eCommerce News & Resources by oscommerceuniversity.com

Our latest video, CRE Loaded Manual Order Creator retails for only $15.00 USD and includes up to 6 minutes of live animation slides with voice narrative on every aspect of creating a manual order within CRE Loaded 6.2.13.1 Standard, Pro & B2B. For more details, click the link below.

• Lesson 1
  • Payment Method Configuration
  • Shipping Method Configuration
  • New Customers
  • Existing Customers
• Lesson 2
  • Quickly search and use existing customers
  • Enter new customers
  • Customer IDs
  • Using the drop down selectors
• Lesson 3
  • Selecting a category
  • Selecting a product
  • Assigning attributes
• Lesson 4
  • Adding Tax
  • Adding Shipping Method and price
  • Selecting Payment Method
  • Adding Discount
  • Adding Comments
• Lesson 5
  • Updating your order
  • Printing Invoices
  • Printing Packing Slips

More Info: CRE Loaded Admin Manual Order Entry

Open Source eCommerce platforms and bootstapping go together like salt and pepper, ham and eggs or turkey and dressing. That’s a fact.

Even when the software is commercialized, it offers significant advantages to the bootstrapping firm in the form of the implicit opportunity to craft new capabilities over time as funding allows.  Which is why I take this opportunity to reply to Javier Rojas description of bootstrapping, a  process in which founders self finance their way to profitability in his article “The Art of the Bootstrap” at venturebeat.com.

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In an unpublished article I started on October 15, I stated “Kerry Watson’s new article was posted today on ecommerceguide.com. You can find it at: http://www.ecommerce-guide.com/news/news/article.php/3777841 . It is entitled, “Can Iozzia Get the CRE Loaded Love Back?”. The short answer is no.”

While I still think I blew off a bit more steam than I want to publicize so quickly after Chain Reaction’s devastating implosion (or indeed – at all), events since then have made me reconsider addressing the issue in this venue though not the conclusion of my initial paragraph.  First off was the management of the all too expected eruption of steam following Sal’s “grand return” and the unbanning of a number of long time community members who were neither happy at being banned, or impressed with claims of change.  One of the most vociferous was Michael DesMarais of Supreme Center Hosting .

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I was reading an article entitled, “The Cutting Edge of Trade Secrets–How Far Should the Law Go To Prevent Misappropriation by Memory and Inevitable Disclosure” and what I found relevant to most small business computer networks are that employees often can setup email accounts and store emails on their personal home computer should the telecommuter – work at home.

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But is it? There seems plenty of reason to doubt whether the approach is either new or open source. My original concept when proposing CRE Loaded commercialization was to charge a standard fee per copy distributed with a 30 to 90 day support window, following which support could be obtained on a contract basis. Revenues would be further augmented by internally developed documentation and education offerings made available both directly to the public on Chain Reaction’s own site, and via a distribution network of existing community vendors. The value of the software would be increased by ongoing addition of new features designed and built in house, and refactoring of the core code to bring it into alignment with the current PHP and MySQL feature sets and changes in the security environment.

What has emerged appears to be little more than SaaS without the second S. Here is why.

The “manual” posted on the latest incarnation of their website is a thinly disguised knock off of Kerry Watson’s 6.2 Users Manual. They may argue that there are few other ways to state the programs use, and that just may be. But why can’t the ‘designers’ of the software do any better? They should for example, have access to and include information on input formats and boundaries, and systemic capabilities and limitations which are not readily available to the non-programmer. Such information is not, as of the date of this writing, available in their “users guide”. Their “educational program” consists of a page buried 3-5 levels deep in their site which asks the users to inform Chain Reaction of their educational needs so that content can be developed. So much for educational and documentation support.

Their new releases are “subscription” based. But there is some room for question as to just what users would be subscribing. What does Chain Reaction deliver in return for its charges?

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2008-11-23

We are finally resuming the development of educational materials here at our nascent Open Source eCommerce University. A new Flash tutorial on updating prices and quantity with Easy Populate is in rough draft, along with a written guide. Its not before time. Its been months since we released anything new in the Moodle installation – but it is getting a face lift, with a new theme to match the rest of the site and new content to match. We will be trying some new arrangements for our classes, and bringing live chat to the table in the near future for those who wish to meet vendors versed in CRE Loaded, osCommerce and other packages serving the Open Source ecommerce marketplace.

Look for a first release of this tutorial in 2 to 3 weeks max.

Recently a blog entry by Anna Bergman entitled, “Why Would you Want Cre Loaded for your E-store?” was brought to my attention.  Not only for its content, but due to the nature of a reply to that post.

First, lets address Anna’s content.  She notes that:

“CRE Loaded currently has 39 additional modules over and above the many that are already included in the default OsCommerce installation. CRE Loaded also offers powerful shopping cart solutions in both the free and paid editions. CRE Loaded has a better template system and its “affiliate manager” allows you to specify the per sale payment percentage rate for each of your affiliate accounts as well as providing a tiered structure that is based on sales performance.”

This is not quite the truth.  CRE Loaded contains considerably MORE than 39 additional modules, and even more modifications to that module set intended to make it more powerful and convenient than its stock osCommerce parent.  Further, it has had a large number of security related modifications added.  I’m proud of the work I carried out first as Project Manager, then as Chief Operating Officer, and happy to be recognized as a founder of CRE Loaded. Read More

I’ve worked with osCommerce and its derivatives for quite some time now. So had the architects of the Magento shopping cart before they came up with the idea of building a completely new Open Source shop cart. Given that osCommerce is widely considered to be the most popular Open Source cart, and that it has at last count 4766 community contributions from its 178,210 members you might wonder why they felt the need for a new cart. It is a good question, and here are my comments on one aspect of the question.

osCommerce has a very minimal release schedule. The Open Source philosophy of “Release Early, Release Often” is just not on the agenda. The last few releases have been backports of new code with minimal impact in terms of business features available in the cart.

Magento has, thus far, offered frequent releases offering significant new functionality long requested by members of the osCommerce community. Data export tools and a much improved backend are only the beginning – the difference is just huge. osCommerce is rather undocumented – and certainly so in terms of official documentation released by the designer. It has a person (one) responsible for developing or leading development of documentation – but little if any cohesive information pertinent to the current release. osCommerce does have established (if poorly understood) API’s for module development and a large body of shipping, payment and order total modules exists.

Magento has selected a professional PHP development framework on which to base development – offloading part of the development and documentation cost while taking advantage of organizations known for excellence in training. Varien has made an effort to get documentation in place with a wiki which, if not regularly maintained, does offer documentation by development team members which can be used to build shipping and payment modules. These are certainly very reasonable areas of focus for a project in this stage of its life cycle, and the practice bodes well for the future.

The osCommerce website features an active community forum with many involved community members. Quite a few of those members are technically accomplished and offer willing assistance. But there is little to no participation from the project members – announcements are few and far between and while many fans of the project constantly urge new members to wait for the 3.0 release of osCommerce – the 3 year wait for a release strains their credibility to the breaking point. If not further.

The Magento website encourages participation and has many actively involved members from both the community AND the project. The rapid move from the 0.7 release to a full 1.0 release is a welcome change. While it has resulted in some lag between semi-official Wiki postings on the APIs intermittent postings and updates by official developers offers a new hope that finally some balance between progress and stability will be available in an Open Source eCommerce project.

By now, the picture should be clear. You could say that the  single biggest problem faced by the osCommerce community is the lack of an osCommerce project. Lacking this challenge, even the technical difficulties related to an EAV based database management scheme and the high demand for buzzword compliance placed on Magento coders is unlikely to hold this new kid on the block back for long.

Recently, I was asked to explain how I thought any company could protect their brand when releasing software under the General Public License. This shortly after I encountered a post stating CRE Loaded “Never made it clear” the software was released under GPL. The second assertion is quickly dealt with. Provided the user can read basic English – the licensing is posted in the footer of every CRE Loaded distribution as follows:

If this does not make it clear the observer is either illiterate, stupid or criminal and hoping his potential victims suffer those conditions.

Frankly, I don’t understand how this long after the initial GPL release anyone could not understand it’s implications. Probably the most important fact about the GPL is that is is a license. Let me say that again – slowly: the General Public License is a LICENSE.

A license is defined by Mirriam-Webster as “ c: a grant by the holder of a copyright or patent to another of any of the rights embodied in the copyright or patent short of an assignment of all rights”. Parse that slowly if you will. “A grant by the holder of a copyright or patent” – the developing authority holds either a copyright, a patent, or both to their software. “short of an assignment of all rights” – the developing authority retains rights to the software. There. Was that so hard?

So, the question is, to what rights to do the developers retain ownership and/or control. The nature of software licensing should make it pretty clear that those rights include the copyright – which the GPL allows them to enforce; and the rights to trademarks, service marks and other tools used to brand the software. Given that anyone in the software industry in general and ecommerce in particular deal with licensing every day by now we should understand this. A huge percentage of all computers sold around the world carry with them a Microsoft software license. This is a given. Yet no one doubts that that license allows them to use the software, but does not give them a right to call themselves Microsoft, claim a partnership with Microsoft, use the Microsoft Logo on their own products or in any other way represent themselves as being a part of Microsoft.

What the osCommerce Project has to say on these issues can be found here, in their own statements on Trademarks and Copyrights. They are well worth reading. In fact, I would go so far as to suggest that they should be required reading of anyone who installs the software. They are easy enough to understand, but equally easy to forget. I am thankful to have been given reason to review them – and plan some site modifications as a result. I want it to be clearly understood that this site is about all Open Source eCommerce, not just osCommerce. Nor is there any connection between this site and the osCommerce project. We are not reviewed or controlled by the project, and other than their clearly identified RSS feeds all content here is copyrighted under terms substantially similar if not identical to those posted by the osCommerce Project.

Their position boils down to normal usage and common sense – materials are copyrighted by the producers, some rights are granted them as the site owner, all software contributed is donated under the same GPL which applies to osCommerce itself, and their trademarks remain theirs. This is as it should be, and not substantially different than many other Open Source projects. Another interesting document which can be found on the osCommerce project site is their Open Source Definition

The first three items are of particular interest here. To quote their document, making fair use, those items are:

• Free Redistribution
  No restrictions are placed on parties from selling of giving away the software.
• Source Code Availability
  The software must include source code and must also allow for binary distributions when there is a well-publicized means of obtaining the source code.
• Derived Works
  Modifications and derived works must be allowed, and must be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software.

So, getting back to the remaining question of how branding can be protected while the software is given away.

The pertinent GPL Version 2 clause in my opinion is section 7 (aka the “Liberty or Death” clause”). It says the following:

“7. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all. For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program.

If any portion of this section is held invalid or unenforceable under any particular circumstance, the balance of the section is intended to apply and the section as a whole is intended to apply in other circumstances.

It is not the purpose of this section to induce you to infringe any patents or other property right claims or to contest validity of any such claims; this section has the sole purpose of protecting the integrity of the free software distribution system, which is implemented by public license practices. Many people have made generous contributions to the wide range of software distributed through that system in reliance on consistent application of that system; it is up to the author/donor to decide if he or she is willing to distribute software through any other system and a licensee cannot impose that choice.

This section is intended to make thoroughly clear what is believed to be a consequence of the rest of this License”So – you can’t stop the software from being given away. But, ” It is not the purpose of this section to induce you to infringe any patents or other property right claims or to contest validity of any such claims;” Brands and trademarks are property. They are subject to many property rights both implicit and explicit – though these vary significantly from one jurisdiction to the next (one reason there is a GPL 3.x). They existed when the first GPL was written – and this clause has the significance of requiring any further distribution for sale to be clearly identified as “Derived Works“.

So, you can modify commercial GPL software, you can give it away, or sell it. But you legally, morally or ethically cannot do so while claiming to be the original author.

There remain other issues, but from an ethical if not legal standpoint there is no real obstacle to commercializing Open Source software. In fact, there are many issues which push for it – the need or desire of business operators to be able to obtain support, or to acquire a version of the software which is less unstable than the free releases being just two good examples. More on those in a future posting.

I’ve been subjected to a bit of distraction lately. The office has been sinking.

Well, not literally sinking, you understand, but definitely moist. It began about a month ago when my better half noticed moisture in the carpet. A lot of moisture.

This drew our attention. It was surrounding a book case so we scurried to save the contents, move the furniture and begin the diagnostic process. The water was clear, which thankfully let out sewer blockage as a potential cause. Unfortunately, we were unable to immediately rule out groundwater leakage, a broken water pipe or act of God.

It happened on a weekend of course, immediately after the complex staff left for the day. The remainder of the weekend was spent soaking hydrogen dioxide from the rug, and hoping for a cessation in the persistent precipitation. Ok, constant rain, damn it. It took three days to get a thorough examination finished. This involved partially demolishing a wall, revealing one small hole in a pipe. It had to be the main fresh water inlet for the entire building and it was. By this time, the water was starting to rise – and primary line or not, I was doubtful that the small leak we had located was sufficient to account for the amount of water soaking the floor of the center of our connubial bliss. A plumber was summoned, but by this time another weekend had arrived, and of course they were unable to locate the cut off valve for the building. This ran to another 3 days of delay while they arranged first to locate said cut off valve, determine it was nonfunctional and arrange to turn off the water for the entire complex. This to repair a leak less than an sixteenth of an inch in diameter in a two inch pipe. Oh joy.

We were advised not to expect immediate relief from our inundation (Latin inundatus, past participle of inundare, see water) - it was expected that water would continue to seep from soaked dry wall for another (you guessed it), three days. This though the dry wall itself was largely, well – dry. I informed our plumber and the maintenance supervisor that I doubted this strongly based on my extensive experience in nursing urological disorders in a tone that was dry if not rye.

Three days later, the river still ran. In fact, it ran rather more strongly than before. Again, I visited the maintenance supervisor and issued him a situation advisory. Once more he inspected the source of our fountain and again, dry wall suffered the indignant abuse necessary to fully expose the source of the flow. While moisture was visible, and the presence of the leak was clear, the source remained elusive A consultant was called in – and the culprit finally localized. It was beneath the concrete. More calls to plumbers, and bids solicited. Not good news. In this southern town, obtaining a bid alone can take 15 to 30 days. Still, not all news was bad. The persistent nature of the issue finally drew the attention of the complex manager, who revealed to her new maintenance supervisor the availability of a carpet extractor and blowers. The situation began to improve.

So, as I write this entry I am listening to the tune of a high speed blower which attempts in vain to dry my soaked floor coverings and contemplating just how much I have accomplished in the past month despite my frequent towel soaking and spinning evolutions and contemplating search engine optimization. Why? One of my better events of the past month was getting to chat with Pitstop (Darel), a denizen of the CRE Loaded forums with a significant interest in SEO techniques and a number of opinions which closely match my own. We have begun a series of posts in the universities forums to address this topic, and will be referring to this entry from time to time to point out some important SEO do’s and don’ts.

Check the forum link CRE Loaded Hints and Tips section for more SEO commentary from both Daren and myself, and have a dry day.