also been updated.

See the forum or the included text file for fixes and changes.

You can please most of the people some of the time...

2009-04-21T00:03:00.000-04:00

This article posted by Randy Cassingham and written by Paul Myers sums it all up nicely. It made me laugh, because I have met so many of these people in the past 7 years I have been working online. And it is so true what Paul says. I enjoyed the article so much that I just had to share it. With people like Paul around publishing helpful tips and info, you don't have to learn the hard way like I did :-)

I highly recommend going over to Paul's website and subscribing to his newsletter. It's a great read for anyone who is really serious about making money online.

Read Randy's article about Paul's newsletter (the article contains a link to Paul's website) here:
http://www.thisistrue.com/blog-tanstaafl_baby.html

And while you are there, sign up to Randy's newsletter called This is True. It is awesome! Start out with the free edition if you want, but I'm telling you right now the Premium This is True is well worth the little amount Randy charges for it (you will not regret subscribing, I promise you that)! I just got my copy of the next edition delivered to my inbox and I plan to read it over a nice hot cup of coffee in the morning-- it's become my Tuesday morning ritual now :-)

Solved my Dreamweaver CS3 connectivity problems

2009-04-18T02:10:00.000-04:00

For the past few months I have been suffering from the dreaded connection problems using Dreamweaver FTP. I have gone through dozens of blogs and dozens of supposed fixes, and saw dozens of recommendations to 'use an external ftp program'. I even uninstalled it and resinstalled it no avail. So I gave up for awhile and started using an external one or just rebooting the system to get Dreamweaver working again. I was convinced that I would have to wipe my OS (WinXP) and reinstall because I thought maybe I screwed up something in the registry.

Here is what was happening:

Dreamweaver would work just fine for awhile (usually half an hour, sometimes longer). Then suddenly, it would start having problems connecting (I couldn't connect to any of the servers in my list). This was happening on both my laptop and my desktop so I knew it had to be something both had in common. The only way I could get Dreamweaver working again was to reboot the system. It would hang on uploading a 62KB file, trying to list the directories, and sometimes it would delete my file from the remote server and then tell me I had to turn on Passive FTP when it was already on, which would cause a 404 error on the server.

So I had this idea that just maybe it was my anti-virus.

I run AVG Anti Virus which is currently on 8.5. If you aren't running AVG, it could still be it so just try this one and see if the problem goes away for you (I know I'm not the only one that has had this problem from the posts I have seen on this):

Open your antivirus control center (for AVG you double-click the AVG icon in your tray).

You need to find the exceptions list. In AVG you click on the tools menu and click on advanced settings. Under Resident shield click on Exceptions.

I added two paths (I'm running Win XP by the way), but the second one is probably what does it:

Path 1: Enter/select the path to Adobe Dreamweaver cs3. On mine it is C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Dreamweaver CS3\

Path 2: This is to the application data folder in your documents and settings under your user account (it might be hidden so you need to change windows settings to show hidden files if you don't see it). The path to mine was: C:\Documents and Settings\Jon\Application Data\Adobe\Dreamweaver 9\

In AVG click on Apply then Ok and close out of it.

It looks like Dreamweaver is working great for me now, and what is really awesome is I got a little bit of a performance boost out the file get and put operations :-)

Shipping Per Item

2009-04-17T14:23:00.000-04:00

I just had one of my newer clients email me today asking about charging shipping per item. Not only did I realize there is a minor bug (will be fixed in next update), but it gave me an idea. When you select this method of shipping it just tells you the method was set and nothing else. You are supposed to go to each item and specify the shipping price under the settings tab when editing the item (which I told them to do, of course). However, this made me realize that I could improve on this feature.

This client has a small catalog so it's not big deal for them, but what if someone had a large catalog? Would they really want to click on each item and update one at a time? What if shipping prices go up and they need to change all their item shipping prices? That would be one heck of a task!

Well I have an idea of how I can make it better! So in an upcoming update I'm going to add the ability to change shipping prices on multiple items at once as well as adjust shipping for multiple items at once (similar to the new price adjustments feature I built in). Look for it either in the next update or the one right after.

Protecting your Coldfusion Tags from FCKEditor

2009-04-14T15:49:00.003-04:00

I ran into a problem on one of my client websites that wanted some dynamic content on their homepage. I edited the homepage in Dreamweaver and added some Coldfusion tags. Two days later, the clients opens the homepage.cfm file in their control panel and FCKEditor screwed up my Coldfusion Tags which generated an error on the homepage (argh!). Naturally I figured there was a setting in fckconfig.js that would solve my troubles. Well, there is, but I had to do a bit of digging to find out how to protect my Coldfusion tags from FCKEditors wrath. You see, the good folks that make FCKEditor available tell you how to protect your php and asp code, but are silent when it comes to Coldfusion tags. FCKEditor attempts to parse Coldfusion tags as HTML and so when you switch views it messes with yours tags in unspeakable ways. But I almost did a little dance when I found the solution to my problem!

I've posted the solution in the CF Shopkart forum:
http://www.cfshopkart.org/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=125

FCKEditor will ignore any of your Coldfusion tags if you add those lines. Sure, it's a security risk if you are using FCKEditor on a public website, but it's only used in the Control Panel for my client and they don't know anything about CF so I figure I'm safe

Edit: In order for dynamic coldfusion content to display in a web browser using FCKeditor, you need to turn script protection off in the cfapplication tag. It is a security risk though because it protects your site from cross site scripting. So if you've been putting cf tags in FCKEditor and then wondering why the dynamic output is not working, it's because script source is on. Set it to "None" or give it a comma delimited list of variables you want to protect. Read more here: http://livedocs.adobe.com/coldfusion/8/htmldocs/help.html?content=Tags_a-b_5.html#1097308

UPDATE:
The link above is dead and I can't paste the code to my blog so if anyone seeing this still needs the code, just email me. You can contact me on my website using the contact form: http://www.cfshopkart.com

Update 3.2.0.2 included in archive now

2009-04-06T23:53:00.000-04:00

I put the 5.3.0.2 update into the archive, but haven't made a separate package for it yet. I was planning to get to it today but didn't quite manage to get the time. I will put it up sometime this week. I am going to also release another update shortly after that. The next update will hopefully have the LinkPoint payment processor support back! It will probably be posted early to middle of next week.

Also I wanted to address something that a couple people emailed me about. There are still a couple websites reporting a vulnerability in CF Shopkart. The vulnerability was addressed over a month ago and the 5.2.2 download had the patch in it. However, I guess I didn't make that clear on the website so the report is still circulating (many of these sites copy and paste from each other and don't actually do their own research so it might a little while before the all catch up to each other). Regardless, I thought it would be best to just take the 5.2.2 download down so people will no longer believe the reports. I will no longer be offering it and the link is now broken (which will hopefully speed up the process of them taking the information down). I have also contacted a couple of them to make them aware of the update.

And just to be clear, the vulnerability has been addressed in 5.3 and no longer exists. There are still a couple more steps I plan to take to increase security in version 5.3, and I will be putting out updates as I get those steps accomplished.

Also, I will attend to any other threats that come up ASAP. So if you see something out there or hear anything, please do not hesitate to contact me about it. I want to know about it!

CF Shopkart 5.3 is out along with an update!

2009-04-03T21:36:00.001-04:00

I have posted CF Shopkart 5.3 on the website for download. I don't have the demo ready yet, but it's coming!

I have also put out an update already (5.3.0.1). Those already running 5.3 will be notified the update is available when they login to their control panel.

Linkpoint and YourPay are not working properly, but I will be working on getting that going in the next few days. I will provide another update once I have that working.

CF Shopkart 5.3 almost out!

2009-03-30T13:26:00.000-04:00

I have been testing the new version last night and today and working out any last minute kinks. But as I was testing, I decided to check up on the PayPal Payments Pro integration guides and found out they now have a new method of making the calls. So today I decided to go ahead and put the PayPal Payment Pro support into version 5.3 before I post it (I've had several requests in the past few months for it, but haven't gotten to it).

So far so good! I'm just hoping my tests work. Can it really be this easy? PayPal even provides a CFC for making the calls!

You can all expect version 5.3 to be posted on the site no later than this Wednesday evening!

After this release I am going to focus on documentation and adding more support for other payment processors (please make requests in the forum and provide links).

CFShopkart 5.3 will have error reporting.

2009-02-20T16:05:00.000-05:00

I was working on the 5.3 update again today and have fixed a few bugs in it that have been reported to me. One of the new things that will be included in this update is error reporting. I came up with the idea when I was fixing a bug in someone's website. I decided to finally get around to putting in a custom error page and handler instead of just having visitors see Coldfusion errors on your website. It will just display a friendly little message, and the entire Coldfusion error will get logged to your database.

In your control panel you will then find the error log and you can click to view the details of the error. To most people that error message won't mean anything, but to me, it can reveal where a problem might be in the application (especially if I get numerous reports of the same thing). There will be a button above the error report and it will send it right on over to my website and log it for my later review! This type of reporting will go a long way in improving CF Shopkart.

Update on the forum: Charles, the guy who runs the forum, had a problem with his server. The good news is, he told me he is working on it over the weekend and should have it up and running by Monday (if all goes well). So keep your fingers crossed folks, and hope it all goes smoothly so you can all start visiting the forum again.

And one more thing: I am putting together a knowledge base. Every time I fix a bug or do some kind of update that fixes a problem I will be putting it into the knowledge base. The knowledge base will also have documentation that will help both end users and developers. It's going to take time, but I will be working on it as much as I possibly can...but don't expect it overnight ;-)

Thanks to all who have been supporting CF Shopkart and to all who have sent me wonderful comments. The compliments are very incouraging.

Been very busy here!

2009-02-19T18:22:00.000-05:00

I have been slammed with work lately. Though I have been working hard on an update to version 5 in what little spare time I have. I can't give a specific date, but I'm going to clear some things out of my way and get it posted soon.

Ido see the forum is down, thank you all for emailing me and letting me know :-). I do not actually run the forum, so I can't really provide any updates on when it's coming back up. I don't even own the domain for it. I'm hoping that it comes back up soon otherwise I'm going to be forced to get one up of my own :-(. I wish the guy that runs it would just let me host it. I wouldn't charge him a thing for it! I've got his email somewhere in my sea of emails. I will write to him and find out what is going on with that.

In the meantime, if anyone has any fixes or anything just reply to this blog post. I've got some things cooking for CF Shopkart, and there will be lots of good things happening this year!

CF Shopkart Exploit Fix

2008-12-29T13:17:00.000-05:00

It has come to my attention that a hacker could use a blind SQL injection in order to cause problems on a website running CFShopkart

When viewing categories in the shopping cart the hacker could append something to the URL variable category=1 to cause problems on your site.

I will have a fix for this along with some other updates in the next release, but here is a simple fix to the potential security risk:

Open the following files:

/catalog/Categories_HTML.cfm
/catalog/Categories_HTMLTree.cfm
/catalog/Categories_Image.cfm
/catalog/FormCategories.cfm

At or near the top make sure you have the following line:

cfparam name = "category" default="0" type="integer"

If the lins is there make sure you add type integer. This is a quick and simple fix, and should prevent this type of attack. From my understanding, those using the MS Access DB are particularly vulnerable to this type of attack.

MySQL, CFQUERY, and creating a user

2008-11-05T20:08:00.000-05:00

Awhile ago I had worked on some code on our back end servers in which I needed to setup some databases through Coldfusion, and for security reasons I needed to set up a new user for each database that we created. So I went ahead and used CFEXECUTE and ran a nice little batch file each time I wanted to create a database. This worked excellent until we decided to run similar code on our production servers, in which the mysql server was seperate from the Coldfusion server. The goal was to create a create multiple databases in mysql and give each one their own username and password. Sounds easy, and, well, guess what? It is in Coldfusion!

One way of doing it, I found out from browsing around the internet, was to create a share over the network. I could create folders very easily for MyISAM databases (not so easily with Inodb), and mysql would recognize it as a new database. Setting up a user was a little more complex as I had to somehow create a batch file and then call it remotely. Now that's all fine, if you don't give a crap about security. You see, sharing files and opening ports is a big risk, especially if you are passing information that could grant a hacker access to all your mysql databases.

So I looked around the internet and I only found hints at a solution to my dilema, but it was enough to get an idea. The one example I did find was actually incorrect, and the person that had posted the question about why it was not working had not received an answer. So I decided to experiment, and I quickly found out how to accomplish what I needed to do: setup a database on a server within my network where the MySQL server wasn't on the same machine as the CF Server.

First, to create a database in Coldfusion using CFQUERY you need to have root access to your mysql database server. For those of you on shared hosting, you are out of luck because you aren't going to get that username and password! But if you have root access you can quickly create a database like this:

[cfquery name = "createdb" datasource="avalid_datasource" username="myrootuser" password="myrootpassword"]
CREATE DATABASE mydatabasename
[/cfquery]

Now of course, you would want to put some kind of error capture in around this or you will risk exposing your root username and password to someone if an error occurs and you have robust exemptions turned on.

Next, for security reasons mostly, I wanted to setup a username and password for each of my databases that I made. This is how I accomplished this:

[cfquery name = "createdb" datasource="avalid_datasource" username="myrootuser"]
GRANT SELECT, INSERT, REFERENCES, UPDATE, DELETE, CREATE, DROP, ALTER, INDEX ON mydatabasename.* TO 'newusername'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY 'newpassword'
[/cfquery]

Note that it is important you specify the root username and password in order to perform these actions or you will get an error.

Hope this helps someone out there! :-)

Version 5.3 is almost done!

2008-11-04T18:59:00.000-05:00

Though I've been very busy lately with developing for Megalinx Corporation and other affiliated companies, I have been finding some time in recent weeks to get some bugs fixed and do a few more features in CFShopkart. Recently I added a little Classified Ads module for it so that will be included in the 5.3 release. It's nothing fancy, and most of you will probably not use it, but it's pretty cool and a good application to build of off if you are wanting to build something like it.

The account section is getting a little face lift and I have also redid the category logins (which I'm currently working on finishing up). You will be able to mark an item as a subscription item as before, but this time the persons cc info is encrypted in the database and saved for you to handle how you want. In this release I won't be supporting any payment processor recurring payment solutions, but that will come soon probably starting with authorize.net and paypal (probably in a 5.3.x release I will add those in). For now it's just stored in the db and you can handle it how you need too (if anyone needs to use this feature). For now, I just plan to make it so that you can select which subscriptions get to access which categories. The reason I redid it, is I was working on something for someone else and I realized the way I had programed it just isn't very versitile, and this will make it much more versitile for future addons and modules.

I did some work on the themes to improve slightly on the implementation.

I am currently adding back in the ability to have downloadable goods! It's going to be good too, in that you will be able to attach multiple files to a product that your customers will then be able to download. Perfect for ebook sites or if you want to give them some type of download after checkout while they wait on a product to ship.

And I've been doing a lot of thinking on Version 6 already! Yes, even though 5.3 isn't quite out, I am thinking ahead :-)...version 6 will see some code changes in the admin. I am going to focus on making it more secure and faster. There are quite a few statement for the various components that will converted to statements. You'll notice that new features I've been adding use CFCASE instead of CFIF...sorry, but years ago when I first did this I used CFIF statements as that is what I learned, but then later learned about CFCASE and CFSWITCH which processes much quicker. So there will be some performance increases there.

I may in the meantime release a few more updates to 5, but I'm thinking that it's high time I quit adding more features, and just focus exclusively on bugs and adding payment processors.

EDIT: 02/2008 - Sorry guys, I've had to postpone the release. I'm doing some more work on it and have had a lot of work coming in. The release will be out soon though!

Welcome to the new CFShopkart Blog!

2008-11-04T15:37:00.000-05:00

I have created a new blog for CFShopkart to keep you all up-to-date on what I'm doing and what is going on with CFShopkart. I will also post some updates and info as I have time. Thanks for stopping by!