New FTP Client released to use with new server version
I’ve been using WinSCP for years and today it seems like I can’t log into Yahoo and GoDaddy servers. I found out that GoDaddy & Yahoo have updated their servers that makes WinSCP V4.2.2 not compatible with those servers any more due to some special encryption type. I went to their website and downloaded the latest client, now I can be able to log in to those servers. Just click on Help menu and check your client version if you can’t log in to remote server. I’d recommend to those who are still using WinSCP and all of the sudden it doesn’t work, just go get the latest version and everything will work as normal.
How to display Prev/Next buttons on a Nivo slider when MouseOver
Most of slider effects will display the Prev/Next buttons by default once you open the page that contain a slider effect. Whether you build a slider for a CMS or a shopping cart or a regular HTML page, you can be able to change the codes in CSS and slider block on your HTML page. Here’s how you do it.
Open the CSS file that supports the slider, add a style for the Prev/Next layer. Hide the layer on display first.
.parent .navigation-links { display:none; }
.parent:hover .navigation-links { display:block; }
Then open the HTML file where the slider layer is located. Add the parent layer as a container for both Prev/Next button.
<div> <div> <!-- other codes are located here --></div> <div> <a id="prevslide"></a> <a id="nextslide"></a> </div> </div>
Now you should enjoy the desired effect.
How to add an MP3 to a music product
1. Create your Music Genres
2. Create your Media Types (these are the allowed file-extension types you will use for uploading files)
3. Create your Record Companies
4. Create your Recording Artists
5. Create your music products … be sure to select the “Product-Music” product-type from the pulldown menu when creating the product.
While entering the product details, you can select the Record Artist, the Record Company, the Genre, etc.
6. Create your media collections using Media Manager …. these are like albums/mixes of songs which can be tied to one or many products.
- “Insert” to create a new media collection. Just give it a name, and click Save.
- Click “Edit” and now you can add media clips to the collection
- Click Browse to select a file stored on your PC, based on the selected media-type.
- When you click Add, it will be uploaded to the Media Directory selected in the pulldown menu (by default, this is the “/media” folder on your server).
- After each item is uploaded, you can click Edit again to add another clip
- If you need to delete a clip, simply click the Delete button next to a given clip
7. With your media collection still selected, click the “Assign to Products” button
- Choose a category and product with which you want to associate this media collection
- You can assign more than one, simply by selecting, clicking Add, and selecting again, clicking Add, etc.
- Collections are not limited to certain categories … they can be assigned to products in various categories as required.
- CAUTION: You need to be sure to ONLY select “product-music” products. The menus do not restrict you to this, but if you select products which are not music products, then your media collections will not be shown in the store.
8. Now your customers can listen to these clips online prior to purchasing your products.
(You might want to ensure that the clips are only short but appealing sections of the full product, to cut down on bandwidth and theft.)
9. You will need to set up your product Attributes to actually tie the “real” music clips to your products for “Purchase”. There are a couple tutorials on this process:
How to move ZenCart to another server
I’ve moved so many Zen carts to many servers before, so this is my input to help out some developers out there trying to move a zencart over to another server environment.
Check for version compatibility:
Every Zencart has its version, check to make sure that the Zencart version is compatible with the PHPMySQL version where you want to move the cart to. Don’t proceed next step if the new server is not compatible to your old Zencart version. Try to download the latest or newest version of Zencart then install it to the new server.
Download files from old server down to your local PC:
Use FTP tool to download all Zencart files to your local PC. It depends on how large your shopping cart is and how many modules /plug-ins, large product photos, or customized codes in your shopping cart, it may take up between 30 mins to 3 hours to download all your file system. 1 of my customers asked me why it took 9 hours to download all his Zencart files. I looked at his files, I saw 3-4 TB of photos that he collected from year 1980s until today and each photo is 3-4MB, that’s why it took so much time. So be patient if you have many large photos with high pixels.
Upload files to your new server:
Use FTP tool again to upload all files to new server.
Export MySQL Database:
From your old server, export all Zencart tables (new version: 95 tables by default. You may have more tables if more modules/plug-ins have been built on your Zencart). You can use phpMyAdmin or SQLYog or any Commercial MySQL DB tool to export files.
Import MySQL Database to the new MySQL server:
Now all those steps done and your shopping cart is still displaying some serious errors such as Database not connected, host not recognized, wrong password,… and nothing works. Some of my customers asked me why. Now it’s time you’ll need an experience developers who are familiar with ZenCart to fix all these issues. If you’re a business owner and doesn’t know PHP-MySQL codes, DO NOT try to modify anything in the Zencart. Even if you miss a semi-colon, the entire website is down forever. Then you have to hire some ZenCart developer to trace all these bugs down in order to fix the right location.
If you move to another house, same thing happens. You have to move all your belongings also and try to re-organize your stuff in the new house, right?
Now, next steps which are the most important after all files and databases are moved over to new server.
Change Configuration parameters to adapt to the new server environment:
Open Zencart Cofiguration file and change all the required variables/parameters to the new values so that the Zencart can run properly on your new server.
Point your domain name to this ZenCart directory:
Login to Admin Control Panel of your new hosting account, point domain name to this Zencart folder after DNS resolved to new server (roughly 72 hours to have full functions on your domain name).
QA/Debugging after all steps are done:
Buy a PHP commercial debugger such as PHPEd. I have used this tool since the 1st version, it’s very powerful. Install the tool on your local PC, during the settings, point it to your new server, then debug from there. Go thru ZenCart purchase process to see where a bug exist, then fix it from there. If you’re a business owner, you can go thru this QA process by yourself. If you find any bug, hire some ZenCart developer to fix it. Do Not try to fix it by yourself if you don’t know PHP-MySQL or at least ZenCart’s logic. If you miss a quote, or a double quote, or a semi-colon, your entire shopping cart will stop working. Believe me, I’ve seen so many business owners being cheap and trying to fix ZenCart by themselves and broke the shopping cart on production server. When they hired me to fix their ZenCart, I found missing quotes, missing $ in front variables, missing tags, … You don’t want customers to view your website when the codes are broken everywhere, they’ll never come back again.
Important reminder:
To be safe, you MUST have a PHP Debugger, a testing server running on Linux/Unix or Window Apache, PHP-MySQL to test ZenCart purchase process before pushing any codes to production server.
X-Monitoring for X-Cart is the must have
Yesterday I re-installed X-Cart Gold for 1 of my customers and the Apache server keeps failing over the last night while we were asleep. If X-Monitoring wasn’t enabled in X-Cart Admin module settings, we could have never found out that our server was down last night. X-Monitoring was a built-in module in X-Cart package when you pay for the license, you can log in to Admin area and turn it on or off. I’d recommend you leave it on by default.
By the way, during the installation of X-Cart, type the email of Admin exact same email as you registered for your license with X-Cart; otherwise, your X-Cart will still be in Evaluation mode and there for it’s still a Demo. Customers can’t purchase a product.