Hello!
We have released CS-Cart and Multi-Vendor 4.9.1. This is a minor release, so its main purpose is to introduce new functionality without affecting backward compatibility. The full list of changes is available in the changelog; this article will cover the most important changes.
Improved Product List Editing (CS-Cart, Multi-Vendor)
The list of products has been reworked. See for yourself how it works on our demo. The first thing you’ll notice is that checkboxes next to products are gone—just click anywhere on the product, and you’ll select it. Multiple products can be selected and unselected by holding the Shift button on your keyboard (just like you do it with files and folders on the desktop).
Once the necessary products are selected, a menu will appear above them. That menu will allow you to perform various actions:
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- Exclude active, hidden or disabled products from the selection.
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- Add or remove categories from the selected products. It’s the fastest way to add a category to multiple products at once without affecting their other categories.
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- Increase or decrease prices, list prices and quantities of the selected products via a modifier.
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- Change the statuses of all the selected products at once.
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- Open the bulk product editing page where you can choose which other properties you’d like to edit.
- Clone, export, or delete the selected products.
Signing In to Admin Panel via Google (CS-Cart, Multi-Vendor)
A new add-on called Back-End Sign-In via Google allows you to replace the standard sign-in mechanism (login+password) with authentication via Google. The drawback is that all your admins will need Google email addresses associated with their accounts. If you aren’t opposed to that, here’s how the add-on will benefit your store:
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- Entering the admin panel will become easier. If you have signed in to your Google account and proceed to the admin panel URL, you’ll only need a couple of clicks to access the admin panel
- Your admin panel will become more secure. Google’s 2-step verification will protect the admins’ email accounts and, by extension, your admin panel
Please note that in Multi-Vendor this add-on applies only to the marketplace administrators and doesn’t affect vendors’ administrators in any way.
Absolute Commissions (Multi-Vendor)
Ever since the vendor plans were added, they didn’t support a flat transaction fee. A marketplace could claim a sum X% from each order (X depended on the vendor plan). Starting with Multi-Vendor 4.9.1, this is no longer the case. You can now take X%, $Y or (X% + $Y) from each order, depending on the vendor plan. See the examples in the screenshot below:
Configurable “Become a Seller” Form (Multi-Vendor)
Many people asked us how to modify the form that potential vendors have to fill in when they apply for vendor status. Previously it required technical skills: you had to find the right .tpl file and modify the code to add or remove the fields. That is no longer the case.
The Administration → Profile fields page now allows you to switch to Vendor information. This is where you’ll be able to add, edit, and remove the fields that appear on the vendor registration form. Just like with profile fields, you can make some of the fields required.
The terms and conditions that vendors must accept are now also a profile field. That’s why the Applying vendors must agree with the terms and conditions setting has been removed from Settings → Vendors.
New Way to Open and Close Storefronts (CS-Cart)
CS-Cart allows you to have multiple storefronts. Previously, the list of storefronts wasn’t very informative: you could just see what storefronts there were. There wasn’t any indication if the storefront was open or closed. To close a storefront, you had to go to Settings → General, select the storefront in the top left corner of the page and tick the Close storefront checkbox.
In CS-Cart 4.9.1 we have improved the list of storefronts (try it on our demo): now you clearly see which of the storefronts are open and closed; you can also open or close a storefront with one click. If you go to the editing page for each storefront, you’ll find out how to access the storefront even if it is closed.
Other Improvements Worth Mentioning
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- The earliest supported PHP version is now 5.6. You won’t be able to start an upgrade to CS-Cart or Multi-Vendor 4.9.1 if you use an older PHP version. Earlier we explained our reasons for bumping the PHP version requirements.
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- The Comments and Reviews add-on received multiple improvements:* The add-on settings now offer a way to enable/disable reviews by default for newly-created products, pages, and vendors.* You can now make it impossible for anyone who hadn’t bought a product to leave a review for that product.* Comments and reviews are now no longer cloned with the product. We’ve made it work that way because cloning is primarily used for creating a different product based on an existing one.
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- The Old Admin Panel add-on is now deprecated. It won’t receive any new features or bug fixes, and starting with version 4.10.1 it will be removed entirely. That’s why the new admin panel will be enabled automatically after the upgrade to 4.9.1.
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- We are ceasing the support of old browsers, such as Internet Explorer 11 and Windows Phone browsers based on it, Microsoft Edge older than 17.17, standard browsers that come with Android 6 and earlier, Safari on iOS earlier than 10.3, and various browsers that don’t support JS.The admin panel will still support the latest stable versions of Chrome, Firefox, Safari (& Safari for iOS), Edge, Chrome for Android, Samsung Internet and other Chromium-based browsers for mobile devices.The change will affect only the administration panel. Customers won’t see the difference, but administrators may have to move to a newer browser. We won’t restrict access to the admin panel via the browsers mentioned above, but the admin panel may not be working properly with them.This move will further reduce the number of bugs and allow our front-end developers to focus on implementing new functionality rather than figuring out ways how to make something work and look exactly the same on a broad range of browsers (some of which aren’t very popular anyway).
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- Integration with the OneKPay payment processor has been added as a separate add-on.
- The PayPal Payments add-on now supports Indian rupee as a primary currency.
The upgrades to version 4.9.1 are already available in your Upgrade Center. As usual, for the first few days we limit the number of available upgrades and offer them on the first-come, first-served basis. If you don’t see an upgrade in your Upgrade Center, please try again later or in a few days.
Please note that because CS-Cart and Multi-Vendor 4.9.1 work only on PHP 5.6 and newer versions, you’ll be able to start the upgrade only if you have a PHP version supported by 4.9.1.