HC Blog

I am switching just the hosting over right now. Hopefully it will be switched by 9 pm for the Necessitae stocking, to avoid all the error pages. Either way, I believe the site will be up with no downtime.

I will work on the databases sometime tomorrow. Maybe early in the morning.

I hope this makes the transition easier for everyone.

I know there are some very important stockings and auction end times happening within the next few hours. I’m going to start the downtime in the next little bit and hope that I can get everything functioning again within a few hours.

Thanks for your understanding everyone!

I’m going to migrate us over to a dedicated server tonight. So I will be shutting down Hyenacart as well as the forums starting around 9 pm (or whenever the kids are in bed). I’ve already got the majority of the files moved over, I just need to move the databases (probably TMI, but just in case you want to know the details ).

I think this should be pretty quick and hope to have everything back up and running within a few hours.

Thanks for understanding. Hopefully this will make HC quicker to load and even more stable — there may be a learning curve as the dedicated server thing is new to me, but I’m hoping I’ll have it figured out quickly.

I apologize for all the Internal Server Errors today. I’m sure it’s been very frustrating for everyone. I can only assume (and hope) that the auxiliary server the host put HC on is some old, poorly powered computer. I say “hope” because I just signed up for a new dedicated server and I hope that when I move all the files over and switch the site to it, that the Internal Server errors will go away completely. I think I will be able to do this with very little or no downtime. Hopefully this will be complete before the end of the weekend.

If the server errors continue, then we have a problem, but we’ll cross that bridge if we come to it.

Thanks for your patience everyone!

I apologize for the downtime today. I am going to need to upgrade the HC hosting again in the near future to manage all the traffic the site gets. In the meantime, my host has moved HC to an auxiliary server. I am hoping to find out from them whether I can have a specific scheduled time to do this upgrade so I can give you all warning about when this will happen.

I will keep you updated!

I’ve tweaked the code a little bit so that if a customer logs in from your store page, the login page is framed by your store customizations. So a customer can enter your store, login, shop, etc. without ever leaving *your* site. Also, after log in, the customer should be automatically redirected to the page they logged in from.

One other thing — for HC Standard users, if the payment confirmations are annoying you, you can turn them off on your “Profile” page (very last option on that page).

You now have the ability to add tags to your listings. These will be searchable by the customer. This will give us a standard way to list sizes, materials, etc. and will make it easier for customers to find exactly what they’re looking for. The first step, however, is for you to add tags to your listings. This is totally optional, of course, but it will be easier for people to find your listings if you tag them correctly. You’ll see the new tag field on your stocking pages. Click on “Choose tags” to bring up a window with clickable tag words. You can also enter your own tags.

If you’d like to add tag words to the standard list, please respond on this thread: http://hyenacart.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=10751

You can view the currently available tag list here: http://www.hyenacart.com/hc_search

This is a to-do that’s been on the books since I introduced congos on HC. Now the congo admin can easily reorder the congo stores from the “Edit vendor” page. The stores are now ordered by category order, rather than the category number. So to re-order the stores, just enter numbers into the “Category Order” field in the numerical order you like. This will change the order of the stores on your main congo page. The same holds true for regular store categories as well. The numbers don’t have to be sequential (in other words, you can skip numbers and enter 10, 20, 30, etc.). Do be careful not to repeat a number though.

Now you can easily put guest vendors at the top of your store, circulate store order week-to-week, feature a particular store at the top, etc. etc.

Just a few more notes for the HC Standard users.

I took the purchase time and buyer columns off of the stocking page. This was a feature left over from before HC had an orders list. If you need your buyer’s info, it will be on your order history.

I also wanted to note that on Paypal confirm transactions, the database is checked for item availability before the customer can pay. So if a customer orders something, but doesn’t pay for a week, and the item has been purchased by someone else in the meantime, the first customer will not be able to complete the transaction.

I had a request for this feature last week and I have basically been obsessed with getting it finished up and out to you since then. Now, in addition to offering items by the standard method, auctions, and lotteries, you can choose to offer a listing by “Paypal confim.” This will list your item as usual. However, when the customer clicks “Buy Now”, the item will remain in stock until Paypal payment has been completed. This should work with any combination of choices, discounts, shipping, etc. I’ve tested as much as I can, but there may still be some bugs here and there, so please let me know if a customer purchases and pays for an item and the order history doesn’t reflect a “Paid” status. Note that the item must be paid for using the Paypal buttons on HC — a direct payment to you can’t be tracked. For now, only payment through Paypal can change the status of an order from New to Paid, but if it’s needed, I can go back later and add the option of letting the seller edit an order to reflect a Paid status.

In addition to this, even on standard orders, when the order is paid, the status switches from New to Paid and you will also be able to see the customer’s address directly on the order details page.

I hope this new feature makes it even easier for you to list and sell your items To list an item by Paypal confirm, just use the drop-down menu (where you set Standard, Auction, or Lottery) and select that option. Also note, that it *is* possible to oversell using Paypal confirm, so I don’t recommend it for highly sought-after items.

Thanks for hosting your store with HC!