SOLO Server 1.14.1.2 was recently released and posted to our production SOLO Servers. Although you can read the full release notes here, we wanted to take a few minutes to cast a deserving spotlight on some of the “way-cool” features in this release:
- The capacity to insert custom post-registration steps into the checkout process is a SOLO Server feature that has been available for quite some time. We do, however, occasionally receive requests from members of the SOLO Server community to customize the registration step. Having the capability to completely override the default customer registration page of the shopping cart through use of the brand-new Custom Registration Page advanced cart option is an awesome new feature in this release that can be used to satisfy your specific business requirements! Do you wish to add fields to the customer registration process? Or perhaps you would like to delete fields that are no longer relevant to your business objectives? Whatever your needs are, our professional services team is now available to discuss your unique requirements and help provide practical solutions. It is integration points like this that make the SOLO Server shopping cart a powerful tool to implement customized business logic for order processing — and yet another outstanding example of our uncompromising dedication to providing our customers precisely what they need to be successful. We deliver!
- Our production servers are hosted in the US Central Time Zone, so all dates and times displayed throughout the various SOLO Server interfaces are represented in this format. As you can imagine, this has the propensity to be particularly annoying to a customer in, for example, Australia, where it is not only a vastly different time of day, it is usually a different day altogether. To help ease the frustration of our friends in Oz and other corners of the world, we have enhanced the default invoice template to display the server’s time zone and offset, so the customer can effectively compare this to their local time.
- While we were enhancing the default invoice template, we also seized upon the opportunity to now force text to wrap to a new line to prevent lengthy copy (you know, those seemingly interminable URLs and long-winded e-mail addresses!) from adversely impacting the formatting and overall appearance of the resulting invoice.
- Oh, one other thing we would like to mention about the previous two bullet points: SOLO Server Shared and Dedicated URL customers already using custom invoices need not fret or agonize over missing out on these updates — we have merged these changes (as well as several other recent invoice improvements) into all custom invoices so that you and your customers can benefit, too!
- There are some internal enhancements to the shopping cart order processor, as we transform the remaining legacy code into .NET. We have been already running the last few steps of the order processor in .NET anyway, so we decided that now was an ideal time to complete the conversion and permanently implement these changes.
- We have revamped the logic behind the Resend Invoice button in the administration interface to share the code referenced in the previous bullet point. As a direct result, the Resend Invoice button now sends the same exact e-mail as originally sent through the shopping cart order processor.
Some additional tips for your consideration…..
- For a while now, you have been able to edit the Support HTML field on your author’s contact details to replace the default data that is shown on the bottom left side of the invoice template. Once you are completely satisfied with the appearance of the left side of the invoice template, open a support ticket to have us replicate these changes within the merchant account support area (or, bottom right side) of the invoice template. We perform this service as a courtesy to all SOLO Server authors, and your request can usually be completed within a single business day.
- You have always been able to use the Order Confirm HTML field on the shopping cart, product, and product option level to add custom text to the invoice template. We have seen a considerable number of SOLO Server authors utilize this field to provide their paying customers with painstakingly detailed instructions on how to download, install, and activate the software. If, for some reason, adding Order Confirm HTML is not enough to fulfill your needs, we can help you create a fully customized invoice template, available to you through a consulting engagement with our professional services team. Contact us for further details!
Well, we think that just about covers everything for now. Pretty cool stuff, eh? We knew you would agree!
We are so excited about this SOLO Server release that our architecture team has already started working on the next one, chock-full of even MORE cool new features — with significant emphasis in the area of performing software licensing using variations of the pay-per-usage model. You can bet that you will be hearing much more about this topic from us in the coming weeks! To make sure that you do not miss out on anything, you can follow us on Twitter @softwarekey or sign up for blog notifications on the right side of this page. We promise to keep your email address private!
As always, we welcome any and all comments, questions, or suggestions which you may have!