# Welcome to Zen Cart™ ... The Zen Cart™ software is made available to you for use, additions, changes, modifications, etc. without charge, under the GNU General Public License. While we do not charge for this software, donations are greatly appreciated each time you download a new version, to help cover the expenses of maintenance, upgrades, updates, the free support forum and the continued development of this software for your online e-commerce store. Donations can be made at: The Zen Cart™ Team Page We appreciate your support. The Zen Cart™ Team Zen Cart™ is derived from: Copyright © 2003 osCommerce This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE and is redistributable under the GNU General Public License

# WHAT'S NEW IN Zen Cart™ v1.2 # GENERAL Table Prefixes can be set during installation Popup Context-Sensitive Help in many places New database abstraction layer -- no more ADODB. This new code is MUCH smaller and runs MUCH faster. (New abstraction code written by the Zen Cart™ team) Caching options expanded -- can now cache SQL queries to file, database, or not at all. This offers performance improvements in varying circumstances. See online help in installer for more information on recommended settings for your system. Numerous additional CSS style tags have been added for better control over display. # INSTALLER Much more user-friendly, with context-sensitive help Pre-Flight Check shows you vitals about your system before installation, alerting you to issues which need to be addressed, and giving a good indicator whether Zen Cart™ will run on your server. Auto-detection of previous versions of Zen Cart™ already installed, offering upgrade if found. Database Upgrade script lets you upgrade from as far back as v1.04 up to v1.2. Upgrade process allows you to add/change table prefixes if needed. # ADMIN AREA Statistics area ("Admin HOME") now also shows Active/Expired for: Specials, Featured Products, Sales Better security over login/logoff, and password resets. Zen Cart™ New Version alerter in Admin header, notifying you of core patches if they are available. Admin-area color-coded action buttons in many areas, esp product/category/attributes. Makes for faster processing of edits, deletes, copy/move, etc. Ability to search for almost ANYTHING in most admin areas (Did you know if you search for a word, it'll show you BOTH categories AND products on same page?) Define Pages Editor - Now you can edit portions of these pages in HTML mode from your Admin Panel: MAIN_PAGE CONTACT_US PRIVACY_POLICY SHIPPING_INFO CONDITIONS PAGE 1(Index) Page 2, Page 3, Page 4 Welcome Email option now also shows an HTML-enabled preview of the welcome message which is sent if the store's HTML-MIME email settings are enabled. # ATTRIBUTES LOTS of new features for attributes: Flags for: display-only, free, discounted, base-price-included, required Onetime fees Quantity pricing Text-Pricing: price-per-word/letter Attribute swatches Price Sorter -- enhanced Attributes Controller enhancements (Option Name Manager) and lots more (Attribute-based stock/inventory is coming in a future release!) # BANNERS Banners can now be set to On or Off for SSL pages (avoiding those "you are about to view..." messages) Banners Groups - You can separate your banners to appear in various/multiple places. There are now 8 positions available, configurable in the Admin area. Banners-Open-New-Windows option # CATEGORIES & PRODUCTS If no image supplied for product, defaults to "no picture available" graphic (turn on/off via Admin) Product Types General Products Music Types Document Types Product Sort Orders Meta Tags enhanced to display a more intelligent price Customizable setting for "New Product Listing" definition Price Manager: Product Pricing Specials Featured Products (NEW) Discount Qty Pricing (NEW) (rules over specials or sale prices) HTML/WYSIWYG editor available for entering product descriptions Optimized category-delete process Category Restrictions now available Category/Product Status (ON/OFF switches). You can enable/disable categories. Ability to show/disable category display on main page Ability to set a Top Level Category New Products display options enhanced (can now configure qty, etc)-- configured in Admin Ability to add/delete all of the Option Values for a product/category/shop # CHECKOUT Shopping Cart contents summary -- added more details to top of page Show Accepted Credit Cards (new option to enable in Admin) Shipping Estimator in cart-contents to show probable shipping costs without having to log in or checkout # COUPON-ADMIN / GIFT VOUCHERS/CERTIFICATES HTML-enabled emailing of coupons & GV's/Gift-Certificates Smarter GV handling for free-shipping items # CUSTOMERS Group Discounts available. Discount applied at checkout. Customers can select to receive HTML or text-only emails (or opt-out) Enhanced sort options in Admin for customer mgmt Customer login levels : 0 = normal shopping (browse with prices) 1 = Login in order to shop (or see prices) 2 = Can browse but no prices (Store is showcase only) Customer approvals are handled in the Admin | Customers area PHPBB login integrated (nickname entered during registration/create-account) Now displays number of orders in customer-mgmt area # DOWNLOADS MANAGER (NEW) New Downloads Manager for configuring downloadable products # MAIL You can now compose your messages in rich text/HTML in Admin modules: Send Email, GV Mail, Coupon Admin, Email-to-Customer New Email template system lets you position content where you want on HTML email messages (see the /extras/README-EmailTemplates.html for more details) Customer & Admin can select whether to receive HTML or text-only messages All emails contain a disclaimer and copyright text (editable via language files of course) Emails can be archived to database for later retrieval (activate via switch in Admin) # NEWSLETTER MANAGER Newsletters can be composed in rich text / HTML directly Basic template system can be customized to display content as desired (HTML-only templating support, linked to the new email-template system) Customers can now click on the supplied "unsubscribe" link in the newsletters they receive, for a one-click confirmation of removal/opt-out. List of customers to send email/newsletters now optionally displays the number of recipients in that group. A future query-builder will enable easy addition of further groups of customers to make available as audiences, based on almost any slice of demographic or sales data. Stay tuned. # ORDERS Billing and Shipping address-mismatch check built in, to help prevent CC fraud Shipping Tare & Large-Package handler (can set either and/or both a percentage or weight for Tare and Large Package) Low-Order fee enhanced COD fee added Built-in auto generating order-total-classes for the stylesheet. You can define the CSS display for the Text and the Amount for each order total module separately for the checkout confirmation. (checkoutConfirmationText-ot-xxxx and ....Value-ot-xxxx) # PAYPAL IPN (NEW) PayPal IPN now replaces the previous PayPal module. This means that when a customer checks out by PayPal, the PayPal server will connect to your store, notify you of the payment, and set the order to "paid" (you can configure the status). There is an interface in the Admin area, under "Customers", which allows you to view all PayPal IPN notifications received. You need to configure PayPal IPN settings in your PayPal account preferences on the PayPal website, in order for this feature to work properly. # PHPBB INTEGRATION Creation of a Zen-Cart™ account creates an account in your phpBB system if configured. Password changes in Zen Cart™ will carry forward to phpBB (not vice-versa, though) NOTE: phpBB is not distributed with Zen Cart™. You must install phpBB separately, and preferably before installing Zen Cart™. (If the link to phpBB is not activated during install/upgrade or phpBB is installed after installing Zen Cart™ v1.2, then activation of this feature requires 2 steps: edit /includes/configure.php and define the full path to your phpBB files, and activate in Admin under My Store) # PRODUCT REVIEWS Now you can now configure Product Reviews to require Admin Approval before posting (set in Admin) # SHIPPING Zones shipping can now be managed by weight or value Address-based Shipping Taxes -- can now be configured to be charged based on customer address, delivery address, or not at all. Shipping configuration error detection checks that origin zip code exists USPS configuration check Order-Weight-Zero status check # SALES/SPECIALS Sales/Specials now have a start date, as well as an expiry date # STOCK (NEW) New report available in Admin to list low-stock items Emails can be sent to Store Owner when stock is low on a given product (Admin - Email Options) # STORE MANAGER (NEW) Now you can reset/update all kinds of settings from the Tools section in the Admin area: Update attribute sort orders, Products Price sort orders Reset the store hit counter, products-viewed counter, master categories ID, Order/Invoice ID # TEMPLATES Define Pages Editor - Now you can edit sections of these pages from your Admin Panel: MAIN_PAGE CONTACT_US PRIVACY_POLICY SHIPPING_INFO CONDITIONS PAGE 1(Index) Page 2, Page 3, Page 4 Developers Tool Kit: Now you can use the Admin area to look up text items, constants, language entries, virtually anything used for programming and configuration, from all over the files in your store. (see Admin | Tools) Numerous CSS/stylesheet adjustments/tweaks, with dynamically-generated classes added in many places. Most notable is the Categories Tree. Parse Time -- added # of queries to display (can be disabled in Admin) Module Overrides -- now the /includes/modules/pages folder can be configured for override protection (more details on template overrides are available on the Zen Cart website FAQ's.) Left/Right Column layout in template system separated. Now there's the builtin capability to have different sidebox styles in each column # WHO'S ONLINE Information displayed for who's online has been tweaked for better performance # Things You Need To Know There are a number of things you'll want to be aware of in migrating to Zen Cart™ v1.2 from a previous version. ### Upgrading For a detailed explanation of the upgrade process, please read UPGRADE.html ### Admin Area There are a zillion new switches in the Admin area affecting a bit of everything.... layout, product/categories, attributes, shipping, images, taxes... pretty much everywhere. Be sure to check out these new settings if things aren't quite how you like them in your shop.... chances are you'll find something here that takes care of things quickly for you. ### Template System Change The Left/Right Column layout in the template system has been separated. Formerly you had a /templates/YOURTEMPLATE/common/tpl_box_default.php. This has now been split into tpl_box_default_left.php, tpl_box_default_right.php, and tpl_box_default_single.php. This offers the built-in capability to have different sidebox styles in each column. So, if you've customized tpl_box_default.php, you'll want to apply your customizations to the new set of files in order to have proper display. ### New Cache Folder This mostly only affects shops that are new or not-yet-live. In previous versions, there were often troubles with insufficient permissions to store temporary files in unsecured space on the server. As such, we now supply a "cache" folder to be configured for storing file-based cache components. The installer will walk you through this during install/upgrade. You have the option of manually switching your configuration over to using the new cache folder, or keeping your existing arrangement (perhaps it's called tmp from previous days). # Help and Support For further information on Zen Cart™, visit our FAQ's and our Support Forums on the web at the Zen Cart™ Website Welcome! We're glad you found us, and we're confident that you'll enjoy the Zen Cart™ Experience!