So there you see the “space” that cannot be filled, no matter what you try to do.

Well, in reality, the reason for this is a blank “more info” area that’s put in by Grid View. There is no information there, but the “More Info” area still takes up space, and by doing so it pushes the space that the item takes up down. This is what causes the next row not to line up correctly.

Below you will see a screenshot diagraming this. The red box is the “More Info” area and as you can see, the green line brought straight across from it does not line up with the next row of images. That’s why you get the blank space. Where the “More Info” box is located is based on how long your product description is, but in most cases, you will see this error.

So, how do we solve this problem? It’s actually pretty simple, once you see how it’s done. You will navigate on your server to “wp-content/plugins/wp-shopping-cart/gold_cart_files/grid_view.css” and you will see the following style:

div.product_grid_display div.product_grid_item{
margin-bottom: 20px;
width: 120px;
float: left;
position: relative;
margin: 4px 8px 8px 0px;
min-height:180px;
height:auto !important;
height:180px;
}

In that style, you will remove this line: “height: auto !important;”

Once you do that, you should see your page working correctly. One more thing to remember is, the product description will push the “More Info” box down further if the product description is long. If that is the case, and this issue happens again, you can then modify the “height: 180px;” area to a larger number to solve this issue again.

I hope that helps anyone having this issue…and until next time…

It’s filled with over 120 pages of quality content, around 50 illustrative screenshots, and more than a dozen helpful text files for easy copy/paste. If you’ve ever wanted to know anything at all about this plugin, you’ll find it in the Bible. It’s currently up-to-date with WP ECommerce version 3.6.7 which is set to be released this week. All minor version updates will be included at no additional cost once you’ve purchased the Bible, so when there is an update or new version, you’re not stuck…just download a new copy and your activation key will open it as well.

We’re really proud of this documentation and believe it to be a very important part of setting up a successful installation of WP Ecommerce on your Wordpress site.

You can find the Bible here: www.wpecommercebible.com

Pick up a copy and then come back and tell me what you think!

So, until next time…

If you have upgraded your WP Ecommerce installation to a Gold version, you’ll notice you get more payment gateway options. One of these new options is an integration with Authorize.net, and by default (WP Ecommerce versions 3.6.6 and earlier) the Authorize.net gateway only passes the credit card number and expiration date over to Authorize.net.

Some prefer to pass over the CVV (the 3 digit number on the back of the credit card) number as well. So, I have integrated that into a file for you. All you have to do is download the file and replace the existing “authorize.php” file with the one you download. It is located here: “wp-content/plugins/wp-shopping-cart/gold_cart_files/merchants/authorize.php”

So download and replace, that’s all there is to it. Then your shopping cart checkout page will ask for the CVV number, pass it on to Authorize.net and verify it for purchases using Authorize.net.

Keep in mind this fix is for WP Ecommerce versions 3.6.6 and earlier, as this issue will be fixed in later releases.

So, you will navigate to “wp-content/plugins/wp-shopping-cart/wp_shopping_cart.php”. On line 2256 you will see the following line:

if(stristr(get_option(’product_list_url’), ($_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'].$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']))){

You will change that line to look like this:

if(stristr((’http://’.$_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'].$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']), get_option(’product_list_url’))){

That’s it!

If you’re using the default page setup that WP Ecommerce sets up on installation, then you’re fine, but if not you will have a problem as this fix will not do anything for you. Upon installtion, WP ECommerce makes a page title “Products Page” and it will be a URL like this: www.yoursite.com/products-page

If you’re using that default setup for your products page, then you’re fine. If you have renamed that page or have made a new page for your products, then this fix will not help you, as it is telling Dropshop to show up on your default products page, which as far as it knows is “www.yourdomain.com/products-page” no matter what you have renamed it to.

So, for that issue, you can edit the “products_list_url” area of the above code to point to your new page or renamed page.

That’s it for now, so until next time…

By default the category description shows in a default font and will not wrap to the next line on your page very well. So it ends up looking really bad. To solve this issue, login to your server and open up “products_page.php” in your wp-shopping-cart directory. Then on line 113, you’ll see this line:

echo “<pre>”.$category_data[0]['description'].”</pre>”;

Change that line to look like this:

echo “<p>”.$category_data[0]['description'].”</p>”;

That’s it!

So….until next time…

Tip #1: You want to change the “add to cart” button that appears on your shopping cart.

Well, first you’ll want to make sure that you choose “iShop” for your theme in “Shop Settings”. That will place an actual button on your cart. Then to change that image, you will navigate to “wp-content/plugins/wp-shopping-cart/themes/iShop/images”. In that directory you will see a “buy_button.gif” and you will replace that with whatever “add to cart” button you’d like. Step 2 of this process is to adjust the stylesheet so that it will reflect the correct image size of the new image you’ve uploaded (unless of course, the new image is the same size as the old; then you can stop here).
Locate “iShop.css” and find the following code:

input.wpsc_buy_button{
background-image: url(images/buy_button.gif);
border: none;
width: 80px;
height: 30px;
}

You will then change the width and height to reflect the size of your new image. Save and upload and you’re all done.

Tip #2: Change wording in your shopping cart.

Most all of the “text” on the site that involves the shopping cart can be found in the language file here:
“wp-content/plugins/wp-shopping-cart/languages/EN_en.php”. In that file you will find everything from “Visit the Shop” to “PnP” (which most like to change to “Shipping”) to the sentence that reads on the checkout page about “having your credit card handy”. You can change these phrases to whatever you’d like, but just remember that when editing this text that you leave the quotes in place, otherwise your site will break!
So here’s an example…I want to remove the words “Visit the Shop” from my sidebar shopping cart. So I locate the line in the language file (it’s on line 174):

define(’TXT_WPSC_VISITTHESHOP’, ‘Visit the Shop’);

I would then change it to this:

define(’TXT_WPSC_VISITTHESHOP’, ”);

And you notice that I left in the quotes, but removed the text. That’s it for changing or removing text.

Tip #3: The Google Checkout button.

If you’re using Google Checkout, you’ll notice that on the checkout page there are 2 Google Checkout buttons. One above the customer information fields and one below. The one that is placed at the top doesn’t really function as it needs the information below it to be filled out first, so the best thing to do is just remove that image and leave the one at the bottom.
So to do this, you will navigate to “wp-content/plugins/wp-shopping-cart/shopping_cart.php” and on line 341 you will see this code:

echo “<br>”.$google_cart->CheckoutButtonCode($google_button_size);

You will just comment that line out so that it looks like this:

//echo “<br>”.$google_cart->CheckoutButtonCode($google_button_size);

Save and upload and that should remove that top Google Checkout button.

Tip #4: Make your “checkout” link bigger and move it.

So on the sidebar cart, some people have requested to have the “Go to Checkout” link bigger and placed above the “Empty Your Cart” link. Here’s how we accomplish that:

First we’ll make the text bigger, so you will navigate to “wp-content/plugins/wp-shopping-cart/languages/EN_en.php” and on line 171 you will see the following:

define(’TXT_WPSC_GOTOCHECKOUT’, ‘Go to Checkout’);

You will edit that line to look like this:

define(’TXT_WPSC_GOTOCHECKOUT’, ‘<font size=”3″>Go to Checkout</font>’);

You can obviously change the “3″ to whatever size you would like to fit your site. Then you will want to place it above the “Empty Your Cart” link, and we’ll do that by navigating to “wp-content/plugins/wp-shopping-cart/shopping_cart_functions.php” and on line 337 you will see this:

$output .= <ahref=’”.get_option(’product_list_url’).$seperator.”category=
“.$_GET['category'].”&amp;cart=empty’ onclick=’emptycart();return false;’>”.TXT_WPSC_EMPTYYOURCART.”</a><br />”;
$output .= “<a href=’”.get_option(’shopping_cart_url’).”‘>”.TXT_WPSC_GOTOCHECKOUT.”
</a><br />”;

And all you will do is take the bottom line that calls to show the “Go To Checkout” link and move it above the “Empty Your Cart” link, so it will then look like this:

$output .= “<a href=’”.get_option(’shopping_cart_url’).”‘>”.TXT_WPSC_GOTOCHECKOUT.”
</a><br />”;$output .= “<a href=’”.get_option(’product_list_url’).$seperator.”category=
“.$_GET['category'].”&amp;cart=empty’ onclick=’emptycart();return false;’>”.TXT_WPSC_EMPTYYOURCART.”</a><br />”;

And that’s it for that.

Tip #5: Modifying your sidebar cart and notification look and feel.

So if you have your cart in your sidebar, you’ll notice that it’s pretty plain looking. There is an easy fix for that and the possibilities are up to you as far as how much you want to style it. First you’ll navigate to your theme’s css file. In that you’ll find the following code:

div#sliding_cart{
margin: 0px;
padding: 0px;
background: none;
border: none;
}

You’ll notice it’s very simple and plain right now, but there are many things you can do to change it. Below I will list an example of how you can change it to have a border around the cart, a background color and a larger font.

div#sliding_cart{
margin-left: 0px;
padding: 0px;
color:#000000;
background: url(’http://www.yoursite.com/image.jpg’);
border: 1px solid #000000;
font-size: 12px;
}

Again, there is a lot more you can do if you would like and know enough about CSS, but this is a simple example.

Next, if you have the “Fancy Notification” enabled, this will show you how to style it. In the same CSS file you will find this:

#fancy_notification{
position: absolute;
top: 0px;
left: 0px;
background: #ffffff;
border: 4px solid #cccccc;
display: none;
height: auto;
z-index: 9;
}

This has all the elements in place that most people want, but feel free to change the border color/width and background color. You can even load in a background image if you’d like by editing the code to look like this:

#fancy_notification{
position: absolute;
top: 0px;
left: 0px;
background: #ffffff url(’http://www.yoursite.com/image.jpg’);
border: 4px solid #cccccc;
display: none;
height: auto;
z-index: 9;
}

You’ll notice that I just gave a direct path to the background image, and it will show up in your notification box.

There are SO many other things you can do to style your cart, but these are a few good examples. If you have any questions about these or other styling issues, feel free to contact me over here.

So, until next time…

There are 2 ways to solve this that I know of now.

Fix #1: The theme that I was using did not have an “archive.php” or an “archives.php” file in it. By adding those files, that fixed the issue of the category listing. So now when I click on a category title I see only posts in that category.

Fix #2: This is probably the most common fix I would assume and it resolved my issue outside of the category listings. If you’re using a static homepage in Wordpress, you need to assign a “posts” page as well. In the Wordpress control panel under “Settings” (in WP 2.5) or “Options” in earlier WP releases, you’ll see the tab for “Reading”…there you have the option to set a static homepage. If you’ve selected the homepage, you have to also select the “Posts Page”…if that is left empty, you’ll experience the “Page Dump”.

I hope this resolves any issues for any of you out there experiencing this problem, as it was very frustrating to try and diagnose.

Until next time…

There is speculation on how it will look and how it will operate already, but what I say is “remember what happened with Windows Vista”…there was hype with Vista (Longhorn) forever it seemed and dates got pushed further and further back. Windows 7 is likely to include a feature that, at least at one point, was called the “Component Delivery System” which is expected to allow users to install the pieces of Windows that they want and need in a more user-configurable way. This I am excited about, as there are lots of areas of the operating system I could do without. So with the talk of Windows 7, I would not hold my breath on anything and just wait and see. Personally, I feel this is a rushed project to say the least and we all know how terrible it can be to release a product before it’s ready (Windows ME). I would hate to see that happen again, so maybe it will be planned properly and released on a logical timetable.

With that being said, it makes me wonder about the future of the operating system itself and software for that matter. With the increasing number of web-based applications around and more being launched everyday, what is the future for the standard operating system and software as we know it? With things like Google Documents and in particular gOS, where does that leave the conventional operating system? I believe more and more people will resort to this type of operating system and/or Linux in the years to come, for ease of use and let’s face it…money.

That’s my opinion on the subject, but I would love to hear what you have to say about it, so comment and let me know your thoughts.

Until next time…

I have a few fixes for this, that have helped….hopefully one of these can help you out if you’re experiencing the same issues.

The problem could be on your SQL server and this fix addresses the issue by changing a setting in your “php.ini” file on your server. If you don’t know where this is or can’t find it, you can contact your hosting company as sometimes they keep this file in a location that you do not have access to.

In the php.ini file check to see if it has “Strict Mode” set to “On”…this needs to be “Off”.

Change from this:

sql-mode=”STRICT_TRANS_TABLES,NO_AUTO_CREATE_USER,NO_ENGINE_SUBSTITUTION”

To this:

sql-mode=”NO_AUTO_CREATE_USER,NO_ENGINE_SUBSTITUTION”

If that doesn’t work for you, the next reason might be that your SQL table is missing information (as in a column in a table), so here’s how to check for that.

In the root of your “wp-shopping-cart” directory, you’ll find “display_items.php”. Open that file to edit and add this line near the top…no particular area, just near the top (on it’s own line).

$wpdb->show_errors = true;

Now save that file and re-upload it and go edit your product again. What this will do is stop the SQL errors from being supressed, and they will show on the page. Does that fix the problem? well, no it does not, but it will show you what errors (if any) are occurring and from there you can try to correct them, or if you need help you can get it over here.

So those are the fixes that I have for editing errors in WP Ecommerce for the moment. Again, I love this plugin…and FYI most all errors I see (besides the ones mentioned above) are from theme issues. Make sure that when you’re selecting a theme for your Wordpress site that it is compatiable with WP Ecommerce (if you’re going to be using the plugin). Themes can do funny things to the plugin.

So, until next time….

Here’s the back story….For those of you that don’t know, Instinct has a plugin for Wordpress known as WP-Ecommerce. It allows you to add a shopping cart to your Wordpress blog. It integrates with Paypal, Google Checkout, Authorize.net, Bluepay and others. There are modules that can be added on to the plugin like:

• Gold Cart (allows for mulitiple image uploads, and adds more payment gateways)

• Grid View (allows you to place your products on the page in a “grid” type fashion)

• Dropshop (this places a static shopping cart at the bottom of your screen and allows you to drag & drop items into your shopping cart)

• Members Only (this allows you to create a “members only” area of your site that is password protected)

• MP3 Module (this allows for a 30 second clip of audio files to be previewed on your products page)

With that being said…it’s a really good plugin and I love it! Don’t get me wrong, there are bugs that go along with all the cool features. Depending on what type of server you run and the way it’s configured, there can be issues. But not to worry, there is a support forum for the plugin and as if that’s not enough, I offer support here as well. You can find that over here.

There are so many modifications that can be made to tailor it to your own site….and in the coming days and months I’ll start to highlight the modifications that I’ve come up with, with step-by-step instructions and screenshots included.