Currently we are working on developing 1.6.2 of Cart Viper, one of the new features we have added is support for the Microsoft Azure platform. Azure is Microsoft’s cloud based hosting service, using Azure you can quickly deploy a DNN website in a matter of minutes.

Starting in release 1.6.2 of Cart Viper you will be able to deploy and run a Cart Viper ecommerce store on DNN that is hosting on Azure Websites. We’ll be creating a video tutorial to help get you started once we release the module.

Adding support for Azure was mainly focused in two area

• SQL Scripts
• PDF Generation

SQL Scripts

When using Azure Websites the database used by DNN is the cloud based version of SQL Server called SQL Azure. SQL Azure has some minor differences in supported SQL terms so we have to modify some of our scripts in order to deploy the module.

PDF Generation

We had previously used a third party library which made use of GDI+ to generate the order detail PDFs, on the cloud platform this lead to an out of memory exception. So we have switched to a new rendering which makes use of WPF.

Using Azure to host your DNN ecommerce site is going to be huge, its just so simple, cost effective and scalable. Watch out for the new release of Cart Viper coming soon.

Working in conjunction with our friends over at ITX we were tasked with allowing Cart viper to provide a mobile DotNetNuke ecommerce store for the Cathedral Company website.

The key requirement for this project was that when viewing the Cathedral Company website on a mobile device the layout would be optimised for a mobile viewing. One of the new features in version 6.1 onwards of DotNetNuke was mobile support, this allowed DotNetNuke to detect if you were viewing the site on a mobile device and then if necessary redirect you to a mobile optimised rather than the standard website.

With this great feature at our disposal we set about creating a series of modules that could display Cart viper categories and products that were optimized for mobile viewing. The end results gives the user a mobile friendly experience when viewing the site on their mobile device allowing for quick page loading times when browsing the store categories and products, but not sacrificing functionality or user-ability.

Site when viewed on mobile device:

Site when viewed on non-mobile device:

With the increased number of customers browsing and shopping from their mobile devices this is a must have for ecommerce solutions, if you are interested in learning what mobile functionality Cart viper can offer your DNN site, please drop us a line.

Here at Cart Viper we understand that without first class support no matter now great your product is it will fail, customers need to have 100% confidence in you to quickly assist with any issues they may have. Along with the confidence the product continues its development life cycle with new and innovative features added and enhanced that will ultimately translate to more sales for your store.

We like to think we have a great balance between an excellent product and customer support. We recently spent some time working with Debt - Proof Living and they had some kinds words to say about the quality of our work:

“We have been so pleased with Cart Viper. The level of customer support the Cart Viper team has provided is beyond exceptional. It's difficult these days to be able to find developers who are able to understand what you need from not only a technical standpoint - but also from a business and marketing perspective.

Nigel and Mark are able to understand and provide support on both fields. We've worked with them on creating a few custom additional add-ons and the pricing has not only been reasonable but the job is always completed in a timely manner. They don't rest until everything is set up correctly and it works exactly how you intended. I highly recommend the Cart Viper platform and we are very satisfied in our experience thus far.”

Max Halberg, Director of Digital Marketing for Debt-Proof Living

Cart Viper offers different levels of support ranging from community to enterprise to ensure there is a support option to fit any budget and support level your organisation requires to ensure instant response to your queries and questions.

If you would like to discuss which support plan would best suit your organisation please drop us a line.

Here at Cart Viper the advanced DotNetNuke ecommerce solution we value innovation and taking the basic Cart viper template and token system and pushing it to its limits. By utilizing the token system and skin objects feature Cart viper supports it is possible to create highly customized, innovative and styled ecommerce solutions.

The below sites highlight how writing a skin object can add additional functionality to your site to make it stand out from the crowd, improve usability and ultimately sales:

www.cerez.co.uk

www.imaginz.co.nz

www.purplecateducation.com

www.electrocorder.com

www.startwithwhy.com

In many cases we worked together with the website owner to produce the end result, if you have a requirement or want to highlight your innovative Cart viper solution please let us know.

Cart Viper the DNN ecommerce solution has supported customers leaving product reviews since version 1.0, however in release 1.6.1 we have added in the ability for the store owner to respond to product reviews and have the admin comments outputted along with the product review.

This new feature increases the ability for the owner to communicate with their customers and encourages a more social aspect to your store.

Responding to a review is straightforward simply select the review you want to reply to from the review admin section and you will be greeted with the below UI:

Once your reply has been saved it will then be outputted below the original customers review:

The admin reply is purely driven by CSS, so you are free to format this as per your needs to match the look and feel of your existing site. This as well as numerous new features are available in Cart Viper 1.6.1 that comes complete with a free 14 day trial.

Along with the many great new features in version 1.6.1 of Cart Viper the advanced DNN shopping cart we have integrated into 9 new payment gateways!

The new payment gateways we have added support for are:

• Barclays EPDQ
• Eway Payment Gateway
• First Data Connect Payment Gateway
• PayWay payment provider
• Quick Books Merchant Services
• Rabo Kassa Omni Payment Gateway
• Sage Pay Forms Payment Gateway
• Virtual Merchant
• World Pay Payment Gateway

Combined with these we have also added support for 2 new currencies:

• New Zealand dollar
• Philippine Peso

All the above features were requested by clients and highlights how flexible and extendable Cart viper is. If you have a requirement for a new payment gateway, currency or any other feature we do not currently support let us know and we would be happy to discuss these with you.

One of the great new features of version 1.6.1 of Cart Viper the advanced DNN shopping cart is the ability to support multiple shipping providers. The advantage of this is you could enable any combination of the Cart viper shipping providers and then the customer can select which provider they would like to use when they complete their order:

• Default (Cart viper internal shipping bands)
• FedEx
• UPS
• USPS

Configuring this option is straightforward, simply select the shipping providers you would like to enable from the shipping admin complete all the relevant settings for the shipping provider and select “Shipping Provider Is Active”

Once completed the customer will be presented with the below options when they checkout, giving them the ability to select the shipping option they prefer:

Stay tuned because over the coming weeks we will be bloging on more of the great new features in release 1.6.1.

Here at Cart Viper the DotNetNuke ecommerce solution we hope you have had a great vacation, now the new year is upon us we are delighted to release version 1.6.1 of Cart Viper the most feature rich and best supported DNN shopping cart. This version is bursting at the seams with 80 new features and enhancements, some of the highlights are listed below however click here to view the full feature list for this release:

• Support multiple shipping providers e.g. UPS, FedEx, USPS and let the customer select which one they would like to use at the point of checkout.
• Google product feed support.
• Add “buy now” price to events, so they can either be rented on a given date or purchased now for the buy it now price.
• Define if a digital download attracts shipping costs.
• 9 new payment gateways! including Barclays EPDQ, Virtual Merchant and Sage Pay forms.
• Allow admin to respond to product reviews.
• Upload an unlimited number of product datasheets.
• Allow admin to define the units of measure the store will use e.g. CM, MM, LB, KG
• Create shipping bands based on zipcodes.
• Define zipcode’s that the store will not deliver to.
• Allow customer to optionally select a delivery date and time.
• Support New Zealand dollar and Philippine Peso currencies.

2013 is going to be a busy year here at Cart viper we have already got a full feature list for our next release if you think there is a feature missing from that list please contact us and we would be happy to add this.

Please take our free 14 day trial and as ever any feedback good or bad please let us know!

Best regards

Nigel.

We would like to wish all our customers a very Happy Holidays.

While we may have been quiet on the blog but behind the scenes we have been working on lots of new features and hope to release version 1.6.1 of Cart Viper in January 2013.

We are really excited about 2013 and all the new features and improvement we have to show you in Cart Viper so stay tuned.

Back in version 1.5.1 of Cart Viper the DNN shopping cart we implemented a new feature that allowed the store admin to upload multiple product images simultaneously.

To achieve this we created a Silverlight control, a trade off we had to make when we implemented this feature is that if you are using version 6 of IIS the Silverlight mime type will not be there by default (version 7 onwards has this in by default). This means that the control cannot be rendered to the page and when you go-to the product image upload section you get a blank screen.

In order to fix this you need to add the Silverlight mime type to IIS, the following link provides a great example of how to achieve this under the section “Using the IIS Manager User Interface in IIS 6.0 in Windows Server 2003” – note upon completing the steps an IIS restart may be necessary.

Once you have completed the above the image up-loader control should then be rendered to the page allowing you to upload multiple images simultaneously and making managing your store with Cart Viper even easier!