Enabling SSL does not seem to function

[rusty]

We have encountered a problem with AC Gold and was wondering if anyone else has seen the issue. Basically we have a site running in catalog mode since since the application does seem to respect the SSL Enabled setting. Specifically, when checking the "SSL Enabled" (check box located: Configure -> Security -> System Settings) the site does not enforce redirection(s) to SSL pages. Also, There used to be settings in the AbleCommerce.config that were used to configure which directories/files should be rendered using SSL if enabled which have been removed in the AC Gold version.

The certificate is installed correctly and can be accessed directly when typed directly into the address bar of the browser.

------------------------

For anyone that is interested:

Our preliminary review of AC Gold with some comments in red are our impressions after upgrading a new 7.0.7 site. In general the upgrade was more complicated than our initial assumptions.

Initial review of AC Gold. AC is offering 2 versions of this WAP and WSP.

• WAP is the application project - this includes all of the code behind
• WSP is a web site project - which would remove all of the code behind (it gets compiled into a dll in the bin directory). Most of our setups will start here

Dev Notes

• It looks like AC has at least started porting the data access layer over to nHibernate
• Lucene.net has been installed for searching
• Log4Net has been included for logging
• Database does not look too different than previous version and there is an upgrade path.
• AbleCommerce changed gears and the GOLD release is not a full version upgrade. There are enough breaking functional changes when upgrading between 7.x and AC Gold (especially with the template/layout/control changes that there is good arguments to say this is a major version update and presumably why the decision was to name it AC Gold rather than 7.0.8
• **Bug In email Templates - ToString("ulc") renders "ulc" in emails. This is a show stopper and has to be fixed before the site can launch. Quick fix is to replace ToString("ulc") with ToString("C") ... and wait for AC patch.

Admin notes

• The dashboard is better organized
• They seemed to put a graphical "navigation" splash page which imo is not needed and just gets in the way.
• Reports are better organized - but also looks like a page where they ran out of design steam
• TinyMCE has been added to the long descriptive areas It would be better to have the option to limit only put basic editor functions on these fields.
• Products page has been reorganized with tabs across the top rather than a sidebar. Page feels more comfortable.
• Products can be accessed directly via a list rather than having to drill down through the catalog
• No notable performance improvements however organization of pages/work flow should be of notable benefit to staff actually running the store. After importing the store products there are some definite performance agains.
• Assets still in assets directory **BUG - Uploading PNG files will create smaller versions with a black background. This was bugged in 7.0.7 as well - but they were created on a white background (which at least was better imo).
• In general changes do not look like there is much "new stuff" for us to learn - mainly just reorganized.
• Summary field was removed from Webpages. It is easy to add back in - but assume we will need to watch it if AC considers it deprecated. However, this is confusing as the summary field still exists on category and product pages

Front end notes

• Heavy use of ASP.NET themes (I think even more so than before).
• Lots of assembly included JavaScripts (these are the /ScriptResource.axd scripts) generally include inside the body tag - front enders are not going to like this.
• Most elements on the page are added with runat="server" tags which makes for some really nasty Id's
• There are still a few tables - lots of divs inside of the tables - Divitis may be an understatement
• Still has heavy usage of viewstate.
• Search is very quick. Search needs to have order by rank or relevance by default as an Alpha list of a lot of products is often not useful if description is included in the search.
• Caching does seem to make a noticeable difference in front end performance (after the first view).

[Shopping Cart Admin]

Hello Rusty,

Thank you for your thoughtful feedback! We are working feverishly to continue to improve month after month and we look forward to your continued feedback on GOLD.

[rusty]

Thanks - I will try and participate more in the future but first things first . Is the SSL switch a known issue or have I missed the new location of the configurations? Our client is very anxious to get out of catalog mode.

[Shopping Cart Admin]

Howdy Rusty,

I'm not sure about the re-direct as of yet. The settings in web.config are an Asp.net function and not specific to AbleCommerce, I'm not a developer but hopefully it's going to work with GOLD as well.

[jmestep]

We ran across the SSL problem on an Able 7 site and I don't remember exactly since I'm not the server guy, but I think there was something missing in the web.config like handle secure pages or something like that.

[AbleMods]

Have you checked ac_StoreSettings to see if the SSLEnabled value exists and is getting set accordingly?

Able does more auto-magic SSL stuff in Gold. But I liked it the old way because I could force SSL to customizations I installed without requiring them to be in authenticated-required folders. I don't see where I can do that now in Gold. How will we force our web-services to SSL?

[NC Software]

WSP is a web site project - which would remove all of the code behind (it gets compiled into a dll in the bin directory).

This statement isn't entirely true. Your site does not compile into "a" (aka one) dll. Actually every single page in your site becomes its own DLL, i.e. hundreds of DLL's are created for your site to function, and it's not in the /bin folder but instead a unique folder in the asp.net temporary files area in the .NET area of Windows. There are a lot of pro's/con's to WSP vs. WAP which I will not go into, it lends to a passionate discussion, I'll just note my preference as a software developer is to use WAP and that is what my recommendation is. You are welcome to google "ASP.NET Web Site vs. Web Application" and you'll find some good info on the web.

[rusty]

I wrote a little HttpModule that seems to have patched the issue for the time being. We have a support ticket out with AC in the mean time.

The code is published to BitBucket if anyone else needs it for the time being. You will need to reference your own CommerceBuilder.dll.
https://bitbucket.org/mindfly/mindfly.acgoldpatches

[rusty]

AbleCommerce sent us a patch for build 4194 which did the trick. I will be deleting my repo off of BitBucket once I have a the URL that their patch can be downloaded.

Thanks for the help!

[Logan Rhodehamel]

• **Bug In email Templates - ToString("ulc") renders "ulc" in emails. This is a show stopper and has to be fixed before the site can launch. Quick fix is to replace ToString("ulc") with ToString("C") ... and wait for AC patch.

I know we had this issue in the past but I thought it was resolved during the betas. In the latest email templates I couldn't find any instances of the bug. We had to include a helper class to achieve this so in newer templates a currency format will look something like this:

Code: Select all

$helper.LSCurrencyFormat($orderItem.ExtendedPrice,"ulc")

[rusty]

Thanks Logan - That little code snippet helps quite a bit. We will go through the templates and do the updates.

Much appreciated!