Zencart + Free Shipping USA Shipping Module

By Joe | Published: August 31, 2010
Zencart + Free Shipping USA Shipping Module zen cart logo

Zen-Cart

Many websites offer free shipping in the USA. The default shipping module for zencart does not allow a store owner to easily handle it. In the configuration of the shipping module, you set the desired country (USA) to display free shipping to, and any of the other options that are available in the standard freeshipper module included with zencart. The zip file contains just 2 files, the shipping total, and a english language define. Install instructions are included in the download. Very easy and fast to install.

You may download the module form bitbucket.org, or even help contribute to it.

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FreeNAS + Mercurial

By Joe | Published: August 6, 2010

mercurial logoI was recently tinkering around with Mercurial and getting my feet wet using a distributed source version control. I have been using Subversion for about the past year, and has served me well. I wanted to get involved with some of the projects hosted on Bitbucket.org in order to fork some projects.  The are a number of useful Codeigniter projects and zen-cart addons on there as well. One of the main ideas behind using a DSVC is not needing a centralized server. This seems great, if you are doing your work where will you have access to the network at some point to push/pull those changesets.  I work from a couple locations and need to be able to push/pull those changes. Pricing plans on Bitbucket.org are very reasonable, but I needed to host a few extra private repositories. Got me thinking to install mercurial on that FreeNAS box sitting quietly in my basement.  I am currently using FreeNAS .69. If you are running another build of FreeNAS, you will need to find the appropriate packages for your build. Read More »

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PetFinder API PHP Class Library

By Joe | Published: June 30, 2010

I was interested in a project for a website as to what data could be retrieved from PetFinder.com. To my surprise, on their website located in the footer is a link to their API documentation. In order to use their API, you must first fill out a developer request for a key & password. I did a quick look to see if anyone had written a php class for accessing the api, but couldn’t find anything useful. I have created a php class that you can call the certain methods available to retrieve the records.

Update 6-30-2010:

I recently updated the class to enable caching the xml response from the Petfinder server. This should provide a nice little speed boost even though it was already pretty fast :) . Caching is enabled by default, and caches expires in 3 minutes. The folder “cache_files” in zip folder must have write permissions. As shown in the instructions, you can change the paths of cache files.

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CodeIgniter + Whitepages.com API Library

By Joe | Published: April 27, 2010

CodeIgniter + Whitepages.com API Library ci logo flame I was recently working on another Codeigniter project that I needed to grab some phone, address, & map information for plotting on a map. After doing a little searching I found Whitepages.com has provided an API interface for retrieving data via REST. The methods seemed simple enough, and provided an easy way to create a CodeIgniter library to due the dirty work. Read More »

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Codeigniter + Geshi

By Joe | Published: April 9, 2010

Geshi is a PHP class to do the heavy lifting for syntax highlighting output to your browswer. Codeigniter + Geshi ci logo flame Geshi started originally to help users highlight code posted on bulletin board sites. I converted the standard Geshi class into a Codeigniter library. Just a simple as renaming the class and created a few methods to conform to some of the options you’ll find in codeigniter.
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Zencart + Price Breaks + Easy Populate

By Joe | Published: February 21, 2010
Zencart + Price Breaks + Easy Populate zen cart logo

Zen-Cart

Here is another update to the popular add-on for Zencart called Easy Populate. For those unfamiliar with Easy Populate, it’s a fantastic add-on for Zencart. Easy Populate allows user to create comma separated values (.csv) files to editing the list of products in their Zencart installation. A user recently emailed me requesting an additional feature of price break imports to be included in Easy Populate. Read More »

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Zencart Custom Session Length

By Joe | Published: February 21, 2010
Zencart Custom Session Length zen cart logo

Zen-Cart

Lately, I have been developing a few modifications for Zencart. One of things I have noticed during the development process, is my shopping cart being lost while typing code and then refreshing the page a little while later. This was no big deal. Just go in add another product, and test again. Then, I got to talking to a few other users who seem to experience the same problem of losing their session. As an end user or a customer this can be frustrating that you have added items to your cart, and then something come ups. They come back to their cart, go to another page, and they have lost their shopping cart. Zencart checks your php.ini for session length. On some hosting accounts, you don’t have access to change this value, or you just want a more user friendly way to adjust this.  This contribution / modification for Zen-cart will fix this problem. No core files are touched with this mod. You can extend the session length / timeout / expiration from the admin page.

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Zencart reCAPTCHA Contribution Mod

By Joe | Published: February 8, 2010
Zencart reCAPTCHA Contribution Mod zen cart logo

Zen-Cart

One of the few options to try and combat SPAM on your zencart install, is to try and implement a CAPTCHA text/image on your contact us page. I recently updated a contribution I  created several months ago. This reCAPTCHA contribution will add configuration fields to the database for your api key and password, color theme selection, and enable/disable feature on contact us form.  The original contribution had used native mysql queries, so I have updated the contribution to support zencart’s $db:Factory object. Read More »

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Zencart + UPS XML Dimensional Support

By Joe | Published: February 4, 2010
Zencart + UPS XML Dimensional Support zen cart logo

Zen-Cart

One task I have put off from switching from osCommerce to ZenCart shopping cart platform, was updating the UPS XML contribution.  For those familiar with the shopping cart system, you know by default they only support standard UPS shipping. The cart figures shipping all the items together in one box. However, some products can’t be shipped together, and distorts shipping quotes for UPS. The solution that evolved in osCommerce was using UPS shipping API to get detailed freight quotes.
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Setup WAMP and SVN Subversion on Windows

By Joe | Published: January 20, 2010

Say you work on a desktop and a laptop computer, and you synchronize your laptop. Edit some files, save, and upload. Everything is fine. Now you get home or back in the office, sit down at the desktop, and forget to synchronize. You edit the files some more, upload, and save. Uh-oh, now you lost the changes you made on your laptop. You’ll have to get a copy off the laptop, and find all the changes you made. Ever done this? Version Control makes this scenario so much easier to resolve. Read More »

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