Wednesday, December 29, 2010

PrestaShop Information - PrestaShop 1.4 beta 2 released

PrestaShop development team has just published the Beta 2 version of PrestaShop 1.4, implementing lots of optimizations:

* Loyalty module has been optimized
* Guest Checkout has been improved
* Tax system is now more efficient
* New features have been added toUPS and USPS modules
* The Back Office Welcome Page has been improved,
* Paypal and MoneyBookers modules have been optimized

The complete list of optimizations is available in the CHANGELOG. Please note that this version is a Beta, and that you should only use it for tests.


Download it now

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

PrestaShop Tips - Paypal checkout trouble shooting tips

Order paid but not appear at back office
=========================================
Symptom
Customer successfully paid at Paypal via Express Checkout, but there is no order appear at back office.

Cause
PayPal has changed their “notify_url” behavior sometime recently.
You must enable IPN at your Paypal account to get your Paypal module at PrestaShop work.

If you disable IPN in your PayPal account, no IPNs will be sent regardless of whether you pass a notify_url value.

This issue happens in all Paypal module for PrestaShop if you don't enable IPN

Solution
Enable IPN at your Paypal account

Log in to your Paypal account
Click Profile menu
Click "Instant Payment Notification" in the "Selling Preferences" section

Select enable IPN and input URL where your IPN will be processed.
If you don't have any URL that process IPN, then just set it to your online store root.

You must enable IPN, otherwise Paypal module will not create order because it will not receive payment result data.

This issue happens in all Paypal module for PrestaShop if you don't enable IPN

This solution applies to all Paypal module for PrestaShop including Agile Express Paypal Checkout module.

What Is Agile Paypal Express Checkout?
=====================================
Agile Paypal is a Paypal Express Checkout module for PrestaShop that allow customer use express checkout without requiring customer to sign up/log in. This module will redirect customer to Paypal payment page in less than 3 clicks.

See here for more detail

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

PrestaShop Tips - prestashop-paypal-express-checkout-how-to-change-shipping-address

Some of my customers (PrestaShop store owners) asked me questions about the possibility of changing shipping address when use Express Checkout of Agile Paypal(A PrestaShop Paypal Express Checkout module). It takes a little bit of time to explain to them, so I decided to write post here to share.

Because Express Checkout does require customer to input address information, so most store owners think that customer can only use billing address at Paypal as shipping address. This is a mistake. Customer can choose any other address as shipping address at payment page. Customer even can add new address and register to Paypal at Paypal payment page.

No matter the customer already has Paypal account or use credit/debit credit, the adding/changing shipping address function is always available.

Here is how to change shipping address at Paypal payment page.

1. After you login to Paypal account, you will be prompted to review order and payment information. In this page, there is a "ship to" section as shown below.




Note:
If you don't have Paypal account yet and choose to use credit, after you input credit information, the same screen will be displayed.

2. At above screen, click "change" link. All existing registered addresses will be displayed as below. You could choose any address as shipping address.


paypal_change_shipping3



3. At above screen, if you would like to add new address, just click "add new", then following screen will appear, you will be able to add new address, and this address will be registered at your Paypal account, you can use it as shipping from now on.





Above function has been confirmed in both real public service environment and SandBox testing Environment.

What Is Agile Paypal


Agile Paypal is a Paypal Express Checkout module for PrestaShop that allow customer use express checkout without requiring customer to sign up/log in. This module will redirect customer to Paypal payment page in less than 3 clicks. See demo screen or live demo at listed URL below.

See here more detail information

Saturday, December 11, 2010

PrestaShop Tips - Cart is not cleared after payment - how PrestaShop Paypal module process your order

Most PrestaShop store owners and customers are confused by following symptom.

Problems


When customer finished payment and is redirected back to PrestaShop store, but customer's cart is still there, not cleared. This issue happens when customer finished payment and click "return to your merchant" store very quickly.


Why would this happen


In order to understand how this would happen, you need to understand how the order is process between Paypal payment server and PrestaShop store.
Here is basic process flows:

Process from customer view.


1.Store redirect customer to Paypal server
(A URL return to PreestaShop store is included in the data posted to Paypal)
2.Ccustomer input required information and perform the payment and finished payment.
3 Paypal show the return URL (which is sent at step 1).
4.Customer click the return link comes back to PrestaShop
5.PrestaShop display payment result.

Process from Paypal server and PrestaShop view


After above step2, following process started concurrently.
3' Paypal server will validate your payment and send back payment process to PrestaShop store.
4' PrestaShop received validation information about the payment and create order and set order status.
5' If payment status "Payment Accepted", then shopping cart will be cleared.

Please note, above two process is executed concurrently and independently. But both process finishes in a few seconds.

So if Paypal server send back confirmation very quickly or customer waited for a few seconds( reading payment result and so on) then click "return to merchant". There is not problem at all.

But sometime, customer comes back to PrestaShop a little earlier than Paypal server send back "Confirmation" to PrestaShop, then customer "shopping cart not cleared" will occur.

At this point, you should be able to understand how "shopping cart not cleared" happened.

PrestaShop Paypal Express Checkout module

Solutions


Honestly, I don't think there is a perfect solution. Here is just a suggestion.

At the returning page of PrestaShop store /modules/paypal/confirmation.php/tpl, check if cart is not cleared, then display some message customer about, let customer refresh page after a few seconds.

It seem that Paypal has made some changes on the payment process, after customer finish payment, when customer click "Return to merchant" link, it will pop up a confirm message. I guess this is trying to make some time for Paypal server to have time send "confirmation" to PrestaShop so that avoid above issue.

Recommendation


Agile Paypal - A PrestaShop Paypal Express Checkout module, is very stable, most issues with standard Paypal module will not appear on that module, plus it has many more new features, such as Express Checkout, create state automatically, get to payment in just 3 clicks. See more detail, please visit here

Friday, December 10, 2010

PrestaShop Tips - PrestaShop SEO enabled tags cloud module

SEO_enabled-tag_cloud_module1

About Agile SEO Tags



Agile SEO Tags is module block that will display SEO enabled tags clouds block on the left column.
SEO enable or diable is configured at store level at back office Preference tab

Compatible PrestaShop



This module is compatible with PrestaShop 1.2x,1.3x,1.4x

Features

* If your store set to Friendly URL, this module will generate tags cloud with SEO friendly URL automatically
* Each Tag will become another URL http://yuorstore.com/tags/tagname/, this will make search index more pages.
* For each tag, the tag will appear in the following places the page title, the keywords, description

SEO_enabled-tag_cloud_module2

Live Experience and Get it


You can have real experience and get this module at
http://addons-modules.com/

Other Modules


Agile Paypal - A PrestaShop Paypal Express Checkout module, customer get to payment in 3 simple clicks. No SSL, no customer registration, and much more features.

FREE Agile Product Sold counter - PrestaShop module that display product sold counter (number of unit sold) at product page.

FREE AdminCarts modification - Allow you to create order from existing cart in just one click. (Help you restore missed order for some unexpected error)

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

PrestaShop Tips - Wrong shipping address bug in standard Paypal PrestaShop paypal module

If you are PrestaShop store owner and are using standard PrestaShop Paypal payment module, please note that there is a bug if your choose different billing address and shipping address.

The Problem


If you customer registered two addresses at your PrestShop store and choose to use different address at checkout, the standard prestaShop Paypal will pass billing address(invoice address) as shipping address (delivery address). Your customer will be confused when he/she is redirected to Paypal, because at Paypal payment page, it will display the "billing" address as shipping address.

See attached screen for detail.
PrestaShop Paypal module pass wrong shipping address

PrestaShop Paypal module pass wrong shipping address


This is a minor bug. It will confuse customer.
But if you also use Paypal to print shipping label, then it is a critical issue.

This bug appears in most of the standard Paypal module such as 1.6/1.7/2.0

Solutions


If you know how how to code PHP, you can fix it in file redirect.php by replacing id_address_invoice with id_address_delivery.


 
$address = new Address(intval($cart->id_address_invoice));



I suggest you buy Agile Paypal - a PrestaShop Express Checkout Module, that you can have many more features such as
  • Agile Paypal express checkout allow customer go payment in just simple 3 clicks.

  • Agile Paypal will create a new account automatically with information posted from Paypal if this is the first order of the customer. Customer will receive “Welcome” email.

  • Agile Paypal will create a new state if the address posted back from Paypal contains state and it is not found in store database. And also an alert email will be sent to store Owner.


  • You can find Agile Paypal - PrestaShop Paypal Express Checkout here


    All bugs found at standard Paypal modules have been fixed at Agile Paypal - PrestaShop Paypal Express Checkout module.
    also include this bugs discussed in this post

    Sunday, December 5, 2010

    PrestaShop Tips - Free PrestaShop product sold counter is available to download

    free-prestashop-product-counter-module

    A free version of PrestaShop product sold counter is available to download.

    What is it?
    ===========
    This is free PrestaShop module that will display product sold count (number of unit sold) at product information page.

    Compatible Versions
    ===================
    This module should be able to work for PrestaShop 1.2.0 and above

    Where to download
    =====================
    you can download it at here http://prestashop-addons.com/