HC Blog

Hi all,

I made a change to the code last night that has had unintended effects. I’m going to keep it the way it is, though, as it makes the most sense. But if you have listings that have disappeared from your store and your stocking page, go to Product Listings >> Batch Edit >> Dates, and ensure that the category number for all of your listings corresponds with an existing category number in your store (if you don’t use categories, set them all to 1). Everything should work fine at that point. If not, please drop a line to support [at] hyenacart.com.

Also, just so you know, the change now orders your listings in category ordering and then item ordering order. That probably makes no sense. Let’s say you have a category “chocolate truffles” which you have ordered as 2, but which is actually category number 10 (i.e., on your Store Settings >> Edit categories page, ordering for that category is set to 3, but the category number is 10). Now let’s say you have another category called “fudge” with ordering set at 5, and is category number 3. Before the change, the items were sorted by category number, and the category ordering was ignored. So your fudge would have shown up before your truffles. Now, the items are sorted by category ordering, so the truffles will show up first. And you can rearrange the listings easily by changing the category ordering on the “Edit categories” page. Clear as mud? Good! But I bet you’re hungry, anyway.

If you have questions, please post here or email the support desk. Sorry for the inconvenience!

Me again

OK - first of all, I added one more category, “Household and Laundry,” for cloth napkins, unpaper towels, laundry soap, etc. Also, if you check out the main HC page, you’ll now see that the text under each category is hotlinked to a search for those items. I’m hoping to make the site more browsable and also introduce items to shopperS who may not be aware of them: “Dryer balls? What are those? What are mei-tai’s? What about I-spy bags? Oh, I didn’t know HC had *toffee*!!”

So, you’ll want to be sure that the items you sell under each item type have the right tags to come up in that search. For example, under knitted items, the search for socks is “knit socks”. Just make sure those words occur in your title or tags.

I’ve also re-organized so fabric stores are now categorized under Patterns, Fabric and Sewing Supplies, leaving the Yarn category for Yarn & Knitting Supplies. Please ensure your store is showing under the correct category.

I’ll take suggestions on item types and search wording in the comments — so please feel free to give your input

In other news, I’ve changed the way I coded BiN handling for HCMulti stores. If you recall, last week, I set it up so each BiN click creates a new order. However, I wasn’t thinking about big BiN stockings where shoppers would be buying a lot of BiN items at once. It made for a ton of extraneous orders who’s items got paid for together in a different order. The seller would have had to go through and manually cancel all the extras. So, what I’ve done is changed it back to the way it was (i.e., the order for BiN’s is not created until the shopper checks out), but all of the BiN purchases can now be viewed via the shopper’s Auction, Drawing, BiN page (in their My HC pages). So buyers can see immediately if they stalked successfully, and be linked directly to their haul. Also, if someone clicks BiN, but doesn’t pay, the seller can re-stock, and no order is created. Unfortunately, this means the seller can’t flag the buyer, but please keep track of it manually, and if a shopper is a repeat offender, you can blacklist him / her and notify the helpdesk. I think this is the best compromise for now, but am still open to suggestions.

I also updated the feedback page so feedback cannot be left for orders with “New” or “Cancelled” status.

Ok — that’s it for now. Thanks everyone!

Hi all,

Guess I’m on a roll lately Just a few more additions to the site:

• The “Jump to store” feature now also searches congo vendors, so if you’re looking for any store hosted on HC, whether it’s a standalone or part of a congo, it should now come up in that search
• I’ve edited the feedback function so feedback for sellers (HC vendors or SC sellers) can not be left by the buyer if the status of the order is “New.” This keeps shoppers from leaving feedback on unpaid orders (i.e., transactions that never really happened). Also note that if you have a buyer pay via Paypal invoice, the HC system will not automatically mark the order “Paid” and you will have to do that manually in your vendor pages in order for the buyer to leave feedback for you
• Finally, I have changed the way HC Multi handles order creation for BIN’s, auctions and drawings. These three types of transactions now create an order immediately (as soon as “Buy Now” is clicked, or the auction / drawing ends and has been refreshed) rather than waiting until the shopper completes the checkout process. The shopper can still go back and add more items to the order and pay for everything at the same time. The difference is that you and the shopper will both see an order in your histories right away.

As always, let me know if anything seems to be buggy.

Thanks hyenas!

Now *this* is the type of message I like to send you. After years (and years) of requests, I have finally added the ability for you to list your stores in multiple categories (yippee!!). You’ll see where you can do this on your profile pages. Please, please, do not abuse this feature by listing your store in unrelated categories. This is not fun for shoppers. I would even ask that you try to list your store only in categories in which you stock items fairly often or have recently stocked items. For example, if Store A stocks cloth diapers and sometimes soap, it would be best if that seller only lists herself in the soap category when she has soap in stock. Make sense?

I have also added three new categories: Pet Items, Sweet Treats, and Upcycled Items. Can’t wait to see you fill them in Note that there may be a bit of a delay before the number of stores updates on the main page. Finally, you’ll see when you list a featured shop ad, that you’ll need to choose just one category to be listed at the top of the ad (otherwise, it could get a bit busy with multiple categories listed).

Please let me know if anything’s buggy or isn’t working the way you expect. Thanks!

Hi all,

This is not my favorite type of email to send out — I’d rather be notifying you of a great new upgrade (some are in the works, but nothing to roll-out right now). However, I have been spending more and more time lately transferring feedbacks between stores, and I think it’s going to make the most sense to start charging a fee for this service.

From here on in,  if you would like to transfer feedback between stores, there will be a $5 charge. Please Paypal this amount to payments [at] hyenacart.com and put the url of the feedback page you’d like to transfer from, and the url of the feedback page you’d like to transfer to, in the comments section.

Thanks for your understanding!

Hi all,

Just a quick note to let you know that the Google Base code had stopped working but is now fixed. There was a new required parameter that has now been added to the file generation code. For more information on Google Base (or Google Product Search, click here). Please give it a try, and if you are still unable to load items into Google Base, email the support desk at support [at] hyenacart.com.

Also, there has been a bug with HC Multi checkout — only with certain stores, and only with shoppers using Internet Explorer. The checkout process would hang up and not take the shopper to the Paypal site for payment. I have now added a button that can be clicked to force the page to go to Paypal in the event that it hangs up. That should fix the issue. Again, please let us know if you or your customers are having problems. Thanks everyone!

Hi everyone,

Apparently Paypal has been cracking-down on gambling using PP funds. Some sellers have had their accounts suspended because the word “lottery” has been red-flagged. I have reworded all of the references to “lottery” in HC to “drawing”. As pointed out by one of our sellers, this is actually more technically correct as

The definition of lottery is: 1 a: a drawing of lots in which prizes are distributed to the winners among persons buying a chance.

Whereas drawing is: : the process of deciding something by drawing lots

So, lotteries are now drawings. I would suggest that you no longer use the ‘lottery’ terminology lest PP suspend your account as well.

This also has implications for running charity raffles (where buyers do purchase chances to win). I won’t be monitoring this, but be aware that Paypal is not tolerating usage of their service to support gambling of any sort, including raffles and lotteries.

If you see the word lottery left over on any of the HC info pages, please drop me a line at support [at] hyenacart.com so I can get it fixed, thanks!

Also, there’s been a bug in the auctions and lotteries that was preventing them from showing up correctly in shoppers’ purchase histories and checkouts. I just fixed this bug, so it should no longer be an issue moving forward. If any of you have shoppers that would like their purchase histories corrected, please have them contact the support desk at  support [at] hyenacart.com with a link to the item they won.

Thanks everyone

Hi all,

Just wanted to let you know that the new search function has been installed on the site: here. As you’ll see, you can now sort search results by price, stocking time, ending time, or alphabetically by store name. In addition, searches can now be filtered by stocktype. Finally, there is now a store-level search that allows shoppers to see which stores carry the item they are searching for, and allow them to expand a store’s listings dynamically. Give it a try and see what you think A few notes on the listings that show up in the search table:

1. only stores with paid dates within the past two months are searchable
2. only listings with end times within the past two months are searchable (also HC Multi items with undefined end times)
3. for HCS stores, only items with preview set to 1 or stocktimes in the past are searchable (in other words, items you’ve set for future stocking, but don’t want previewed won’t show up)
4. for HCM stores, only items with “Show” checked will be searchable.

If you have any items that should be showing up in search but aren’t, please drop us a line at support@hyenacart.com and we’ll take a look at it.

In other news, Prudence at Cuddlebug Cloth brought the Pay it Forward movement to my attention. She outlines the idea on her listing here. I think it’s a wonderful idea and would love to see more PIF listings on HC. And remember, we have three-letter search now, so shoppers will be searching on “PIF” Let’s spread that good karma around!

Finally, I’d like to update the HC categories (i.e., the ones listed on the main page). Please comment here with suggestions. If we have enough stores to fill out a category, we’ll add it in. Also, if you have suggestions for more tag words to include on the search page, please post those as well.

Thanks everyone!

Hi everyone!

I’m excited to announce that the new storetop menus are now live across all HC stores If you get any questions from your customers about how to use the menu, or what features it includes, please point them to this page.

In other news, there are three gorgeous new store templates to be found on your Store Settings >> Profile page. They were designed by the very talented Kandace of Kandace Wright Designs. Check them out — they are something else!

I hope to have another exciting announcement regarding the search function in the next day or two. Stay tuned!

Thanks for shopping/selling HC

Phew! I’ve done a lot of debugging on the storetop menus and they are just about ready to be rolled out. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, please check out this post.

Please please check your store designs with the new menu. If you have design issues, and would like me to fix them, please post a link to your store in the comments to this post, a description of the issue, and give me permission to tweak your design to fix the issue.

If you’re a do-it-your-selfer, you can try the following fixes for the most common problems:

1. Mysterious white bar at the top of your store (below the storetop menu). This is caused by setting a margin at the top of the page. The margin needs to be zero’ed out. For example:

   body { margin: 37px 0px 10px 0px; }

   needs to be changed to this:

   body { margin: 0px 0px 10px 0px; }

2. The storetop menu is too far to the right. Some of the links don’t show on the page. This is caused by a

   body{text-align:center}

   style definition. If this is removed, the issue will go away

3. You use white text for your links, so the storetop menu, being white on white, is not very useful. You can add this style definition to your style sheet:

   .navhc a, .navhc a:hover {color:#000000;}

   where you can change the color to whatever you desire, and the link text will then show up correctly.

4. Your store table is wider than your design: check your Store Settings >> Profile page, and ensure that the “width of storetable” value is not too large.

Remember, if you would prefer not to make these changes, please comment to this blog post with permission for me to make the changes for you. The menus will roll out in a week, so again, please check your store designs!

One last note: many of you have commented that the menus seem too small and inconspicuous. My hope is that, since they stay at the top of the browser window no matter how far down the user scrolls, that they will be noticeable because of that.

Thanks everyone!