ShopSite, Inc. has introduced ShopSite Starter, a new product to replace ShopSite Lite. ShopSite Starter allows for more products than Lite (15), and includes a real-time payment gateway. In addition, all of the Shopping Cart upsell (banner ad) messages have been removed as well as the back office upsell frame.
ShopSite Lite users who have their hosting provider upgrade them to ShopSite version 5.0.2.6 will automatically become ShopSite Starter users.
The integrated payment gateway in Starter is provided by E-Commerce Exchange (ECX). The ECX gateway is available on servers running Linux, Solaris Sparc, and Irix operating systems. For more information on ShopSite Starter, visit our web pages at https://www.shopsite.com/starter.html.
Some merchants have had shoppers complain that when they click on the "Add to Cart" buttons to add items to the shopping cart, the cart has reported "Your shopping cart is empty." The problem at the root of this is usually that the URL contained in the Add to Cart buttons on your store's HTML pages differs from the Shopping Cart CGIs URL set in the ShopSite back office (you can see this value in Preferences > Hosting Service). This discrepancy is often encountered after moving a store to a new server.
To resolve the problem, synchronize the URL on your pages with the URL in the Hosting Service setting for Shopping Cart CGIs URL. Merchants using ShopSite-generated pages should be able to do this simply by regenerating the site from Utilities > Publish. For more information and examples, search for 'S03741' in the ShopSite Knowledgebase at http://support.shopsite.com/kbase.
"How do I skip the ShopSite Wizard?"
Solution
The ShopSite Wizard comes up when a merchant enters their store for the first time. It helps them to get their store initially functioning within 15 minutes. However, if you are an experienced ShopSite developer you may want to skip the Wizard and go right to the advanced features in the ShopSite back office.
To skip the wizard, when the first screen of the ShopSite Store Setup Wizard is displayed, click on the green 'ShopSite' tab in the top left corner of the screen. ShopSite will then ask you to confirm that you want to skip the wizard and go directly to the main ShopSite interface.
NOTE/WARNING: Skipping the wizard skips some important steps in the configuration of your store, including setting up a main page (index.html), currency symbols, shipping, tax, etc.. This can all be done through the regular interface of ShopSite, but it's recommended that you only skip the wizard if you really are an experienced ShopSite user.
You can also rerun the wizard by going to the Utilities menu and clicking on the Wizard button.
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Internet Use Sets Record in October, Raising Holiday Shopping Hopes
www.ecommercetimes.com/perl/story/?id=14746
"The overall health of the Internet is solid in spite of the current economic conditions and recent national events," NetRatings vice president of analytical services Sean Kaldor said. "We are establishing a firm base for stable growth of holiday e-commerce traffic."
In addition, the article reports that gift, flower, patriotic, and spiritual sites recently saw the most growth.
Most recent release of ShopSite:
The latest maintenance version of ShopSite now includes a payment gateway from E-Commerce Exchange (ECX). The ECX gateway is available on servers running Linux, Solaris Sparc, and Irix operating systems and in all product levels (Lite, Starter, Manager or Pro) on these operating systems. Click here to read about the new features in ShopSite 5.
To upgrade your ShopSite store, contact your authorized reseller hosting partner.
This monthly newsletter will help you as a ShopSite user to be up to speed with the developments of our software. To subscribe to this newsletter, send an email to Merchant-News-request@shopsite.com and place the word "subscribe" (without the quotes) in the body of your message.