The issue is that Comparison Shopping Feeds are not submitting on an accurate schedule.  The problem is not predictable in that it may happen at any given time on any given site using any of the four types of built-in feeds – or it may not happen at all.  On some sites we’ve seen the issue pop up daily for a few days in a row and then not at all for weeks.

While the problem itself is ongoing, we have been given an interim solution that we will implement once a week on each of our servers in order to “unstick” “stuck” feeds.  This will keep your feeds up to date on at least a weekly basis.  As described above, the random factor could mean that your feeds are never behind, but at least with this temporary solution the oldest they will be is 7 days.  If you change your product prices on a daily basis you would be much better suited using a piece of shopping engine software to manage your feeds as it is a much more robust solution.   If you’d like our recommendations for shopping engine management software please open a support ticket and we will get back to you as soon as possible.

If you are not changing prices and descriptions for your products on a daily basis it is actually frowned upon by most shopping feed systems to submit unchanged data too frequently.

This issue will hopefully be corrected in the near future.  We appreciate your patience and understanding until that time.

What I’m talking about is that in ProStores you have the ability to use the File Type option under Support > Upload Images in your ProStores administration panel.  In the image below I’ve clicked on the dropdown to show the second option: Multi-Image Zip Archive

This is where it gets tricky.  The system accepts zip files, but only if that file contains images and nothing else. Nothing.  Not a folder, not several folders, not a “thumbs.db” file (generated automatically by Windows in image directories), nothing at all other than the images themselves.

Click Here to download Example #1.  This example shows a properly constructed zip file that ProStores will accept

Click Here to download Example #2.  This example shows a file which will be rejected – it contains a folder with the images inside.

This may take a little practice depending on what program you are used to using to create zip files.  If you have never created one before, there’s no time like the present!  WinZip and WinRar are both free programs that can produce ProStores-compatible zip files.  Regardless of the program you use, the main idea to take away from this article is that you are zipping the images themselves only.  If you’re adding a whole directory to the zip file it’s adding extra overhead and information to the file that ProStores can’t understand.

One last very important point I should make here is that this article as well as the Multi-Image Zip Archive functionality itself is only intended for PC users running Windows.  Mac users running any version of OS X will not be able to produce zip files that are compatible with ProStores using any known software as the end result will always include structural files ProStores cannot handle due to the way the OS X file system is setup.

Well here’s what’s happening: you are allowing what is called Anonymous Checkout on your site.  When a client chooses to checkout anonymously, they are not making an account on your site.  Period.  I get people all the time asking how they accept anonymous orders but force everyone to make an account and the answer is simple – you can’t.  The entire point of allowing anonymous checkout is to target the demographic of internet users that are just a bit too paranoid and feel that creating an account will always lead to spam or identity theft.  It’s a substantial demographic so it can sometimes be a hard decision as to whether or not you will accept their orders.

Go to Store Settings > General in your ProStores administration panel and expand the Shopping Car and Checkout Options and you should be looking at something like this:

What matters here is the last section, Checkout Options.  Notice you can require an account, not allow accounts, or allow both.  If your site is allowing both options, then you are allowing people to checkout without creating accounts.  While in many cases this isn’t an issue, if you are considering allowing this option there are a few things you should consider first:

• Anonymous customers cannot purchase downloadable products
• Anonymous customers cannot purchase subscription products
• You cannot issue a credit to an anonymous customer
• You cannot perform order entry for an anonymous customer
• You cannot look up customer information for an anonymous customer

While these may seem trivial to most stores out there, these are important things to keep in mind for certain types of stores – most importantly stores that offer only downloadable products.  If a store like that allows both, they’re simply going to be losing sales whenever someone attempts to checkout and leaves thanks to getting an error message.  If the option wasn’t there in the first place the idea of checking out without an account may not even occur to them.

My point is not that there’s anything wrong with accepting anonymous orders, it’s that the decision to do so should be an informed decision and hopefully this information will help you decide what’s best for your site.

There are plenty of reasons to end up in this position, and while deleting the order will get it off of the Ready For Shipping page, it will also mean that the order’s data is permanently gone and will not be included in any of the reports you can generate in your store.  First lets run through a few scenarios that would end with a stuck order and what to do in each case:

A) The order is old. Nearly all payment processors have a 30 day processing limitation, meaning a session is created when the customer checks out and the purchase is authorized.  That session remains valid for 30 days, but once 30 days have come and gone the session expires and you will not be able to charge that customer.  This is an instance of a stuck order that needs more than just getting unstuck.  In this instance the best bet is to contact the customer.  You could use your Order Entry tool to send them a new invoice (there is an option to create an outstanding invoice to be paid online – in that instance a link is sent to the customer that they can follow to checkout) or you could ask them to checkout themselves.  Either case is somewhat risky as the customer may no longer want to order from you, but no online business should be accepting credit card information more than 30 days before sending out the item.  That goes far beyond what most would consider an acceptable amount of time to wait, even for something marked as being on backorder.

B) Your payment processor has changed in between the time the order was placed and when you tried to mark it as shipped. This can be a tricky situation depending on whether or not you still have access to your previous payment gateway account.  For instance if your payment processor was LinkPoint, but you’ve decided to switch toAuthorize.net , then orders placed when LinkPoint was the gateway will not be able to be marked as shipped normally now that Authorize.net is in place.  If you no longer have access to the LinkPoint account you simply cannot collect this payment and should not ship the order until you’ve contacted the customer (like in scenario A above).   If you still have access to the LinkPoint account then you can process the order in ProStores following these steps:

1. Close your Store.  You are going to be changing the payment processor so you don’t want anyone to be checking out while you’re doing that.  You could end up in the same position again when it’s time to ship orders placed while you were fixing this one!
2. Go To Store Settings > Payment Prefs.  On this page you should see your current payment processor selected.  Change the processor back to what you were using before (if you were setup like my example above you would see Authorize.net as the current processor and would change the dropdown menu to LinkPoint) and then click the Submit button at the bottom of the page.  Depending on your processor you may be taken to the Configure page next, but if that happens all you need to do is click Submit on that page as well.
3. Ship The Stuck Order.  As long as it’s been less than 30 days you should now be able to simply mark the offending order(s) as shipped.  The system will charge the client through your old processor and the order will be moved to Completed Orders
4. Go Back To Payment Prefs. Now you’re just going to do the reverse of step 2.  Put your current processor back in place and click Submit.
5. Open The Store.  You’ve finished processing the stuck orders and have reset your payment processor so get the store open again as soon as you can to avoid losing any business unnecessarily!

C) You’ve processed the payment elsewhere. Just about everyone has to do this every now and then for one reason or another.  The order came in through ProStores but you needed to process the payment through your gateway’s website (usually called a Virtual Terminal) and now it’s stuck in ProStores and can’t be marked as shipped.  As long as you’re certain you’ve been paid, follow steps 1 through 5 above with one exception.  You will be changing the processor to None.  With no processor in place when you mark the order as shipped it will not attempt to collect payment.

Google has been steadily working on their checkout system in order to make it as useful as possible for their merchants, and one of the recent developments has been the addition of a promotion system!  The system still cannot accept outside promotions (and I doubt it ever will – that goes way beyond the scope of what a system like this is capable of), but now you have to option to setup duplicates of your ProStores promotions within the Google Checkout account itself.  At the moment it’s still a somewhat limited system in that you can only setup a sitewide sale, but hopefully they will add the ability to do shipping or manufacturer based discounts in the future.

Ok, so step one is to sign in to your Google Checkout account and make sure you are looking at the sales manager section.  If when you sign in you see a list of orders you have placed with other merchants then you will need to click the My Sales link in the upper-right.  Now, click on the tools tab and click on Coupons (not promotions – the promotions section handles automatic discounts, which is something that is already being handled by your ProStores site – if you put the same automatic sale in Google that exists in your ProStores site then you’ll be giving the client the discount twice) like in this screenshot:

Next, you will want to click the link to create a new coupon:

Finally, enter your promotion code exactly as you entered it in ProStores, set your discount amount (and type – whether it’s a percentage off or flat amount off), any requirements, and then submit:

That’s it!  Simple right?  If you follow these easy steps you’ll be able to offer promotion-code-based sales and still accept Google Checkout!  For those of you still not accepting this method of payment, what are you waiting for?  Click here and get started today!

This behavior is unpredictable in every aspect; what template is changed, what template it will be substituted with and when this error will occur. Previously this bug was confined to other enabled “Store Versions” and would revert to the first “Store Version” alphabetically. Because the problem happens at random, it is difficult to determine a fix. However, removing the other store version(s) will correct the issue as there will be no other content for ProStores to show.

First, backup the “Store Versions” by following this video.

Backing_Up_Store_Versions

Next, it is important to note that deleting the “Store Versions” will also delete any images uploaded specifically to that “Store Version’s” folder so remember to keep a backup. To retrieve the images for a backup we recommend using an FTP client as there is no built-in ability in ProStores to download all template set images at once.

Finally, under Store Design > Store Versions select all but the active (default) template set and choose “Delete Store Version” from the dropdown menu on that page.

Calculations are another great use for PHP.  The math system in ProStores itself it certainly limited, but if you’re able to include the math capabilities of a language like PHP suddenly all kinds of opportunities arise.  For example, a real-time currency convertor on your website could alert foreign customers as to what the product would cost with the current conversion rates taken into account.

Do you have products that require user-submitted photos?  PHP can be utilized to build a system that can allow your users to upload their own photos or artwork for use with their order, linking the order to the files (thus avoiding the extra step of contacting the client after their order to request content).

Basically what it comes down to is that the sky is the limit!  Have an idea for something ProStores can’t necessarily do on it’s own?  Feel free to let us know!

A basline is a saved backup of a particular template and a good set of them should be considered your insurance against a broken site should the changes you make on your own cause unexpected problems.  By default, when you go to your site’s Page Template Manager and click on a template name in order to edit it, you get the following popup dialog box:

Let’s look at this for a moment because this could be the last time you ever see this popup, depending on how you choose to proceed.  We recommend that you change this popup to look like this:

Notice we’re saying to not use this popup to control your baselines.  Here’s why:  This popup, when left with the default settings, will come up every single time you go to edit a template from the Page Template Manager, whether you need it to or not.  The possibility that you will accidentally overwrite a useful baseline with a broken copy by simply trying to get past this popup quickly is an unecessary risk that can and (in our opinion) should be avoided.  If you choose the same settings as shown above (uncheck the box to Save a baseline, check the box to not show the message and change the dropdown menu to say “again”) then you can have manual control over baslines on your site without taking the risk that they could be accidentally replaced.  The rest of this article will assume you’ve made this change and will focus on manually setting and retrieving baselines.

To set a baseline manually, first you should open up the Page Template Manager.  Check the box next to the template you would like to save (note: you should do this at least once for all properly functioning templates on your site – that way if anything at all goes wrong you know you at least have a working copy to revert to) and then select Set a Baseline from the More Actions dropdown menu.  For example, in the following image I am choosing to set a baseline for the Product List template:

When you choose to set a baseline, the page will refresh and ask you to confirm your choice.  Be sure that you actually do want to do this for the template(s) selected (you may set a baseline this way for as many templates at one time as you’d like) and click the Set Baseline button.  A note will be placed on that template when you view the Page Template Manager so you can see on what day and at what time the baseline was set.  You can also see when you last edited the page in question.  It is a good practice to replace previously set baselines with new ones if you’ve changed the page without causing any problems or errors.  Remember, a backup is only useful as long as it contains accurate, recent information.

Finally, there will come a time when you need to retrieve a baseline in order to fix a problem.  You may have accidentally pasted the wrong template before hitting the Publish button or perhaps you published a template with broken or missing code and cannot determine what was done incorrectly.  In either case, you’ll be happy that you took the time to make a baseline when things were working properly.  To get a template back to how it was working at the moment you set a baseline, first open your site’s Page Template Manager.  Find the template(s) in question and check the box(es) next to them.  Next, select Revert to Baseline from the More Actions dropdown menu as seen in this example:

On the page that loads you will be asked to confirm this decision.  Be sure you’re restoring only templates you wish to restore and then click the Revert to Baseline button.  The template(s) will be restored exactly as it was the moment you initially set the baseline.

When used properly, baselines give you more freedom to experiment on your site without needing to fear the possibility of causing permanent damage.  Just keep in mind that while using the Advanced Editor or Basic Editor to edit your templates you are working on the Header and the Footer in addition to the template you’ve selected so it’s a good practice to set baselines on those templates even if you do not intend to change them in any way.

If you have a brick and mortar store or service a particular region, Neighbors could be a great way to give your business additional exposure. By contributing to local discussions, you can build your company’s reputation. Offering useful information on this forum will help position your business as the authority and build customer trust. Yahoo! even makes it easy to link to your Local Business listing within posts.

Discussions on Yahoo! Neighbors have great potential to rank well in search engine results, as well. If Yahoo! Answers is any idicator, these discussions will likely appear high up in the results for local search queries. The online conversations held on the Yahoo! Answers forum have carried a lot of weight in the SERPs and there’s no reason to believe that Neighbors won’t have the same power.

Give Yahoo! Neighbors a shot. The service is based on user input, so it will only get better as more people contribute.