Remove “Powered by Opencart” from the footer
If you want to remove the "Powered by OpenCart" text in your footer, it's actually quite easy. You would need to FTP into your site, and browse the:
/catalog/language/english/common
directory. Once you are here, you will see a file called footer.tpl. All you need to do is to open this file, and edit the lines of code that say "Powered By OpenCart".
This is the code from OpenCart 1.5:
<div id="powered">Powered By <a href="http://www.opencart.com">OpenCart</a><br /> Your Store © 2012</div>
You can simply change this to something like:
<div id="powered">Powered By <a href="http://www.theURLtomycoolwebsite.com">MyCoolWebsite</a><br /> Your Store © 2012</div>
OpenCart asks for a donation if you do this.
Hope this helps!
OpenCart Update – Daniel Kerr is at it again
We have been covering some updates on OpenCart, and while we mainly forgot about it, a few of our readers pointed out that Daniel Kerr, has been at it again on his forum. We've covered some of the reasons why we don't recommend OpenCart, but here are some quick snippets of Daniel having a little breakdown when users on his support forum are posting what they believe are bugs to the system.
this is down to your server not setup properly. my server works fine and so do many others.
this means its your fault!
one of my all time favorites:
its a permissions issue! with your server! nothing to do with opencart! you have not set the web user to have permission on this folder. are u stupied! opencart does not alter your session directory!
Keep in mind, these are direct quotes from Daniel.
there is not an sql injection problem you clown!
sql injection would mean you are actually injecting sql via the some unescaped variable.
the problem is (if there is one) a bug with mysql.
this threads like the blind leading the blind.
When releasing a product, you must expect that there are going to be lots of questions, some repetitive, some off the wall, and some that make no sense. However, the difference is in the customer service. For those who want their product to be used, such as PrestaShop for example, would never talk to their users like this. Those who want to push their users away, use the exact language above.
Of course, the choice is yours of which eCommerce platform you use, but do you want to be called "stupied" when asking a support question for OpenCart?
PayPal is down: Failure of server APACHE bridge
For the past 30 minutes, paypalmanager.paypal.com has been down with the following error:
Failure of server APACHE bridge:
No backend server available for connection: timed out after 10 seconds or idempotent set to OFF.
This is extremely frustrating and not the first time PayPal has been down. PayPal is a multi billion dollar company, how can they let these things constantly happen?
Unable to process orders, check on orders, check on balances or anything during this time.
Hopefully square will be a good PayPal replacement so we have another similar option.
Amazon Affiliate Program Pulling out of California? C’mon Jerry Brown!
I am an Amazon Affiliate, and have been for about two years. However, I have recently not been participating in the program simply because I do not have the time to maintain an affiliate storefront at this time. Since I'm signed up and located in California, I received this email today from Amazon saying that they are likely going to pull out of California if Jerry Brown (our governor) gets his way. He basically wants to tax all Amazon purchases made in CA even though Amazon doesn't actually reside physically in CA.
Notice of Contract Termination Due to Potential New California Law
Hello,
For well over a decade, the Amazon Associates Program has worked with thousands of California residents. Unfortunately, a potential new law that may be signed by Governor Brown compels us to terminate this program for California-based participants. It specifically imposes the collection of taxes from consumers on sales by online retailers - including but not limited to those referred by California-based marketing affiliates like you - even if those retailers have no physical presence in the state.
We oppose this bill because it is unconstitutional and counterproductive. It is supported by big-box retailers, most of which are based outside California, that seek to harm the affiliate advertising programs of their competitors. Similar legislation in other states has led to job and income losses, and little, if any, new tax revenue. We deeply regret that we must take this action.
As a result, we will terminate contracts with all California residents that are participants in the Amazon Associates Program as of the date (if any) that the California law becomes effective. We will send a follow-up notice to you confirming the termination date if the California law is enacted. In the event that the California law does not become effective before September 30, 2011, we withdraw this notice. As of the termination date, California residents will no longer receive advertising fees for sales referred to Amazon.com, Endless.com, MYHABIT.COM or SmallParts.com. Please be assured that all qualifying advertising fees earned on or before the termination date will be processed and paid in full in accordance with the regular payment schedule.
You are receiving this email because our records indicate that you are a resident of California. If you are not currently a resident of California, or if you are relocating to another state in the near future, you can manage the details of your Associates account here. And if you relocate to another state in the near future please contact us for reinstatement into the Amazon Associates Program.
To avoid confusion, we would like to clarify that this development will only impact our ability to offer the Associates Program to California residents and will not affect their ability to purchase from Amazon.com, Endless.com, MYHABIT.COM or SmallParts.com.
We have enjoyed working with you and other California-based participants in the Amazon Associates Program and, if this situation is rectified, would very much welcome the opportunity to re-open our Associates Program to California residents. We are also working on alternative ways to help California residents monetize their websites and we will be sure to contact you when these become available.
Regards,
The Amazon Associates Team
Please note that you must use this e-mail address to access your account in Associates Central or when contacting Associates Customer Service.
To manage your e-mail preferences, update your account settings.
Message Category: Notice of Contract Termination Due to Potential New California Law
© 2011 Amazon.com. All rights reserved. Amazon.com is a registered trademark of Amazon.com, Inc. Amazon.com, 410 Terry Avenue N., Seattle, WA 98109-5210, USA.
I'm not sure how to take this. Amazon is quick to pull out, but it's been doing this in various other states already. Could Amazon one day just not have an affiliate program if it becomes federal (or enough national) law that all eCommerce is taxed regardless of where your business is physically?
This is going to open up a can of worms... since every state has different tax rates, and even every county, it's going to be an eCommerce nightmare trying to keep up and charge people the right amount of tax.
Is international next?
Update- it's official... Amazon is pulling out of California. Thanks Jerry Brown.
Hello,
Unfortunately, Governor Brown has signed into law the bill that we emailed you about earlier today. As a result of this, contracts with all California residents participating in the Amazon Associates Program are terminated effective today, June 29, 2011. Those California residents will no longer receive advertising fees for sales referred to Amazon.com, Endless.com, MYHABIT.COM or SmallParts.com. Please be assured that all qualifying advertising fees earned before today will be processed and paid in full in accordance with the regular payment schedule.
You are receiving this email because our records indicate that you are a resident of California. If you are not currently a resident of California, or if you are relocating to another state in the near future, you can manage the details of your Associates account here. And if you relocate to another state in the near future please contact us for reinstatement into the Amazon Associates Program.
To avoid confusion, we would like to clarify that this development will only impact our ability to offer the Associates Program to California residents and will not affect your ability to purchase from Amazon.com, Endless.com, MYHABIT.COM or SmallParts.com.
We have enjoyed working with you and other California-based participants in the Amazon Associates Program and, if this situation is rectified, would very much welcome the opportunity to re-open our Associates Program to California residents. As mentioned before, we are continuing to work on alternative ways to help California residents monetize their websites and we will be sure to contact you when these become available.
Regards,
The Amazon Associates Team
Priceline.com Review – Not what it’s cracked up to be
My wife and I are looking to go away for the weekend, and after looking at some hotel prices directly on the hotel site, we decide to try Priceline, since they brag about their Priceline Negotiator. We selected a 4 star hotel to see what kind of prices it would show, and to our surprise, Priceline showed the name of the hotel. It also said Price Guarantee. So I decided to compare prices with the price on Priceline vs the price on this particular hotel's website. The price turned out to be exactly the same, with no price difference.
I decided to contact their live support:
Isaac R. : Hello! How may I assist you?
customer : the price on your site is same as hotel site
Isaac R. : I would be happy to answer your question!
Isaac R. : Correct, this hotel is an agency property and a pay when you stay. They provide us their rates directly.
customer : but it says best rates guaranteed
Isaac R. : Correct. We offer our best price guarantee.
Isaac R. : If you find a better published price online for the exact same hotel and itinerary within 24 hours and prior to your check in date, we'll refund you 100% of the difference if you qualify.
Isaac R. : For customers with a U.S. billing address, we'll throw in an extra $50 off your vacation package.
customer : i dont get it. its the same price though
customer : i see
customer : so no point in using your site
Isaac R. : I understand, but if you find a better ate on another sire we will match it and give you $50 off your next package.
I was holding a baby in one arm, and using one to type, so I typed a minimum as possible, but you can see that there is absolutely no advantage in using Priceline. Also, he must have known what hotel I was looking at due to the way he answered my question... unless if all hotels have the same rules.
I don't get it... what's the big deal with Priceline? How do they have so much money that they have big ad campaigns? I won't be using them again. It also gets to me how these guys can't spell... "better ate on another sire"?
Daniel Kerr’s OpenCart Security Holes and Vulnerability
Daniel Kerr, the lead developer and project owner of OpenCart has been known to be very angry when confronted with OpenCart security issues. As the project owner, you would suspect a more gentle approach, but instead the approach from Daniel Kerr is very different. Infact, Daniel Kerr has been known to call people liars and idiots, the very same people he wants to use his open source e-commerce platform!
You have Daniel posting on such blogs as TechCrunch saying how "Magento is a poorly coded hog!", and instead to use OpenCart. Do you have the Magento project owner posting on blogs about how OpenCart is written by a boy in his basement, angry at the world, and has his forum run by a bunch of self loving moderators who can't wait to call their users ignorant?
It's attitudes like this that leave serious problems like Security Vulnerabilities unpatched.
For example, there is a Security Vulnerability that allows an attacker to force their way into the Admin CP of OpenCart in version 1.4.8, 1.4.9, and 1.4.9.1.
This code: $this->session->data['token'] = md5(rand(0,15));
Should be: $this->session->data['token'] = md5(mt_rand());
Which is pretty poor coding. Hashes should always be salted and based on random values. However, try telling Daniel this and he will tell you how much of an idiot you are. OpenCart also had an issue where if exec() was enabled you can do a e107 exploit and run remote code execution.
Daniel's response to these issues, after some name calling, is that OpenCart does not have a security vulnerability, AND then post links to security vulnerabilities at competitors sites such as PrestaShop, Magento, osCommerce and ZenCart. What kind of a response is this?
In 2010, a security researcher claims to have found a total of 14 security vulnerabilities in OpenCart, and released a statement that since Daniel Kerr is unwilling to fix them, to quickly move away from OpenCart.
When a researcher sent Daniel an email about this, Daniel replied to the email with: "I prefer if you mind your own business and not bother me or the opencart community. The exploit that is being discussed will be fixed in the next release. I don't need your services. Stop wasting my time. Stop bothering me!"
He's also said things like:
"don't post bullshit security warnngs."
"DO YOU REALLY THINK ITS FUNNY TO POST SOMTHING THATY DOES NOT HAPPEN? WASTING MY TIME TO CHECK THIS!"
"nobody ever complained about this before. I think this bug i caused by you altering something."
"what are yiou trying to say? you know more than me regarding onepage checkout. you think i have not done my own research?"
"this is not opencarts fault. you must have done somethign to cause this."
"if you had actually searched the forum you would know its a permission isssue and you need to change the permissions on the cache directory."
Have you ever seen any response such as this from a project owner? If we are bugging him so much, why does he keep releasing OpenCart versions and wanting us to use them?
The researcher is Eduardo Vela and he says on his blog: "These vulnerabilities are now private, because we think he won't fix them if we make them public (as he hasn't fixed the first ones). And we can't make them public, because thousands of users use OpenCart and they actually manage security sensitive information. (In this case I don't think full disclosure will work). Knowing that Daniel Kerr has a bad history even with fully disclosed vulnerabilities, we are clueless on what to do. The best thing may be to urge everyone to stop using OpenCart as soon as possible."
Daniel really needs anger management and needs to address the issues people are saying OpenCart has. It's serious because his software deals with credit card transactions, so potentially it could be a big problem.
OpenCart 1.5.0 Release Date – Sometime between now and never
We have been waiting for OpenCart 1.5.0 release for about 6 months now, with release date promises come and gone. This is one of the reasons why we have not recommended OpenCart for enterprise projects.
In fact, the amount of anger, disgust and upheaval by the OpenCart community is growing every day, to the point that one of the moderators, Qphoria, has literally locked all OpenCart 1.5.0 threads in order to keep calm and peace in the community.
The latest hold up seems to be a theme that Daniel (the project owner) has decided to change last minute. In my opinion, the new screenshot that Qphoria posted in a locked thread is much worse than the original theme for 1.5.0. OpenCart is known for it's clean and easy to use out-of-the-box theme, and this latest iteration seems to be going south after many months of positive comments abou tit.
It's now nearing the end of March 2011, and after another 2 months OpenCart 1.5.0 is still not released, while Prestashop 1.4 is already off and running.
Just another reason why you can't rely on the OpenCart team when you need a better OpenCart system than the existing, which lacks many features over PrestaShop.
Why not to use OpenCart – Bad Reviews of OpenCart team
We have been extremely frustrated by our OpenCart experience. We're not the only ones... there are many bad reviews of OpenCart for many different reasons and I'll explain them a bit here.
OpenCart is an open source e-commerce platform written in PHP and is based on the MVC platform. The code is clean and written in a way that is easy to modify and understand. Overall, it's a pretty good e-Commerce system and if you know your way around LAMP technology you can modify it nicely to suit your needs. Of the other open source systems we have tried, it's the cleanest and uses the least amount of files overall.
So that's the good about it. We'll let you know our complaints about the software itself in a bit, but what gets us the most is the OpenCart team. As far as we know, there are two main OpenCart contributors... one is Daniel, who recently moved to China and is the OpenCart founder. The other is someone who goes by "Qphoria" on the OpenCart forums, who seems to be one of Daniel's chosen ones to release updates to the software. Qphoria is also a moderator on the forums along with a couple of other guys.
Here are a few reasons why we take back our recommendation of using OpenCart for client sites. First, if you post a question in their forums, be prepared to not receive an answer. In fact, most of the answers are standard canned, and very derogatory. Qphoria along with the other moderators look down on people and even say things like "Why do I bother writing the readme if no one is going to read it". The problem is the readme doesn't include information some people are asking. If it's a true bug, sometimes your thread will get deleted, sometimes it will get locked, and no explanation is given. The forums and the moderators are a mess.
When Qphoria releases updates, the readme many times says that templates are not affected by certain updates. However, the update patch usually contains default template changes. Not only that, but the problem with this, is that if you have a custom template, you need to be very careful because the template changes go to the default folder, not the custom folder. In other words, if you have template changes your updates end up being very cumbersome and time consuming.
Daniel must have a lot going on. He constantly sets dates or gives time frames for when versions will be launched, but those days come and go. Sure, it's free, and what can you expect, but with attitudes like this, they can't expect us to use their platform on client sites. When we give clients expectations, and set deadlines, it's impossible to coordinate this with OpenCart since they only have empty promises. For example, OpenCart 1.5 was promised about 6 months ago, and every 2 weeks there is a new promise to when it will be delivered. Still we wait.
Unlike other platforms, we don't know when the next patch will be released either. Qphoria just released OpenCart 1.4.9.4 and has already started talking about 1.4.9.5. When you ask him when 1.4.9.5 is scheduled, so you can plan it around your clients, he says, in a very abrupt way "it'll be released when it's released". However, most of the time he won't even answer.
These releases have gotten so bad, there is a thread on the OpenCart forum called "Conspiracy Theories". Sad.
So how does OpenCart makes it's money? From add ons. When someone releases an add on into the OpenCart community, and charges for it, Daniel takes a 20% commission. Many of the add ons won't work with 1.5, so people would need to likely re-purchase any add ons that they bought when using 1.4.x.
Another problem is if you have a store on 1.4.x, and want to upgrade to 1.5, the team has already said that most all custom templates won't work, and also your product options won't carry over. Have fun either manually creating your options all over again, or pay for some custom script to move your old options over. What a mess.
At this point, we have started to play with PrestaShop, and there's more of a learning curve with it, but at least their team is much more in tune with their user base. TomatoCart also looks interesting.
If you want to use OpenCart, stick with 1.4.9.4, and don't give your clients any expectations on new features. When 1.5 comes out, it's going to be a RC release any way, so it's going to go through many rounds of bug testing. I'd stay way from OpenCart until at least 1.5.1.
My recommendation to Daniel:
1) Start a timeline, and stick to it. Give your user base a good release schedule. Your user base is losing faith and jumping ship.
2) Tell your moderators to be more gentle with their users, and if not, fire them. Are they doing this because they love it, or because they have to? They're acting like it's because of the latter.
3) Don't be so defensive. There are many posts of you attacking the poster for giving their opinion. This really looks negatively upon you.
4) Both you and your moderators act like the world owes you a favor. We were just fine without OpenCart and we'll be just fine without it. Don't give us a reason to all bail ship.
Your mileage may vary with OpenCart, but my frustration level is pretty high. Daniel promises that things will get better with OpenCart, but so far none of us have any reason to believe it.
OpenCart 1.4.9.4 Released Today
For those of you who follow OpenCart, Qphoria updated the latest version to 1.4.9.4. Daniel says 1.5 RC will be released on Monday.
OpenCart 1.4.9.4 features mainly bug fixes and not added features. We'll wait for 1.5 Final for that.
Changes:
== OpenCart v1.4.9.4 ==
FIXES:
- Colspan fixed for admin product list when no products found
- Search not working on all pages fixed
- Removed Foreach in Cache::get function since it returns after the first file anyway
- Added touch() to cache file before unlink to avoid the file race condition
- Add IP back to order edit page (accidentally removed in 1.4.9)
- Removed language status check for download edit
- Fixed language autodetect to check if language is enabled
- Fixed php error when loading information controller with no information_id
- Possible additional fixes for mail to use base64 encoding in subject
- Fixed column width issue fpr product totals in admin order edit
- Updated Paypal Standard to latest patch + auto-bypass for 0.00 totals
- Fixed text_error in category page
- Email validation simplified to check for *@*.*
- Fixed security issue with Moneybookers payment gateway
- Fixed USPS issues do to 2011 change
- Fixed flat rate wording on description (broke in 1.4.9)
- Fixed Paypal Pro currency conversion issueADDED:
- Specials listed in the admin product list also show when start or end is 0000-00-00
- Allow resetting invoice id to 1 by changing invoice prefix
- Added invoice_date field to order to store the date the invoice was generated
- Added invoice date to actual invoice print
- Added additional help text for some features to explain their function better
- New Account Create alert mail option
- Added email to db insert for admin on new install
- Converted setting.php controller to use the new proposed optimization standard methods (cut filesize in half)
- Added additional security params in htaccess
- Additional minor code optimizations
- Updated USPS to use RateV4 API
- New Account Success continues to checkout/shipping instead of checkout/cart since it is more intuitive
- Removed fedex placeholder files since they reference a deprecated api
- Added date header to mail class to help prevent spam filtering
OpenCart is an open source e-commerce system based on PHP and LAMP, written in MVC.