WebAsyst server has moved to another datacenter. Now all WebAsyst accounts, along with their data, are hosted on the server that uses latest equipment and technology. This allows utilizing such features as high-availability cluster and loading balancing. High-availability technology ensures hosting service availability in case of server failure or malfunction, while load balancing solves the problem of server overloading and slow connection.

The new technology should considerably improve service performance and availability for accounts hosted on WebAsyst server. Hosting will become more reliable with faster connection. It will increase speed and improve many features of WebAsyst functionality: database entry updates, file uploads, mail sending, and many more. 

It also gives us a pleasure to say that the move process went very smoothly: none of our users had reported service glitches or connection failures. We will continue to improve our services!

Credit card payment is the most common way of online transaction, yet when it comes to understanding how credit card processing works most of us are quite confused. We have already published a post that describes how to set up payment processing in an online store. The current post is an attempt to give a general overview of the credit card processing thru Internet in simple terms.

When a retail store cashier swipes your credit card thru credit card terminal, the following process takes place: credit card and payment details are sent electronically to merchant’s acquiring bank, which contacts credit card issuing bank; in case transaction is approved, funds are deposited on the merchant’s account. Online credit card processing in ecommerce adheres to the same processing steps, except the physical credit card terminal that swipes your card in a retail store is substituted by payment gateway (Authorize.Net, 2checkout, CHASE Paymentech, etc.) – a service that processes online payments in a secure way.

The overall credit card processing scheme in an online store usually looks like the following:

A merchant needs to have a merchant account and a payment gateway account in order to set up credit cad processing in his store.

Let’s follow the steps from the time a customer types his credit card number in an online store to pay for his order till he receives a response whether the payment went thru:

1. A customer places an order and types his credit card number on a secure site of an online store. Store administrator sees the shopping cart details, which include order and billing information.
2. Shopping cart details along with merchant account are sent to payment gateway secure server for processing.
3. Payment gateway forwards transaction information to merchant’s acquiring bank.
4. Merchant’s acquiring bank forwards transaction information to the credit card issuing bank for transaction verification.
5. Credit card issuing bank verifies transaction and sends response code (Approve, Deny, and reason for denial if applicable) back to merchant’s acquiring bank.
6. Merchant’s bank sends credit card transaction details and response back to payment gateway. If payment is approved, the bank will deposit funds on a merchant’s account at the scheduled time.
7. Payment gateway sends transaction details and response back to merchant’s online store.
8. Payment information is displayed to the customer; i.e. “credit card was charged”, “credit card was denied”, etc. 

At certain processing stages fees will be charged from the transaction total. The amount of fees depends on a payment gateway used, merchant account, credit card type, and other factors; it usually adds up to be two to three percent of total charges.

In a future post we will tell more about a merchant account: why is it needed, what account types are there, and what do you need to do to get an account. Stay tuned!

We have just released a video clip that takes you thru WebAsyst account registration process. You’ll find there detailed step-by-step instructions on how to sign up for a free account hosted on WebAsyst server and make it permanent. It also shows you main WebAsyst account page and gives a brief overview of WebAsyst applications. This instructional video also takes you to an account registration form and describes account personalization options; i.e. account name, versions of applications, storage resources, and more. Just click Play and watch the presentation:

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You can also find this video presentation along with written instructions and other help topics published in our Help Center - click here.

We are glad to announce a discount offer:
$50 discount for Shop-Script PREMIUM

This is a short-term time limited offer, which will be removed without an additional notice (there is no fixed expiration date).

Discount applies for the first license purchase only. It does not apply for the purchase of additional Shop-Script PREMIUM licenses (which are fixed 50% off the base price) or Shop-Script PRO->PREMIUM upgrade.

Buy Shop-Script PREMIUM now

When setting up checkout options in the online store, a store owner is driven but several factors. Consumers like checkout to be comprehensive, easy to follow, yet secure and safe. They also like to see more than one option, payment and shipping types to choose from.

Though checkout procedure can be different from one store to the next, it always requires for a customer to enter shipping and payment information, which is then used to save and finalize an order. This is standard traditional checkout process and is employed by most online stores.

Though many customers use kind of checkout described above, they often find it frustrating to type contact/shipping/billing and other information every time they place an order in the new store. They may even abandon their shopping carts or find it easier to shop in the same store where all necessary information is already on file.

To make it easier and more appealing to a customer, Google Checkout and PayPal Express Checkout has launched an alternative to a traditional checkout process. Its main feature is that customer’s information is stored in the checkout service (Google or PayPal) database and is sent to your online store. When a customer clicks a button, order details are passed to the site of the corresponding service; information there is pulled up by matching customer’s account on file and saved order is passed back to the store.  For a customer this kind of checkout is:

• quick - just a button click without typing contact and billing details
• secure - no sensitive information is passed between servers; it is stored in the database of a checkout service
• consistent – the same checkout process no matter where you place an order (as long as the store offers this checkout option)

In a Shop-Script store corresponding Google Checkout and PayPal Express Checkout buttons both appear on the shopping cart details page, together with a standard “Proceed to checkout” option: 

Which checkout should I choose?
The scheme below shows steps that describe both kinds of checkouts:

When it comes to choosing which checkout to setup in a store, all of them are equally valid and legitimate checkout processes. One is no better than the other, just like one payment type offered in a store is not better than the other. A way of checkout selected by a customer is often based on personal preferences. It is, therefore, a good practice to offer all kinds of checkout in an online store.

WebAsyst allows you to set and modify a number of personal and system preferences. These settings affect system appearance, formats, and properties.

Personal settings
If given an access, a user can specify and modify personal settings. They become effective immediately and apply only to the user who specified them. The following settings are available by clicking My WebAsyst from the main menu:

• Change password – enter and confirm your new password to login WebAsyst.
• Look & Feel – preview and select a theme and menu layout of user interface.
• Preferences – change your name and email notifications properties, select language of WebAsyst interface, and indicate start page selected from the drop-down list to be displayed when opening your account (Tips & Tricks by default). You can also indicate an email to be used as “sender” when emailing from WebAsyst. User ID is used to login a user into the system and cannot be changed. The picture below shows sample personal settings page:

  

An account administrator can limit user access and indicate whether a user is allowed to modify his/her contact information and enable/disable email notifications. In the picture below an administrator is allowing a user to modify contact information and closing an access to enable/disable email notifications. In case email notifications are enabled for this user by default, an administrator ensures that they will not be disabled by mistake:

System settings
System settings apply to the account and can be modified only by a user with account administrator privileges. Other account users will see the changes next time they log in. By clicking Administrator -> System Settings from the main WebAsyst window, an account administrator can modify the following setting (as in the picture below):

• Date Format – specify date format (MM/DD/YYYY, DD.MM.YYYY, etc.). All date records of WebAsyst applications included in the account will be displayed in the specified format. 
• Session Expiration Interval – set the time in minutes, which indicates how long the system can stay idle for every user. At the end of the specified time period a user will be logged off. You can also set the interval to “Never expires” to stay logged in till the system is closed.

An account administrator can also specify company information settings by clicking Administrator -> Company Information. He/she can fill in “Company Name” field and indicate image file in “Select Logo Image” field (only GIF images are allowed) to have company name and logo appear in the top panel of WebAsyst window:

The rest of the fields on the Company Information page include address and contact details.

An administrator of an account hosted on WebAsyst server can also open Account Information page (by clicking Administrator -> Account Information) to access account details related to included WebAsyst applications and system resources. The page also includes links to upgrade, downgrade, or cancel the account.

Today we have presented our new offer for web developers and consultants.

If you or your company have experience working with Shop-Script, and if you provide some of the following services:

• custom web based software development (PHP/MySQL/Smarty);
• custom web design;
• SEO consulting;
• merchant accounts;
• SSL certificates;

then we invite you to become our affiliate. This is abolutely free for you!

See more details here: http://www.shop-script.com/dev-partners.html

In Project Manager a project can be viewed in Gantt Chart. Gantt Chart provides graphical presentation of project schedule. It displays order of tasks and their duration with the use of colored bars. Gantt Chart is useful in project planning and scheduling – it helps you identify potential scheduling problems and plan project stages for a point in time.

The picture below shows a sample project created in Project Manager, “Managing Virtual Teams”. It is displayed in Gantt Chart in Project Manager main window. The project includes four tasks – “Setting up virtual office”, “Setting teleconferencing tools”, “Software installation”, and “Tech support”:

The Gantt Chart window is split into three parts. Tasks are listed on the left of the window. Center of the window displays dates of project lifetime on the top and colored bars corresponding to project tasks. Each task is represented with two bars:

• The upper bar stands for actual task duration, starting with the first day of a task. A complete task is represented by the upper bar colored in light grey (“Setting up virtual office”, “Setting teleconferencing tools”). Its end point corresponds to a task’s completion date. An incomplete task is shown by the dark grey bar, where end point is today’s date (“Software installation”, “Tech support”). Today’s date is shown by a vertical red line that runs thru a bar. 
• The lower bar is split into two adjacent parts. The left side of the bar is colored in green and corresponds to the planned task duration, from the start to due date. The right side of the bar is colored in pink, runs past the tasks due date, and stands for an overdue time period. A green only lower bar indicates that a due date has not been met yet or the task was completed on its due date. A task without specified due date does not have lower bar (“Tech support”).

The right side of the window displays three numbers for every task in the following form: actual/planned/overdue. Actual (shown in black) is the actual number of days of a task (from start to either today’s or completion date). Planned (shown in green) is the number of days between start and due dates. Overdue (shown in pink) – number of days past due date. For the “Software Installation” task shown on the picture above, the days are given as 44/21/23. The task is incomplete. It was started on 02/15/07 with the due date set as 03/07/07. The numbers indicate that there are 44 days from the start of the task till today’s date (03/30/07) and the task is 23 days overdue.

Modifying Gantt Chart view
By default the whole project lifetime is displayed in Gantt Chart window. The top line of the chart shows all project months of the calendar year between (and including) first and last project months. The last project month could be project completion date, today’s date, or the latest due date of all tasks. This default chart interval is called “Fit to Project” and is set as 01/12/07 thru 03/30/07 for “Managing Virtual Teams” project. 

If you would like to have you project displayed in a different time period, you need to define visible interval. Click View -> Define Visible Interval and set interval start and end days. The smallest interval you can set is one month. If you define “February 2007 – February 2007” visible interval for the project, the tasks bars will be scaled to one month time period in the following way:

If a project contains many tasks (both complete and incomplete), you can choose between displaying both kinds of tasks or incomplete only. Click View -> Hide Complete Tasks to display only incomplete tasks. To go back to the full list of tasks, click View -> Show Complete Tasks.

Quick Notes includes a collection of print templates, which allow notes to be displayed in a printer friendly format. You can print a single note, all notes included in a selected folder, or all notes from Quick Notes application using the same template:

Every print template design includes personalization variables; i.e. a placeholder that corresponds to a note property (note subject, attached file names, date, note author, etc.). When a user clicks Notes -> Print from Quick Notes main window and selects notes to print and a template, variables from the selected templates are substituted with the corresponding note properties. Thus, the note templates shown above were based on the following design:

Every template is customizable and can be modified in a built-in HTML editor. To use the editor you do not need to have HTML or webpage design skills. The default templates included in Quick Notes are listed on Notes -> Print Templates page. Click on a template to modify it. The list on the right shows all substitution variables that can be added to the template. They include placeholders for a folder name, note subject, note content, attached file list, content author, and date and time of a note creation/modification. Click on a variable to add it to your template design.

You can also create your own print template. Click Add Template (from the Notes -> Print Templates page) and design your own template in HTML editor by placing substitution variables in the space provided. Your new template will be added to the Print Templates list.

We have become aware of a post that contains information about security vulnerability in Shop-Script FREE:

http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/464350

We have checked this info on Shop-Script FREE installations over the Internet, but no vulnerabilities have been ever found.

It could be that author of this post writes about bugs in some other scripts rather than Shop-Script FREE (e.g. its clones), I can not say for sure. If you look at Shop-Script FREE file list, there is no such a file which is mentioned in this bugtraq (smarty_class.php). There is file smarty.class.php in the package, but it does not have any described issues as well.

Users of Shop-Script FREE, please be aware that this bug info is not confirmed, and it does not relate to your online store security anyhow.