Requests for R4 or R5

[KenPalmer]

I know that R3 was released on November 30. After working with AC Gold for a couple of months we have some request for R4 or R5 that would make our lives a little easier.

Our storefront is deployed on a load-balanced, two-server environment. Some hurdles we encountered with AbleCommerce Gold were related to hard coded directories. For those unfamiliar with this, specifically I'm referring to:
* App_Data\Indexes
* Assets\DigitalGoods
* Assets\ProductImages

We use a load-balanced, 2-server environment to host our sites. The problem we encountered with uploading files (digital goods and product images) was that the uploaded files would be saved on one server, but not on the other server. We had a similar problem with the indexes. If we logged into the administration panel and re-indexed the site, the re-indexing would only occur on the server that our browser was pointed to.

So for instance, lets say I logged into the admin panel and was directed to the site on Server #1. Then I added a digital good, uploaded a related product image, and then re-indexed the site. All of that would show up correctly for customers whose browsers were directed to that same instance of the site on Server #1. But visitors who were directed to Server #2 by the load balancing process would see a broken image for the product, and would not be able to download the digital file. And if the site required re-indexing, then features that fail when the index is bad would fail for that visitor on Server #2. Visitors directed to Server #1 would have a trouble-free experience, while visitors on Server #2 would report problems.

There are several ways to handle this, and our ultimate solution was to create Symbolic Links for the above directories. The symbolic links pointed to common directories on a file-sharing server. Now when we deploy the site, we will write a script to recreate the symbolic links, and also set the correct directory permissions. All of this could be made easier if...

Request #1: Please make the targeted directories configurable. Instead of embedding them into the code in a hard-coded manner, make them config entries. Or make them virtual directories where the code performs a map path to virtual directories.

Our second request relates to the payment providers. In our case, we used the Skipjack payment provider, which we also found had hard coded properties rather than utilizing configurable settings. And the AbleCommerce interface presented a limited subset of capabilities from the Skipjack API. In our case, we needed the advanced payment processor, and the Comment Line. And we needed to target an alternate Skipjack URL for that payment provider. One of our experts had to jump through hoops to get that working, and mentioned that it would have been very helpful if more of that would have been configurable.

Request #2: Please enhance the Skipjack payment provider to be more configurable. Present the Skipjack URL and the Comment Line on the administration screen. If the URL needs to have a default value, put it there, but at least provide the capability of configuring that easily from the administrative tool.

That being said, we do like this product. Customer support has been very good, both on this forum and via cases I have submitted. Given the extensive feature-set present in AbleCommerce Gold, it's remarkable to see how well this product works. In a single-server environment with a basic payment provider, AbleCommerce Gold would likely work seamlessly for most businesses. Additionally, when I've needed to make code changes, the code has been easy to follow. Thanks.

[NC Software]

Concur - you can't expect everything to be stuffed into a 'single instance' store. We use iSCSI SAN's for our mass storage, it would be nice if our digital goods could be stored there and keep things out of the web site structure. Same thing would apply to indexes, allow the path to be set such as we use S drives for the iSCSI SAN so we would use S:\AC\DigitalGoods and S:\AC\Indexes. I've also recommended in the past to not serve digital goods from the AC site but instead allow external links as our downloads don't get served from our AC site. We have dedicated download servers so allowing a link to those downloads to be used would solve these problems.

[Logan Rhodehamel]

Thanks for the detailed feedback. One thing I think worth mentioning is that in R3 we integrated a new feedback tool. You will see it docked on the right hand side of the screen when you are in the merchant administration. You can click on this whenever you think of some ideas. In addition to making new feature suggestions, you can vote or comment on suggestions that have already been made.

Small correction though - digital goods are under App_Data rather than Assets. In clustered situations symbolic links are currently the strongest solution for these directories. Even if we allow configurable paths, it will still require some sort of synchronization between installations.

[NC Software]

Small correction though - digital goods are under App_Data rather than Assets. In clustered situations symbolic links are currently the strongest solution for these directories. Even if we allow configurable paths, it will still require some sort of synchronization between installations.

If the paths are maintained in the database, as I prefer as much as possible to be centrally stored here, then this is not the case.

[Logan Rhodehamel]

I was thinking about product images. It is not possible to have them pathed outside of the web application because they are served directly to the browser as images. What path could you set in the database that would prevent product images from requiring synchronization?

[NC Software]

I didn't see his item for ProductImages - the other two apply to me. Although when I migrate to gold I'll opt for SQL FTS as I prefer this out of the file system, but the digital goods has been a long standing issue for me as discussed previously. I don't need massive downloads in the web site file structure or in the case of people serving media, it may require an external mass storage implementation vs. in a smaller hard disk storage that come on servers. I don't need large hard drives on my servers with iSCSI SAN's and DAS.

[Logan Rhodehamel]

but the digital goods has been a long standing issue for me as discussed previously

Using a symbolic link should be an option for you. Set up whatever storage solution you want, then remap the DigitalGoods folder to it. It will still be under the website structure (and transparent to our application) but you can offload the storage to another device.

[euroluxantiques]

I know this is an old thread and I don't mean to hi-jack it, but I cannot make these symbolic links work for my product images. We host our product images on a separate webserver. I successfully created the symbolic links under the Assets/ProductImages folder. I created symbolic subfolders under the ProductImages folder--1 each for Thumbnails, Icons, LargeImages, and Images, as we have 60,000+ images and I like to keep the sizes separated for organization.

I then went directly into the database and changed the corresponding URL fields in ac_Products and ac_ProductImages to reflect "~/Assets/ProductImages/Images/ProductImage-1.jpg," etc. I even imported an image in admin to make sure I had the naming structure correct, and I'm pretty sure that I have based on the name created on import. The first image (main image and thumbnail) are showing up on the product pages.

However, my thumbnail images below the main product image are still not showing when I load a product page. If I click on the alt text for the thumbnail, it opens the large image, as expected. Why aren't these thumbnail images showing? Any help would be appreciated. Here's an example of one of my dev product pages:

http://dev.euroluxantiques.com/Antique- ... 23836.aspx

[jmestep]

You might need to change some code in or relating to the GetImage.ashx file-it has special image handling code. It is throwing "500" errors. See attached image.

2-11-2013 8-01-15 AM.png

[euroluxantiques]

Thanks, that helped! I looked at the code in GetImage.ashx and found it will throw the 500 error if there is a problem with processing/resizing the image. I had linked my large images (1600px on longest side), and when I switched to my regular images (660px on longest side), it started working. How did you get those error codes to show up? That would help me in debugging issues like this. I still don't think that linking images on remote servers should be this difficult.

[euroluxantiques]

BTW, GetImage.ashx and ProductImage.ascx do not work with additional images in table ac_ProductImages if they're in png format. I had to switch to jpg to get them to show up. I've reported the bug.

[jmestep]

I used a free debugging program called Fiddler. They are now part of the Telerik family so you might want to get it now in case they start charging for it later and you wouldn't want to pay.
http://www.fiddler2.com/fiddler2/