X-Cart Classic v.4.6.2: Subscriptions, New USPS API, Responsive Email notifications

Blog
X-Cart Product Updates
X-Cart Classic v.4.6.2: Subscriptions, New USPS API, Responsive Email notifications

X-Cart Classic v.4.6.2: Subscriptions, New USPS API, Responsive Email notifications

04 Feb 2014

3 min read

Today is a perfect day, especially for the fans of X-Cart 4 Classic: we’re announcing the release of a new version. The main changes of X-Cart v.4.6.2 are listed below:

USPS integration updated to support latest Rates API
“Bestsellers” module rewritten not to rely on “Advanced Statistics”.
“Product returns” available for customers who placed their orders as “anonymous”, without account creation.
“X-Payments subscriptions and installments module” included into X-Cart package.
“Ideal Responsive” set as default skin, the template code significantly improved.
email notifications got responsive, too.
all the JavaScript libraries updated.
“Advanced_statistics” module removed.
Google Checkout and ViaKlix payment gateway support removed.

USPS integration updated to support latest Rates API

On January, 26th USPS rolled out the API changes. The ‘get real-time shipping rates’ functionality was adjusted in X-Cart 4.6.2 to be fully compatible with the updated RateV4 API. For older versions, we issued a patch which was given out on the forum here.

“Bestsellers” module changes

The “Bestsellers” module was rewritten not to rely on “Advanced Statistics”, the latter being removed from X-cart package at all because of performance issues. The “Bestsellers” module now uses a new table product_sales_stats which is populated with order data when the order is payed, i.e. its status changes to”processed” or “completed”.

The “Recommended products” module (“Customers also bought” tab) has also been separated from “Advanced Statistics” and optimized.

As for “Advanced statistics” substitution, we recommend a very powerful (and free!) tool – Google Analytics. David Coggan, one of X-Cart merchants(Carolyn Nussbaum Music: One Stop Flute Shop ) switched to Google Analytics already: “GA is amazing and gives me way more without bloating my DB”.

Getting more responsive

Mobile users should surpass desktop users in 2014, many analysts predict. So the “Ideal Responsive” template code has been significantly improved further (especially mobile mode), and we went on to make email notifications responsive too, see iPhone and iPad screenshots to the right. The changes affect all types of notifications to users: customer, admin, provider.

Subscriptions

When we excluded all so-called “backgorund” payment integrations ( for the sake of PCI compliance), it became impossible to store credit card details for future use – unless it’s configured on payment gateway side. Now it’s possible again- yet everything remains PCI compliant. All the magic is in ‘tokenization’ feature of X-Payments, a PA DSS payment application. Together with X-Payments subscriptions and installments module included into version 4.6.2 ( and available as a free module for previous versions) you can “save” credit cards and charge them again.

JavaScript libraries update

We have updated the JS libraries. The most notable one is jQuery. Keeping in mind that some customers are still using Internet Explorer v.8 and older, we decided not to use jQuery 2.x so far, and upgraded it to v.1.10.2 instead. The full list of updated JS libs is below:

jQuery – 1.10.2
jQueryUI – 1.10.3
jCarousel – 0.2.9
jQuery Cookie Plagin – 1.4.0
jQuery block UI = 2.66.0
Handlebars – 1.1.0

Miscellaneous

Google Checkout was shut down on November, 20 2013. For this reason the corresponding integration was removed from X-Cart package.
ViaKlix payment gateway has been removed from the list of supported integrations: www.viaklix.com is now redirecting to www.myvirtualmerchant.com, and the latter is already supported in X-Cart.
Not to postpone the release, we took decision to fix “PayPal access” by means of patches which will appear in the next couple of weeks.
“Product returns” became available for customers who placed their orders as”anonymous”, without account creation. This is the first little step in rebuilding the functionality of guest users, requested by X-Cart community on the forum. As promised there, the feature will be significantly rebuilt in the next version of X-Cart v.4 Classic.

Demo and Free Download

Download and install a new version of X-Cart v.4. Classic or browse a Demo store and share your thoughts on the forum.

Play with demo Download free trial

About the author

Anastasia Zhavoronkova

Lead Marketing Coordinator at Seller Labs and X-Cart

Anastasia has over 8 years of experience in the eCommerce industry. Having been a Customer Care agent in the past, she knows exactly what eCommerce merchants' needs are, and uses her knowledge in Marketing to bring value to the community by sharing her thoughts on relevant topics.