Do we validate? Parking, no. Xhtml? Yes! 2.1 released
Greetings
The 2.1 release of Quick Shopping cart was released on December 11th and while most of the work was “under the hood” there's a couple of visible changes I'd like to bring to your attention .
Xhtml Validation
We've added a Verify button to any of our input fields that accept HTML to ensure that the code is xhtml 1.0 compatible. If it's not we’ll let you know, and even point out the section that fails, otherwise you will be rewarded with a dialog congratulating you on your mad markup skills. We're still allowing you to proceed through the warnings to post non compliant code though it’s advisable that you resolve any errors before enacting a change that could break the display of your shopping cart.
Inventory choice: When is a sale a sale?
That’s a question that many of you asked us to reconsider. With the 2.0 release a change was made to the point at which we decreased the inventory for an item to the invoice creation. This was in response to our store owners that had shoppers visit their store, fail to complete the order, e.g. no sale was made yet we took the item out of stock prevent resale until the owner intervened. This makes sense for people with larger inventories or that sell items that cant be reordered. The inverse was that people with limited stock of unique or limited inventory could now easily oversell when anyone used the pay and call method. Both points of view are valid and this choice is now included within the program.
You can locate this choice by going to your Storefront tab > Preferences > Order Preferences
Templates / Invoice
We've also fixed many template issues and chances are if you reported an issue it's been resolved within this build. One additional change is within the invoice section where Payment status no longer shows on the invoice . This stems from an internal label we were using “incomplete” which was a status for the store owner being carried through to the invoice. We're still working on many of the requests we've had on this blog, and through our feedback link in the program, so keep them coming .
Regards
John
QSC
Team.
I am working on setting up my Google Product Search Data Feed. Google requires that I manually upload the xml file. I don't have this file on my computer. How do I get the file to the data feed?
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Greetings Matt,
This is a great question, great because we recently added the help and an article on this topic. All your Google® Base are belong to us. has the complete flow but the quick answer to your question is that you don't need manually upload the file you can have QSC automatically generate and send this via FTP to Google's products. Give the article/ help a review and please let me know if there's anything we need to add to the process or explain better.
Regards
John
QSC team
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XHTML validation built in...very cool! Also thanks for the fix on the payment status issue showing on the invoice.
One of the recent new templates is "beach runner". I would like to use it but the photo in the header does not work well for me. I noticed many of the templates are offered in an "A" or "B" choice where "A" has header images and "B" does not. Can you offer the beach runner template in a "B" format in the future? Or is it possible for us to change the default header image on the "A" templates?
Thanks again for all the improvements.
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Greetings David,
Thank you for the Thank you . With regards to the template choices I'll follow up on the beach runner and see if this is already in the works or it can be sheperded along.
Regards
John
QSC Team
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Hey,
I sell high value jewelry items. Recently I have been getting requests from my customers for payment plans and layaways. Is it possible to make a suggestion for a layaway program with QSC.
Basically, during checkout customer's can choose to pay the total amount over a period of time. They can choose the time period ie. 3 months, 6 months, 12 months, 24 months, etc.
Thanks,
Ravi K.
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Greetings Ravi,
It's certainly an interesting idea but it's hard to reconcile with the shopping cart as it currently stands. That doesn't mean that such a thing is impossible just that I've never looked into the need for this type of feature. It's almost like creating a subscription service for real world goods and then having to take on a separate account management role that's quite different from our single sale model at present. We'll certainly keep this in mind and I thank you for taking the time to give us your feedback.
John
QSC team
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Why does QSC not support Google Analytics anymore? It was working fine until the update to XHTML. Thanks.
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Hello Barry,
We actually still do support Google Analytics in Quick Shopping Cart, along with all other statistics and lead programs that can be inserted into the code of the page either in the Custom header, footer or welcome message. You might be wondering why in many cases where 3rd party scripts/references make calls to 3rd party resources, this returns a note saying that the code is not XHTML compliant upon saving? This has actually been a large source of the inquiries that have come in since this change.
Although we can't vouch for all 3rd party source code, many of the URL's referenced contain the 'ampersand' character (&) a character in XHTML that is used to mark the beginning of an HTML entity, and when Quick Shopping Cart sees that the entity is not closed properly with semicolon (the common termination character for an entity), it is considered incorrect syntax and not XHTML compliant by W3C standards. The nice thing about this situation is that even though we point this out the issue upon saving the entry, the inserted script/reference is saved exactly as you have entered it and still performs it's designated task.
In short, everything still works the same, we are just doing our part to promote clean code on your Quick Shopping Cart, which makes for better browser display and resolution for your customers and quicker analysis for search engines. If this doesn't specifically pertain to your Google Analytics issue, please write in to support@godaddy.com with a copy of the Analytics script so that we can give it a better look, but as your question seemed to be similar to others we have received, I felt it important to shed some light on the issue.
Sincerely
Benjamin
QSC team
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I use the "Getaway" (Travel & Leisure) template for my main site and blog. Would love to see this as a store template option (and of course allow me to change the background picture). Also am greatly looking forward to a text box option on the product level (i.e. text to be engraved). Hope this is in the near future! I mentioned this before but I would also love to be able to re-arrange the order of my option sets, and apply global changes (such as option-based pricing) across all products instead of having to go in through each product.
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Disregard the Getaway request - I see it on here now! One question though - if I choose Getaway A, how do I replace the stock background photo with my own? Thanks!
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Greetings
Presently there's no way to do so. The Getaway B template should mirror A just without the presence of the graphics. Hopefully that does the trick if not I'll take a look into were the difference between the two lies.
Regards
John
QSC team
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Thanks John. I use the same template (Getaway A, with the graphics) for my main WST site and my blog, and both allowed me to swap out the photo. Right now I am using the Getaway B (without the graphics) but would love to use my own. I tried using XHTML to insert my image, but it seems it has a pre-set width, only 50% of the full header. Guess that's just part of the template.
Also, this may be a bug, but when I customize the menu and set the option to "New Window", it doesn't open in a new window - it opens in the same window. Just FYI - thanks!
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Greetings Rachel,
We're always looking at ways to make the usage of the "same" templates between our programs as consistent as possible and we're still improving this on an ongoing basis. I'll take a look at the "new window" opening atop the old one and have it corrected in a future release.
Regards
John
QSC team.
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Hi Guys,
I want to list some of my items on ebay motors but the ebay manager doesn't have a listing for automotive products. Can this be added?
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Greetings Matt,
I'm looking into this. If there's nothing preventing us from including this category type within the Ebay integration I'll request that we add this. Ebay Motors in the USA is considered a separate store, not just a category with separate requirements for us to follow. I'll update the blog / what's new section with any changes that occur.
Regards
John
QSC team.
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Your new Xhtml Validation is a pain I have spent hours getting my site to display the way I want it and I get errors. I wrote the code using front page editor and it seems to work but the vasidation keeps stopping me from moving on. the errors give you line numbers and places that are extreamly dificult if not impossible to find because of webpage formatting. We need improvements to this product not more problems.
Thanks
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Greetings Dean,
Thank you for your comments. Presently the validator with QSC does not prevent publication with QSC and the warning's are advisory. I am placing text within the app to make that clearer since it's been the source of some confusion.
We'd really need to see an example of the output that's to be able to comment in detail on where they issue could lie and to interpret the errors resulting.
Regards
John
QSC team.
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Hi John,
I have been reading and posting to this blog for almost a year now and it seems that many of the user problems, including my own, come from a lack of training in html.
I recently purchased a book from Amazon titled " Head First HTML with CSS & XTML" written by Elisabeth Freeman & Eric Freeman. This book was amazing. It opened dorrs for me on how I can improve my sites through the use of proper coding. Just knowing what the symbols between the mean was worth the price of the book! I highly recommend it to anyone who has decided to design their own sites with QSC or WST. Many of the answers to fequently asked questions can be found within its pages.
Hope this helps!
Matt
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Greetings Matt,
Thanks for taking the time to pass this information along. While we're continually trying to improving and expand the ease of use for many of the CSS/ HTML sections an understanding of the underlying markup really improves how the store looks to the buyer as well as being very useful on any other sites you may have. Happy new year
Regards
John
QSC team
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Would love to see the new "Penmanship" CSS-template for the store! I just discovered it for my WST and Blogcast sites, and I'd love to use it for the QSC. Just a suggestion for the next release!
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Rachel,
Thank you for your feedback on template choices for QSC and for using the WST and Blogcast programs for which we also have product blogs over at www.onlinequickblog.com and blog.websitetonight.com . I'll certainy pass that on to the design team for future consideration. I'll reply to your Quick Book question in a separate post.
Regards
John
QSC Team.
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I agree with Allen. I am experiencing a lot of difficulties with the new XHTML validator. For example, I have been unable make mass corrections. When I upload my corrected file, I am told that I have a zillion errors that I need to make. Thus, I am being forced to make mass corrections one product at a time. I was previously considering opening another storefront with Godaddy, but now I am looking at other more user friendly shopping carts. Is there anyway that the validator can be disabled when importing files?
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Renee ,
We are planning to turn the validator on the bulk upload back to an advisory only mode within the next update of the program. Meanwhile I apologize for the inconvenience. If starting out on a new storefront creating the product descriptions with a free xhtml editor like Xstandard lite over at Xstandard.com may be useful.
Regards
John
QSC team
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Recently I did a partial refund of an order, but QSC identified it as a full refund and put the order back into my inventory and placed the order in refund status (which cannot be changed). When I updated the tracking # and resent the e-mail with the updated information to the customer, it stated that the order had been refunded which confused the customer. Is there any way for the QSC to not put the order into refund status or any way for me to change the order status?
Thanks
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Greetings Kondra,
Presently QSC doesn't have the ability to create partial refunds and treats the entire transaction as being reversed and as you noted is irreversible at that stage . As such the mail that went out was, at least in the systems mind correct. I realize that's not a great situation but hopefully it explains what occurred this time around. We're taking another look at refunds to take better account of situations like these.
Regards
John
QSC team
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