Hi friends,
We took a decision to roll out a new version of X-Cart. Less than a month passed since we released X-Cart Classic v.4.6.2, so I’m foreseeing your question, whether version 4.6.2 is stable enough, as normally we do not release the software that often. The answer is yes. Yes, X-Cart 4.6.2 is stable, and you may feel free to use it – unless you need those 2 features which were announced in the article title.
PayPal Access
According to PayPal’s Statistics, there were 110+ million active accounts in 2013. “PayPal Access” was initially aimed at streamlining the registration process in your store for these very millions of customers. This feature used to be supported in X-Cart v.4, but when PayPal changed the API this autumn, the integration was broken, and it turned out that the update required complex changes. That’s why we decided to include it into a new release, not to give out a huge and hard-to-apply patch.
Amazon Payments
With “Amazon Payments”, hundreds of millions of Amazon customers can pay on your site with the information already stored in their Amazon accounts. Just like PayPal access, it makes checkout faster for your buyers – they do not need to enter their shipping and billing info again and again. This module used a line of code of another module, removed in 4.6.2, so with the release of that version we found out a fault: “Amazon Payments” was no longer available. The fix was given out on the forum right away, and it was also included into version 4.6.3.
USPS update
USPS announced an upcoming update (effective March, 07,2014 at approximately 12.01 Central Time), as a result of which “USPS First Class Mail” shipping method will become unavailable in existing X-Cart 4 stores. It’s being renamed to “First-Class Mail Stamped Letter”.
In X-Cart 4.6.3 this update is already taken into account, if you run an older version and do not want to upgrade, you have 2 simple options:
- Option One: If you use version 4.5.0 and higher, go to USPS settings page of your store and select checkbox ‘Automatically enable new shipping methods from shipping server response’. Do not forget to disable it after the update, if you want to make sure that another shipping method will not appear in your store without your “approval” one day.
- Option Two: After March, 7th, find the new method in X-Cart admin area (yourdomain.com/admin/shipping.php) manually and activate it ( note, it will appear AFTER the changes are implemented on USPS side).
- Option Three: Apply the SQL patch below. Note, you should do it only after the “First Class mail” method disappears, which would mean that the announced USPS changes went live. Otherwise, you will hide the method available currently, and the new one will not be available either (so far).
UPDATE xcart_shipping SET `shipping` = "USPS First-Class Mail##R## Stamped Letter" WHERE `code` = "USPS" AND `subcode` != "" AND shipping= "USPS First-Class Mail##R## Letter";
To sum up
Need “PayPal access” – upgrade to 4.6.3. Need “Amazon Payments” – upgrade to 4.6.3, or apply the patch. Need “USPS – First Class Mail” upgrade to v.4.6.3, or apply the patch, or enable the method manually.
Never use(d) described features at all – feel free to stay with v4.6.2, and reconsider whether to upgrade or not in summer, when X-Cart Classic v 4.6.4 is announced.
Have something to say about it? We’ll be happy to hear from you! Share your feedback on the X-Cart Community Forums.
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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.
