Just a quick note to all you FedEx customers.

A note from FedEx:

FedEx understands the importance of real-time transactions and we regret any inconvenience this outage may cause. We will be updating our systems on Saturday, October 4, 2008 from 9PM to Sunday 3AM CDT

Please note: Ground shipping and Ground rating services will be impacted.

If you have any questions or need technical assistance, please contact the FedEx Help Desk @ 1-877-339-2774 or send an email to websupport@fedex.com

Thank you for using FedEx Web Services, FedEx Ship Manager API or FedEx Ship Manager Direct.

--- We hope this helps!

Google base is a great tool for increasing traffic to your ecommerce site.

What is Google Base? It is a simple product feed that accepts an export of your products to be uploaded into Googles system.

Have you ever been to Google and searched for something and see a little set of 2-3 products listed with their prices? This would be just under the top Google Ads. These are results from various retailers who have uploaded their products to Google Base that match as closely as possible (per Google). They don't always come up, but mostly they do and they make things easier for the shopper looking for specific items.

There is also a Google Base shopping area, that your products can be listed in. This area allows customers to drill down into specific product listings and it is pretty extensive with many different attributes. You will need to read up on the various attributes that you can add to your products that show things like available colors, or sizes or isbn numbers. There are a ton of attributes and the more work you put into Google base when creating your products the more likely potential customers will find you.

Best of all -- IT'S FREE (for now). Google may end up charging for this solution, but as of this writing Google Base product submissions are free.

In my previous post, I mentioned Google Checkout. And Kurt from www.seedandgarden.com commented on why would you add Google Checkout if your customer is leaving your site? I too would question that and honestly, I really wish that Google would have handled this differently, but they don't.

So here is why "I think" utilizing Google Checkout and Google Base together adds a one - two punch. If you have your google base feed uploaded and your site offers Google Checkout, your listings in Google Base will have a Google Checkout button next to your listing, this helps highlight your listing even more than your competitors who DON'T have Google Checkout (your Google Checkout icon, is also shown in the Google Base shopping area, and customers can choose to only see results with Google Checkout, ikes you may miss out if you don't have Google Checkout). It also allows more of your products to show up after someone clicks the link below the 3 results to see more results "from companies who use Google Checkout", note this is not just other results, but ONLY results of people who are using Google Checkout. These are all free additional advertising avenues. The only drawback is that when they start there checkout process they are actually pushed over to Google Checkout instead of your normal SiteDirector checkout.

I guess my thought on it is this, it is pretty inexpensive on a per transaction charge to use Google Checkout, it's just another way to get additional revenue and really, do you care where the money comes from, just as long as money is coming?

All in all it is a pretty sweet solution.

So you might ask, how do I get my products into Google Base. Inside of your SiteDirector console follow these instructions.

• Click on Import / Export
• Click on Google Base Export
• This will generate a simple file that you can download locally
• RIGHT mouse click to save the file locally on your hard drive
• Go to Google Base, select Data Feeds
• Follow the directions from there
• Within 24-48 hours, your products will start showing up

Simple as that. Every bit helps especially when the internet has become a very competitive place to shop.

I hope this helps!

We have created a Google Checkout module that is available from QuillDesign. If you are interested in utilizing Google Checkout on your SiteDirector Shopping Cart site, please contact us at info@quilldesign.com and we will contact you with the specifics.

Note about Google Checkout and how it actually works. It is not like paypal where you can accept paypal directly on your site and through your normal SiteDirector checkout process. Instead utilizing Google Checkout, your customers actually leave your site before they start the checkout process and head over to Google to actually checkout. Our modules will pass the order information back once the order has been completed.

But be aware, the customers do leave your site and it is NOT like another payment method (ie Visa, Master Card, Paypal ect..) it is a complete checkout process at Google.

If you'd like this for your site, contact us and we'll work with you.

There are fee's associated with integrating this into your cart.

This is just a quick fix that a number of folks have emailed us about and it is one line of code to add to your stylesheet that will correct this display problem.

During the checkout process when you are on the customer input (billing and shipping) within the checkout process. In FireFox 3.x the bottom form fields are skewed on the page.

In your /scripts/default.css stylesheet, locate the .form dt {} style and add the line (line-height: 17px;) It will fix your problem.

So by default, your code should look like:

That should fix you up and everything should look good!

Well, we had planned to be deep into version 5 at this point in time, but as it stands, we are way behind. We get alot of emails asking about it and where we are at with it. So we felt a blog post would be the best way to answer.

There are many things that need to take place and all of them take time, which we here at QuillDesign are sometimes short of.

Version 5 is in the works, but it has been like a roller coaster, working on it one day and not for a few more days. Projects and other customizations seem to sweep in just as we start putting our heads back into the code.

At the earliest, we are looking at the end of the year before we can get v5 out. It may be longer, it depends on how deep we go.

One thing for sure, it will be a welcome piece of software.

Thank you to one and all!

Many of you have asked for Quickbooks integration into SiteDirector's shopping cart. This is something we really have wanted to implement, but time and resources have been too low.

Well, we now have a solution for you. Clark Valberg over at Epicenter Consulting has put together a seamless Quickbooks integration module that can get you up and running with Quickbooks and SiteDirector.

Basically they are using Quickbooks "Web connector" to grab all of the order data from SiteDirector (behind the scenes) and sync up the orders and create invoices and statements within Quickbooks. All that you have to do is click the button within Quickbooks and the module with SiteDirector does the rest.

If you are interested in getting this module for your SiteDirector installation, contact Clark @ clark@epicenterconsulting.com. He will discuss your needs and the integration and get you setup to utilize Quickbooks with SiteDirector.

We haven't posted in awhile, there have been so many things going on and not enough time to post about anything that would be helpful. I know I know, if you blog you've got to blog, or don't do it at all. Well we like our blog and we would like to blog more, but with all the various projects going on, blogging is the low man on the totem pole.

Anyway, to our topic. We are working on v5.0 of SiteDirector right now. We are very excited we have some strong things going on and you developers out there will be very excited.

Right now we are in the planning stages and soon to be moving into production. But we are putting our pens and pencils to the paper and making sure we cover all the bases of things we have missed in the past.

Our main goals for v5.0

1) Clean code that is EASY to follow and customize: We want SiteDirector to be very developer friendly. More so than in the past. We will be breaking down the pages even more so it will be easy to add additional fields and additional customizations. This is what will make SiteDirector really appealing to even more developers. We had discussed frameworks, but decided against it, even though we like frameworks ourselves, we have found that many developers find it easier to work with procedural code and it makes for easier changes.

2) Easy Skinning - We are going to make the front end very skinnable and the CSS/XHTML will be much easier to manipulate as well as change out. Just swap out CSS files and the whole site makes it's change.

3) Finally the catalog building. We have ourselves been dealing directly with online stores to find the bumps in the road, the things that slow you down in managing your store. We are designing a much more fluid console area that will speed up management and improve best practices.

Some hints: Ajax, drag and drop, flyout windows, better promotions..... more to come!

We have just released version 4.7 of SiteDirector.

This was a minor release fixing a few bugs and adding just a few new features.

From the CSS/XHTML version of SiteDirector, we added to the Non CSS/XHTML version Previously viewed products.

All you have to do is run the RUNME.CFM script that comes with your patch then add the following code in places you want to display previously viewed products. This would take a developer to do.

Another addition for the NON-CSS version of SiteDirector is additional NOTES fields for the shopping cart. The RUNME.CFM script will add those values to your settings table and allow you to then modify those notes files.

All other fixes are minor.

We are currently working on a second set of templates for the CSS/XHTML version. We will release those available for download as soon as they are completed.

After a delay, we have released our online demo for SiteDirector v4.6 a complete CSS / XHTML solution.

Please take a look at our online demo at http://demo.quilldesign.com. You will be able to see a full store with all kinds of different solutions and everything is CSS / XHTML.

If you purchase SiteDirector, you have the ability to download both the tabled version or the CSS/XHTML Tableless shopping cart.

We recommend the CSS version, not because it took us a long time to get it to production, but because it is much more easily customizable and search engines eat up the code, it's much easier for the spiders to read.

Also there are a few new features:

• Previously Viewed Products - SiteDirector now stores the last 5 products the customer has viewed. This is great to allow your customers to get back to the products they were looking at.
• Send Page To Friend - Nothing new in the ecommerce world, but somewhere along the line, this fell off of the feature list of SiteDirector.
• Contact Form - SiteDirector now comes with a simple contact us form that you can use.

So, drop into the demo and let us know what you think, we would appreciate your comments.

Just a quick post to let everyone know that the CSS/XHTML version of SiteDirector is still in the works. We are tweaking and still integrating.

It is taking us longer than expected. We thought we would be finished last week. With projects, code taking longer and cleanup, we just under estimated the time to live.

So, expect the new version hopefull next week. We are in the final stages, but still have things to do.

Thank you for your patience, we have had alot of people asking the status, and it's coming soon.

SiteDirector is getting a facelift! We are going to be releasing a version of SiteDirector that is completely CSS/XHTML Validated code.

This will be for the front end of the store website. The console will still have tables.

The new design will be completely tableless (except where tables are required for "data" output). All managed through CSS and will cross-browser compatible.

Our last version release v4.5 was a major re-work with alot of code changes as many of you know. This was to prepare for this release of our CSS version.

We will also be implementing this next version in our demo area so everyone can see the new look (hopefully by Wednesday).

We are very excited about this, as quality CSS shopping carts are hard to come by and this will be beneficial to everyone.

With this new look and coding style, we can help integrate your old site into the new look and feel. After this release (later this week), you can submit your designs and we can look them over for you. Contact Paul Giesenhagen for more details.

Using Semantic CSS is one more step at gaining better SEO. CSS allows for Search Engines to easily read your content, using code to display important information, giving you that extra step and advantage.

Looking forward to the release!

Quick note to let you all know that version 4.5 of SiteDirector Shopping Cart has been released.

You can view all the details about the release @ SiteDirector v4.5 - Upcoming Release.

We are releasing this to fix security holes, code clean up and some minor bug fixes. As stated in the other blog post, almost every file in the original archive has been modified so this is kind of a hefty update IF you have made modifications to core code. If you just updated templates, no worries, you won't see any problem copying over the other directories and leaving your templates and layouts alone (note there is a layout in the /cart/layout/ directory).

Within the next 3 weeks, we will be releasing an additional version of SiteDirector that is completely XHTML/CSS. It is under development as I type this up.

We are also in the process of updating our online demo which will showcase this CSS solution. Currently the Demo is running on version 4.3 which is missing some good features we added in v4.4.

To get your v4.5 log into your account at Customer Account and go to patches.

Let us know if you have any questions.

Thank you