A ton of new sites launched this month including: Heel Toe Automotive, TKarts USA, Happy Pet Organics, Anything Bedding, Sezeur and the re-designed Mundo. Whew!

New clients this month include a custom door company, a custom motorcycle accessories site, a local architecture firm, a local residential contractor and a consulting firm.

And as you have no doubt noticed, we FINALLY completed our new site design! Still a few bugs to work out, but it is nice to be current with our own site for a change.

We officially launched Blue Flour today after a couple months of development. These guys sell some of the best gourmet cookies on the planet so be sure to check them out!

www.blueflour.com

Couple of new site launches this week:

First, here's the re-birth of DeanHenry.com

Next, we have a new site promoting a 55+ housing community - Indian Ridge

Too many new projects to list this month, but among them are a Chocolate Fountain company, an Orchid seller, a fitness information and products site and a lighting site.

September is already half over and we haven't even had a chance to update our blog! Seems like everyone wants an X-Cart site these days. Among our new projects are a toystore, a sporting goods reseller, a Bridesmaids gift store, a music store, a wireless retailer, a shoe store, a personal security site and two more General Contractors. We are wrapping up about 10 sites this week and will hopefully have launch announcements soon.

Here it is October already...leaves are changing and everyone is gearing up for the holiday shopping season! Quite a few new projects this month including an interior contractor, a lingerie site, a blog for an e-commerce site, and a data storage products site.

Couple of new site launches as well. First, here's a custom door company called Clark Hall:

Next is a sports supplement site:

If we can actually get our clients to upload their products, we'll have about 5 more to announce soon :)

On a security note, we have noticed a huge increase in hacking of X-Cart sites of late. Most are due to simple neglect in securing the site properly. There is a great thread in the X-Cart forums on how to secure an X-Cart site. Taking these simple steps will all but eliminate any vulnerabilities in X-Cart, but they only work if you take the time to implement them!

You should also make sure to backup your entire site daily. This means copying both the files themselves and the database. Good hosting companies will offer a dedicated backup server, but not many will back up your data daily (like we do), so it always pays to make backups yourself. We are currently re-creating thousands of dollars worth of customizations for two different clients, both of whom were with a hosting company that didn't make backups. Don't let this happen to you, secure your site NOW!

Happy belated Halloween! Always a little bit depressing this time of year, at least here in the Northeastern US, as it is now dark at 4:30 PM :( In any event, we have been extremely busy of late, both with X-Cart sites and 'brochure' type web sites. Here are a few of our most recent:

CarolMeeker.com - A landscape designer in Northern New York:

Encore Data Products - digital media superstore:

The Chocolate Savant - how about a chocolate fountain:

Sportsworkout.com:

Musician's Library:

MegaWi:

Now if we could only get the rest of our clients to upload their products, we'd have a whole lot more sites to announce! Look for some EXTREMELY interesting sites coming up in the next few weeks. Enjoy!

Yes, I realize December is half over, but with everyone trying to get their site ready/updated for the holidays, we have hardly had time to sleep let alone update the blog! In any event, below are the new sites launched in the last month. Some interesting ones for sure:

Emma Pink

Acres in Hell - A truely unique gift!

Nutricology

Folk Art Mavens

Just wanted to take a moment to thank all of our clients for a fantastic 2006, and to wish everyone a happy, healthy, successful 2007!

Ok, I know I have been slacking when it comes to updating the blog. There just don't seem to be enough hours in the day, and unfortunately updating the web site takes a back seat to everything else. However, I am going to make it a priority this month to add not only some new projects, but some X-Cart Tips and Tricks as well. Here are a couple of sites we recently launched:

NHB Gear

Future Green (with The Design People)

One of my New Years resolutions was to do a better job of updating my blog here on ryandesignstudio.com, which means at least one news article a month, and hopefully a few X-Cart tips and tricks columns as well. For March, we have a few sites which have just launched:

DizziPinz.com - we developed this site with a graphic designer who wishes to remain anonymous

BridesMaidCafe.com - featuring illustrations by 9 Lives

Connecticut Main Street Center - this was one of our original clients back in 2001 and was long-overdue for a complete makeover

Atlantis Building Company - a new site for a local building contractor

One of the questions we often get is "How do you come up with the designs for my site?" or "How do I know you will design something that I will like?". Well, I'll try to clarify that here by going through the design process.

The first thing we do when contracted to come up with a new site design is to send the client a questionnaire with a number of detailed questions. These questions range from "Do you have an existing site/logo/marketing material?" to "What is your target market?". Essentially we are looking for not only an idea of what the client pictures in their mind for the new site, but also what their store is selling and to whom. The more information the client provides up front, the closer our initial concepts are to what they envision.

One of the advantages of hiring a professional designer, whether it be for a web site or a new home, is that we are trained to take someone's vision and turn it into something tangible. Once we receive the information from the client, we look at their existing graphics, their target market, their competition, their products and their thoughts on what they want the site to look like. We then take that information and translate it in to some initial design concepts in image format, usually just the 'home' page of the site. This gives the client the overall feel for what the site could look like. The initial two concepts we provide are usually pretty different, with one concept being exactly what the client asks for, but also one that is 'outside the box' so that they won't get tunnel vision and see only one possible solution.

We always ask that the client be brutally honest with their feedback, as it is much easier to revise a concept if we know exactly what they love/hate about it. About 90% of the time we are pretty close to what the client wants with the first concepts, but sometimes it take a few rounds to get to the point where they are 100% happy. We simply adjust the concepts based on the client's feedback, or if we are completely off base, we start from scratch. We don't actually start the implementation of the design until the client fully approves the design concept, as it is much easier (and less expensive) to change the concept in image format as opposed to changing code on a working site.

Once the design is approved, we start implementing the design into X-Cart. This is where we will also work with the client on the 'interior' pages of the site - category, product detail, cart, checkout and static pages all use the same basic framework of the design, but are arranged differently depending on the client's preferences. We use a highly modified version of X-Cart, so the checkout and category pages in particular are completely different than the default X-Cart templates.

When hiring a designer (even if it isn't us!) there is never such a thing as too much information. Here is a simple checklist of things that are helpful for a designer when creating a new image for your site:

- Existing site/logo/marketing material
- Color palates you prefer
- Other web sites you like/dislike and why
- Navigation structure you would like to use, both for products and non-product pages
- Who your closes competitors are
- Who your target market is
- An idea of what kinds of products you are selling
- The 'feeling' you are trying to convey to your customers
- Your company philosophy/story/personality
- What features you want to use on the site (bestsellers, newsletters, featured products, etc)
- Any other details that make your company unique

Hopefully this will help you with your next design project!

We have been working on a new checkout system over the past year based on client feedback as well as conversion testing. The obvious solution to any checkout system is simplicity. The easier it is for the customer to checkout, the more likely the sale will go through. So, we have managed to get the process down to two steps:

1. The customer either logs in with an existing user/pass, or they supply billing/shipping information. To make this process even cleaner, we have used expanding div tags to hide the shipping/create account portions of the form unless a customer wants them. When they click the checkbox that portion of the form becomes visible. See a screenshot of the login/register page here.

2. Once the customer has provided the billing/shipping info, they are taken to a one page checkout. This page includes radio button selections for both shipping and payment method selection. The cart totals on the right update when you change shipping methods, and the payment area changes based on the payment selection. This keeps the user on the same screen and keeps them from having to take another 'action' step, as studies have found that the more clicks, the fewer conversions. We have kept the screen as clutter-free as possible, and have made the 'submit order' button prominent so that they cannot miss what the next step should be. See a screenshot here.

Please note that these are 'skeletons' of the pages only, we apply the design style of the rest of the site to these pages so that they look even better.

We have also modified and cleaned up the cart page, which you can see here.

This checkout 'mod' is not available as a stand-alone add-on, but is included with every custom design/design integration project free of charge.

In other news, X-Cart just released version 4.1.7, which looks to be just about ready for prime time. We are going to start using it with a couple of clients who are willing to be guinea pigs, so I will report back here as to our experience shortly. It sounds like the major bugs are worked out, and they have also added some nice features such as an updated default skin (finally) as well as a Google Analytics module which makes adding the tracking code MUCH easier.

As far as new projects go, we are working on some great bath and body product sites, a redesign for a hollywood costume site, a california winery and a vintage shop. We also have some sites that are just about ready to launch, we will post them in the blog when they are ready to go.

We have been doing some extensive work with the 4.1 branch of X-Cart (currently release 4.1.7) and it appears it is almost ready for prime time. We still aren't using it for sites that will go live in the next month, but we are hoping that by July 1 we will be able to transition from the 4.0 branch to the 4.1 branch. There are still some bugs that will hopefully be worked out with 4.1.8, but for the most part it seems to benchmark better than 4.0, and the code is much cleaner. Still some remaining font tags, but the Qualiteam folks seem to have realized that W3C compliant code is the way to go.

New sites launched in the past month include:

Organised Mum - a UK based store featuring calendars, diaries and schedules for families. This store features Thickbox image display paired with the Cerdman dynamic image resize tool. We have also used our Streamlined Checkout module here.

Anycake.com - This was a complete re-design of an existing store based in Northern Ireland, also featuring our Streamlined Checkout modification.

We recently decided to upgrade to a new hosting server (available to our X-Cart clients) as the old one was getting a little slow and there wasn't much we could do to upgrade it. So, after weighing the options, we decided to go with a brand new, top of the line server at Rackspace. They have been nothing short of phenomenal as a server management company for the past 3 years, so there was no doubt we would be going with them for the new server. In addition, having the server on the same network made the migration much easier.

For those of you who are technically inclined, here are the specs:

- Dual Core AMD Opteron 1212
- 4GB DDR2 RAM
- 3x146 SCSI Drives in a RAID 5 array
- Cisco PIX 501-50 Firewall
- Daily incremental backup to offline backup server

This setup allows us to run the databases off from one drive, and the RAID array with SCSI drives makes things run twice as fast. The improvement from our old single drive ATA server is stunning, and the newest version of Plesk comes with much improved e-mail filtering options.

I would like to personally thank Matt Service from Service Internet Solutions who did the migration for us. The service was fantastic, he completed it in the early morning hours of a Sunday, and there were NO issues. This is why you should pay a professional for these types of things, the headaches we could have encountered....well...let's not go there :)

In any event, our X-Cart clients' sites are now loading almost instantly, even the ones with heavy traffic and thousands of products. We now have some more slots available on the server, and will be offering them along with our design packages. Contact us for more information.

Have a great July!

The big news for August is that we are officially using X-Cart 4.1.8 for all new projects. We spent about 20 hours over the last week cleaning up the core code and adding various enhancements including:

- Streamlined one page checkout
- My Account area
- Cerdmann dynamic image resize with Thickbox pop-ups
- Mostly table-less layout (still used for product display and forms for now)
- W3C compliant code throughout
- Subcategories in columns with icons
- Pre-Login shipping calculator
- Improved registration form
- Enhanced SEO (META data, H1 tags where appropriate, etc)
- Clearly organized admin area

We have uncovered a few bugs here and there, but nothing major and we are confident that this platform is stable and ready for use on live sites.

Lots of new sites to announce this month, but I will post those all together in a new entry later this week.

It has been an unbelievably fun year for X-Cart projects, and we have never been this busy. Apparently people are finally realizing that a standard out of the box X-Cart template just doesn't cut it. In addition, many of our clients have found a huge improvement in both sales and conversion rates in the cart after hiring us to re-design their site. This is both due to the clean, search engine friendly code we use in our templates, and the extremely easy-to-use checkout system we have built.

Here are some sites we launched in the last couple of months:

Treo Modern - a completely new contemporary furniture site. This was one of the first sites we built with X-Cart 4.1, and features our streamlined checkout and the Thickbox/dynamic image combo which has become part of our standard installation now.

Natures Parlour - The first site of it's kind selling natural/organic/handmade skin and hair care products for all races, all ages and both sexes.

Peak Sports Nutrition - supplements for competitive and recreational sports, bodybuilding, weight loss, general health and fitness.

Monster Makers - a complete re-design for one of the premier mask making supply companies in the industry.

Electronix Discounters - we completely remade this site from scratch, incorporating a new look and feel, our streamlined checkout, improved customer navigation and product display and a vastly improved code base.

Mohea Beauty - a new site which really expresses the client's taste - as well as showcasing her beautiful soaps and beauty products!

Dry Stack Cellars - a new site for a California winery.

It has been a great year for us here at Ryan Design Studio. We have successfully transitioned to the 4.1 branch of X-Cart and have also been working closely with a Search Engine Optimization firm to come up with an installation package and 'skin' for X-Cart that does extremely well in the search engines. We implemented over 50 custom designs into X-Cart this year, some completely new sites and some makeovers. Our Streamlined Checkout module has been a great success for the clients we have installed it for, with conversion percentages increasing in the double digits. All of our custom designs now include this module, as well as the Thickbox dynamic resize function for product images.

As it is the time of year for resolutions, I have a few that I hope to keep:

- I will be posting some comprehensive 'guides' for e-commerce and search engine optimization. Many of our clients come to us not knowing a thing about selling on the web, and with over 200 e-commerce sites under our belt we now know a thing or two about how to create and maintain a successful store.

- We will soon have a full demo of our modified X-Cart system available.

- We have developed a number of partnerships in the past year in various markets from Search Engine Optimization to hosting, and will soon have a 'Partner' page that list all of these firms.

And finally, my biggest resolution will be to update this blog more than once a month! Just about every day I come across a tip, trick or mod for X-Cart that is worth sharing here, and I will do my best to take 10 minutes each week to post them. We are currently in the process of hiring some additional help, which will hopefully give me some more time to focus on things like this instead of coding and designing all day! Speaking of which, if you are a graphic designer or PHP programmer and are looking for some freelance work, please feel free to drop me a line with your resume and work experience.

In closing, I would like to sincerely thank everyone who allowed us the opportunity to work with them this year. There is nothing more satisfying than transitioning a site from that lovely default X-Cart skin into something that truly reflects the client's business and tastes. Each site is a unique challenge, and I consider myself extremely fortunate to be able to enjoy what I do each and every day of the year. I hope you all have a great Holiday, and a successful 2008!

So much for keeping that New Year's resolution of posting once a month! Ah well, they are made to be broken right?

We've been extremely busy this year already, having launched more than 10 stores since Jan 1, with 20 more currently on the schedule for the next 2 months. Below is a sampling of new launches:

Salud Spa Bar - a completely new site featuring a 'build your own scent' module.

Wizard Coin Supply - a completely new site featuring SEO by Vector Computer Consulting

Grand Furniture Showcase - a highly customized site featuring a large number of enhancements and add-on modules.

Just Bird Stuff - redesign of an existing site with major SEO and customer usability enhancements.

Victory Canter - redesign of a standard X-Cart template, we also re-organized their navigation menu, added thickbox functionality and our streamlined checkout.

Flag Addict - a new site selling garden flags of all types.

March and April were our busiest months ever, with about 10 sites going live. We are also working on finishing up an additional 15 projects that will be launching in May. Hence the delay in updating the blog!

An important note concerning X-Cart this month - we recently learned that most hosts will be updating their servers to run PHP and MySQL 5, as the 4.x version are at the end of their life cycle. In addition, servers running 4.x will no longer be PCI compliant, which is a major problem for X-Cart owners accepting credit card payments. The bad news is that X-Cart 4.0 and earlier versions DO NOT WORK on MySQL 4, and upgrading to 4.1 is a major headache and expense, particularly for highly custom sites. Luckily, a patch was just released that addresses this issue. If you are one of our clients and your host is planning on upgrading, please contact us prior to the upgrade so that we can patch your cart. If you are hosted with us, we will be upgrading later this summer.

Now on to the new projects!

Marlo Beauty - we migrated Marlo from another cart system, and gave them a completely custom site with too many custom features to mention. This was a collaboration with their graphic design firm - designiko.

Dog Collar Boutique - a brand new site featuring a custom size and price filter.

War Game Store - a brand new site specializing in Warhammer.

Starring Fragrances - celebrity sisters Ashley and Courtney Peldon's perfume and jewelry store. We moved them over from another cart system and added a forum and blog.

Mango Madness - we moved Mango over from another store system and gave them a fresh look and feel.

Kashmir Company - it doesn't get much more custom than this! With extensive use of Flash and Thickbox, you can barely tell this was once X-Cart.

Well it has been a while - so much for my resolution of updating the blog daily. I have a valid excuse though - this has been the best year ever for Ryan Design Studio, and I just haven't had the time. In this economy, I am very thankful for the workload. Lots to talk about, let's start with X-Cart itself.

New X-Cart release coming soon!

Rumor has it that the new version, 4.2, will be out in November. Now if this is a typical Qualiteam release, it means it won't be usable for a few months as they use customers as the bug testers, but from what we are hearing it is going to be a major update. It sounds like it will be CSS-based (finally) along with a dimension based shipping system and search engine friendly urls. Sounds very promising.

Whenever a new version comes out, we get flooded with e-mails asking if they should update to the latest version. In this case, it is going to be very expensive, as X-Cart has completely re-done the template system and shipping module, so it isn't just about adding a couple of patch files. Once we do a bit of testing on the new version, we'll report back as to what your options are if you do want to upgrade.

Ryan Design Studio video learning series - coming soon!

One of the things that has been on the long-term radar for a while has been a series of educational videos on the X-Cart system. As we all know, the manual is cumbersome at best, and doesn't really offer a good tutorial on how things work, and where things are in the back-end. We will be starting with a general overview of the administration area, and then we'll focus on specific areas (options, shipping, languages, etc). Look for the first video to be available here in the blog in the next week or so.

Site update

We just finished updating the site, as it was due for both a code and content overhaul. A few things to note:

- We are no longer offering 'static' web design as a service. We've really become e-commerce specialists and that is what we are going to focus on from here on out.
- Have a look at our new SEO page which gives a brief overview on SEO for those of you not familiar with it.
- A major update to the portfolio with 15 new projects listed

What's next?

In the next week, we'll be posting an updated list of recommended X-Cart add-ons, as there has been quite an increase in both vendors selling mods, and new mods from existing vendors. Also look for the videos mentioned above, I think these will prove very helpful to a lot of people.

Check back soon!

X-Cart just came out with their new 4.2 version in beta today - doing some testing now to see how it looks. The big changes include many features we have included in our stores for over a year now, but it will be nice to have them in the stock install as well. Highlights:

- CSS (tableless) layout
- Dimensional Shipping
- Search Engine Friendly urls out of the box
- Fully customizable META data
- Pre-Auth availability for credit cards
- Dynamic thumbnail generation

So the only 'new' features for our clients would be the dimensional shipping and pre-auth/capture functionality - everything else on that list we already include in our custom stores.

So the big question everyone will be asking is, should I upgrade? The answer is - it depends. First, I do not recommend using a new release until X-Cart deems it 'stable' which is usually around the .8 or .9 release. Even then it is better to let it go a few more versions to work out ALL of the bugs. Both the 4.0 and 4.1 versions were not really 'stable' until well after they were deemed 'stable' by Qualiteam. Once 4.2 does become stable, the only reasons to upgrade are if you need a new feature such as dimensional shipping or pre-auth functionality. If you are one of our clients, the other features are already included in your store, so there is no reasons to spend the money or the time upgrading. If you are running a stock version of 4.1, an upgrade is always recommended to stay on top of the latest technology. This release will certainly address many of the issues that have been handled by third party add-ons in the past. So the bottom line is, wait for a while and see how this release shakes out before upgrading.

A few new site launches this week as well:

Nurture My Body

South Nest

Exotic Orient

SpaBox

RelaxOBak

Qualiteam released X-Cart 4.2 today, and I have already received about 10 e-mails asking how to go about upgrading. Unfortunately, there will not be an upgrade kit available from 4.1 to 4.2, as the template and shipping systems are so drastically different, it would be nearly impossible. There will be a database patch released, which will allow you to upgrade your 4.1.x database to 4.2, but that still means you'd need to start with a fresh install of 4.2. So for those of you who are running a 4.1.x store, I would recommend sticking with it.

If you are about to build a new store, I'd still give it a few months for the third party developers to catch up, as they will most likely need to completely rebuild their modules to accommodate the new template system. It does look like a nice clean layout, something we have been asking for forever. The dimensional shipping and pre-auth/capture functionality for some payment gateways is also a nice touch.

All of the other 'new' features have existed for quite a while in the third party market, so there is really nothing earth shattering here. Still, always nice to see Qualiteam making progress and keeping their cart updated. The CSS-based template is essential, as it renders much cleaner than tables, and is a lot easier to modify. It is also much more search engine friendly and cross-browser compatible, so a welcome change indeed.

Wishing you all a Happy Holiday season!

Just want to take a moment to wish our clients, friends and colleagues a Happy, Healthy New Year! Lots to look forward to in 2009, including a new version of X-Cart!

Even though many of us are hopeful that the new President and his administration will eventually turn the economy around, the current recession will be here for a while. For online store owners, the simple fact is that if you do not stay competitive and keep the traffic flowing to your site, chances are you won't last the year. I can't tell you how many e-mails I have received from existing site owners asking what they can to do improve their traffic and sales. So, I thought I would put together a quick post on some simple things you can do to help boost your rankings, keep the customers coming to your store and convert the traffic that does come to your store into sales.

Pricing/Free Shipping - The first thing you can do is make sure your pricing is competitive. Now more than ever people are bargain shopping, and if they can find the same product you are selling elsewhere for less, that is where they are going to buy it. One way to 'one up' your competition is to always offer free shipping of some sort. Even if your prices are a bit higher than the competition, the psychological effect of free shipping tends to win people over. If you have a threshold of a certain dollar amount to get to free shipping, the benefit is often a higher average order. People will spend an extra $10 to get $5 of free shipping. A crazy as it sounds, it is all in the psychology.

Add a Blog - Google in particular eats this stuff up and it is an easy way to add weekly/daily fresh content to your site. Write articles about new products, ways to use your products, or just general articles about your industry. Use keywords freely, and try to update it at least once a week. WordPress is the blog we use most often, as it is free and very easy to alter to match the design of your site. The only catch is that you need to install it on your domain (i.e. yourdomain.com/blog) and not a hosted solution like yoursite.wordpress.com, as the benefit to the search engine only works if it is ON your domain.

Build your backlinks - now is a perfect time really focus on getting inbound links to your site. These can't just be random links on random sites, they need to have a decent PageRank (4 or above) and need to be related to your industry. Forums and blogs are great places to add links to your site, as are manufacturer's web sites, local chambers of commerce and trade organizations or groups.

Make your customers feel comfortable ordering from you - sometimes when it comes down to buying from site A or site B (and pricing is the same) the customer will simply choose which one they feel more comfortable with. There are a number of things that contribute to a customer's comfort level:

- A clearly defined set of policies (returns, shipping, privacy, etc)
- An 'About Us' page that lets the customer know there are real people taking their money. A nice friendly photo of yourself/your family also goes a long way to building customer confidence
- Make sure your site is secure, and let them know it is secure by adding trust icons and an SSL icon
- A professional design. Nothing throws up a red flag more than a cookie cutter, generic design

Explore new ways to advertise/promote your products - there are lots of ways to promote your products these days that you may not have considered:

- Push your products out to 'shopping' sites such as Google Base, Shopzilla, etc
- Create a channel on Youtube and publish videos about your products
- Create a Facebook and MySpace page for your site
- Advertise with AdWords
- Send out a monthly newsletter with current promotions/specials. An easy way to remind customers to come back and visit you again

Hire an SEO specialist - even if you think you are promoting the correct keywords in your site, having a professional analysis done may lead to the discovery of 'niche' keywords that could drive a whole new batch of traffic to your site. Many SEO firms offer an entry-level 'report' that gives you a detailed breakdown of your competitors and keywords/potential traffic.

That should give you plenty of things to work on in the coming months. The good news is, an economy like this tends to weed out the stores that aren't 100% serious about their business. This can result in increased traffic and sales for you if you take the time to do things right.

X-Cart (Qualiteam) announced the other day that they will be completely re-engineering their shopping cart systems, combining their main product (X-Cart) with their 'Lite' product (LiteCommerce) into a brand new product called X-Cart v5. It looks as though they plan to involve the current client base in the development of this next-generation shopping cart, at least in providing feedback on what features/functions it should have.

This is good news for everyone, as the tech behind their current cart is starting to look a bit out of date, particular when so many other carts are embracing AJAX and other user-friendly, time saving techniques. We can only hope that things like real-time form error checking, dragging and dropping and a CMS will be part of this new X-Cart, but I will be lobbying hard for exactly this type of technology. I'll post updates here as things start to take shape, and we hear more about it from X-Cart.

For those of you who already own X-Cart and don't visit the forums that often, now is a good time to start. There is a thread in the 'Wish List' forum that is meant for suggestions for the v5 platform. At this point, everything is on the table, so if you have a feature you have always wanted in X-Cart, or something that has always driven you crazy about the system, now is the time to share it. They have instituted a 'thank you' system - if you see a suggestion you like, add your thanks to the post. The ones that get the most 'votes' will be seriously considered for the release. It is nice to see Qualiteam finally involving the community in their development.

In other news, we have launched our first Expression Engine project - www.apitherapy.org. This one is pretty highly customized, special thanks to Matt at Vector for all of his help.

After spending the last few months developing 15 different sites, they are slowly starting to go live:

Scuba Basics

Hapari Swimwear

Mane Depot

Welcome Bags

We'll have a few more to announce in the coming weeks.

Well, my New Year's resolution of updating the blog often didn't last long! I'll try to redeem myself in the coming months.

Just wanted to give an update on what is going on in the X-Cart world, as this year should be an interesting one. First, X-Cart has a very good running list put together by forum users on features that should be available in v5. We are all hopeful that this new flagship cart will be as good as promised.

With the impending PA-DSS compliance deadline fast approaching (a little over a year now) we finally got an answer out of Qualitaem as to how they will be handling this. The v5 cart will be PA-DSS compliant out of the box, meaning you won't have to do anything to be PA-DSS and thus PCI-Compliant. For those of you who are using 4.0.x or 4.1.x versions of X-Cart, Qualiteam will be releasing a plug-in module that will essentially act as its own independent payment gateway, operating outside of X-Cart, which will allow those older versions of carts to also be PA-DSS compliant. I'm a little nervous about how easy this will be, as I don't really look forward to updating 150 carts the day before the regulations kick in! Let's hope they release these modules with plenty of time to spare.

I have been getting a lot of questions lately about what version of X-Cart they should be using. Most of the X-Cart professionals, myself included, are recommending to stay with 4.1.12, at least until v5 comes out at the end of the year. 4.2 is still extremely buggy, and with the upcoming release of 4.3, it doesn't appear that Qualiteam is paying much attention to making 4.2 stable. 4.3 may be a little better, but 4.1.12 is still a much more stable platform and will be fine until it is time to try out v5.

I have a long list of site launches which I will post shortly in another entry.

Well, it has been a while - and a crazy summer. The big news is, Ryan Design Studio has moved into a new office! You can now find us in Branford, Connecticut - one town south of our old location. It is a great spot right downtown, and offers a whole lot more space for expansion - will hopefully have some news on that front in the very near future!

So what has been going on since May? The big news is that X-Cart's new v5 platform is on the horizon. We are all eagerly awaiting this release, and I'll be sure to post here as soon as we have a firm date. We all have our fingers crossed that this will live up to the huge expectations and won't just be yet another recycled version of X-Cart.

We've launched a number of sites in the past few months, including:

+ Top Gun Supply
+ Just 4 Birds
+ Custom Promise Rings
+ Coffee Shrine
+ Strider Sports
+ Lotioncrafter.com
+ Center Point Pond
+ Tutti Amici
+ The Brides Pendant
+ CEP Socks

Big news today - X-Cart 4.3 was released:

http://www.x-cart.com/news/xcart-430-released.html

This represents a pretty big change from the 4.1 platform, and as soon as we have done some testing and let the bugs work themselves out we'll be switching to this platform for all new installs. Looks like they did a nice job on first glance though. If you are starting a new site in the next few weeks, I'd hold out for at least another release - the early ones usually have a few bugs that need to get fixed before it can be used for a live site, although they did a pretty good job with beta on this one.

Will post an update here once we have had a chance to play around with it a bit more.

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Thanks to all of the people we had the pleasure of working with this year, and we look forward to working with even more of you next year!

Ok, so I am the worst blogger in the history of the world, I admit it! But hey, if I was blogging all day and not working, that would not be good either right? So yes, we have been very busy here at Ryan Design Studio for the last few months. Lots of projects to update which I will do shortly.

We've started working with the 4.3.1 branch of X-Cart now. Not really any huge new features, but a number of my clients appreciate the dimensional shipping and pre-auth functionality for credit card payments (authorize first, charge when shipped). The mod vendors are pretty much caught up to converting their mods over, so we are now using this as our production version. We have of course rewritten the templates using clean CSS, as X-Cart out of the box is quite bloated and sloppy when it comes to the CSS/html. Nothing a few hours of cleanup can't fix!