Shopmodules.com : Home of Joozen - Joomla ecommerce shopping cart soulution Zencart checkout component bridge for Joomla CMS.

All major browsers currently provide us with very powerful tools needed to create a fairly complex and flexible applications. One of the main tools is, of course, the JavaScript interpreter. Highly reaching  interpreters let us to use such an applications as GMail, Google Documents, and many others.

Why not to take advantage of technology to build a network of online stores, for example.

Using our experience, accumulated findings and example of ecwid.com we decided to make some experiments and got some encouraging results.

Now we are confident that in the near future Solid Cart will be able to build a network of shops using the embedding widgets method. Short snippets of javascript code will be incorporated to the pages of the targeted sites. It’s will run scripts to display store’s pages.

We can try something right now. For example to display embed category menu we need to add following snippet to page’s code:

1

<div> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://demo.solid-cart.com/scw/main.js" 
charset="utf-8">script> div> 

It can be any, even a static page. The only requirement - the head and body tags.

As result we'll get a categoris tree presented below. As we see everything is very simple.

Joomla is a very flexible content management system. Huge number of sites powered by Joomla and using many of it’s extensions.

Meanwhile Zen-Cart has a reputation as a stable, reliable and secure eCommerce system. Developers paying great attention to it’s security and reliability.

Combining two of these system we are able to take advantage of both

Let’s take launching affiliate program as an example of advantages of joining Joomla and Zen-Cart features.

Affiliate program is important form of the business cooperation between vendor and partners  and allows to attract more customers.

There is no such a features provided on standard Zen-Cart package but, same time there are possibilities to integration of third party affiliate programs.

There are couple of affiliate components in Joomla Extension Directory. We’ll discuss two of them: Amigos and wizAffiliates.

Now we need site powered by Joomla v1.5.x with Solid Cart v1.1.1 or higher installed.

Affiliate Program powered by Amigos

Developers of Amigos Affiliate Component offers it in two versions: paid and free. You may download component from developers site.

Install component using Joomla installer.

Now we need setup connection between Solid Cart and Amigos. To achieve it you just need download specific Solid Cart’s plugin (plg_solidcart_amigos-1.0.0-J1.5) , install and enable it. Now you need create menu item for Amigos component (for example in User Menu) and Job Done. Now you have  working affiliate program which tracking Solid Cart orders.

Affiliate Program powered by wizAffiliate

Installation and configuration procedure is quite similar to Amigos.

Visit wizAffiliate website to download component. Installation is fast and simple.

To make Solid Cart a source of commission you need download, install and activate plugin plg_solidcart_wizAffiliates-1.0.0-J1.5 and include it as a source in wizAffiliate control panel.

Now create menu item for wizAffiliate.

That’s all what you need to do. Simple!

Conclusions

So, it seems to be quite easy to run Affiliate Program when Joomla’s and Zen-Cart’s capabilities are put together.  As you can see it’s make things easier and time-saving.

No matter how well does your site work, sooner or later you have to upgrade it. And Zen-Cart isn’t exception.

It would be nice to automate this routine. Unfortunately in case of Zen-Cart it’s doesn’t work like that. To update it you have to overwrite files, perform SQL queries, and even at times compare files to merge them.

In contrast to the Zen-Cart in Joomla 1.6 version’s upgrade process is automated. And, of course we can use it to upgrade our component’s versions

Let’s take as an example our online shop powered by Solid Cart v1.1.1

Let’s check if new version available

To do so:

Login to your Joomla Admin Panel

Select Extensions -> Extension Manager and Select Update Section

Clear Cache pressing Purge Cache button

Click Find Updates to gather information about available updates

Version 1.1.2 available

Let’s install new version now

Tick the Solid Cart component’s check-box and click Update

Joomla itself will download new version’s package, unpack it, perform necessary system checks and update the scripts and, if necessary, database as well. The procedure may take a few minutes.

All done

Snapped today.

Joomla passwords stored in database using one-way MD5 hash so If you lost password it isn't possible to recover old but you can reset it to new one.

To reset password open phpMyAdmin and in the mySQL database find jos_users table. Click browse and edit. Find your username and select password row for editing.

You can't simply enter text into the field as it should be hashed but you can set it to a known value ( new password = MD5 hashed password).

Enter hashed value and press "Go"

  secret = 5ebe2294ecd0e0f08eab7690d2a6ee69
 
  admin = 21232f297a57a5a743894a0e4a801fc3

Than login to admin, goto User Manager and change password to more secure one.

Hope it helps.