Creative Services Department Takes Design Beyond Yahoo! Stores

Posted on December 7, 2009
Filed Under Yahoo! Small Business Upgrades | Leave a Comment

FastPivot’s Creative Services has announced a Print Package Insert Promotion now through December 15th to help store owners take advantage of the holiday sales cycle. Many online store owners see an increase in their sales this time of year. It’s also the perfect time to use sales to deliver messages and generate more repeat purchases. The use of package inserts can be an effective, affordable tool.

Store owners must have a print-ready (psd, ai or eps file format) of their store logo and a product to showcase. FastPivot designers will personalize the layout to match the existing store colors and feel. Store owners will receive a layout that is print-ready for producing a 4 x 6 inch one-sided insert.

Contact FastPivot today to design your Print Package Insert.

Yahoo! Script Changes: PHP Based Apps in Yahoo! Hosting Effected

Posted on September 10, 2009
Filed Under Yahoo! Small Business Upgrades | Leave a Comment

Yahoo! has recently announced a change to their PHP hosting environment:

[Yahoo!]

To improve security for both merchants and buyers, we will be disabling the following PHP options, beginning October 1:

register_globals
allow_url_fopen and its corollary allow_url_include

[Yahoo!]

Should this concern you?

Most stores will not be affected by this change if they are using the Merchant Solutions Store Editor as the engine which generates store pages. Stores that have been built in Merchant Solutions Web Hosting could need to make adjustments to their php scripts.

If your store was built by FastPivot, it uses the Store Editor as the store page engine. Your store itself will NOT be affected by this change. However, if FastPivot built any custom php scripts for your store, they may be affected by this change.

What kinds of features are involved?

Any page that has a URL that starts with “site.” or https://pN.secure.hostingprod.com is a page that might be affected by Yahoo’s change. For example, if I have the store http://www.MyYahooStore.com, all pages that begin with this URL will not be affected. If I have any pages with URLs that start with http://site.MyYahooStore.com or https://p4.secure.hostingprod.com/@site.myyahoostore.com/ssl/ these might be affected, depending on what functions they perform.

Some examples of pages that might need a code adjustment because of this change by Yahoo:

Pages that add customer information to a database, or email it to you (other than pages using Yahoo’s standard mail-to forms)
Custom image handlers that retrieve images stored in hosting instead of using the images inside the store editor
Custom tools that handle user-supplied images
Specialized merchandizing or promotional features that you manage from a different URL instead of managing within your Yahoo! store editor
Specialized shipping or tax rates that you manage from a different URL instead of managing within your Yahoo! store manager
Be aware that a feature may be encased in an iFrame, so the feature itself may use a different url than the page that it appears on

FastPivot has assessed all of our current clients, and we will be contacting you personally if we are aware of any scripts that need to be reviewed. If you have pages or functions regarding your store that you have questions about and you don’t hear from us personally, please feel free to contact us at FastPivot.

Yahoo! Merchant Solutions System upgrade on August 6th

Posted on August 4, 2009
Filed Under Ecommerce, Yahoo! Small Business Upgrades | Leave a Comment

08/04/09

12:46 PM PST: Merchant Solutions system upgrade on August 6

http://www.ysmallbizstatus.com/status/archives/847

On August 6, 2009, from 9:30 p.m. to 12 a.m. (PDT), we’ll be conducting upgrades to help improve system performance. If you do not see a notice about the upgrade in your Store Manager, your store is not affected.

Shoppers may be unable to use coupons or gift certificates when placing an order during this time. Store Manager will not be available during this time. Merchants should complete all store publishes before the upgrade begins. Publishes in-progress will be stopped, resulting in a partial content publish. FDMS batch submissions and site statistics reporting may be delayed until the following day.

Please note: Merchants using the Database Inventory feature should set their “Quantity can Exceed Availability” setting to “Yes” for the upgrade period, or orders may not be accepted. Your inventory will automatically be updated to reflect new orders once the upgrades are complete. Orders received during this time should be checked against available item quantities to ensure the order can be filled.

To modify the “Quantity can Exceed Availability” setting:

* In Store Manager, click on “Configure Inventory” (located in the Order Settings column).
* In the Settings Section, change “Quantity can Exceed Availability” to “Yes”.
* Click the “Update” button.
* Publish your Order Settings.

Following the upgrade, you may restore your original settings if needed, to prevent items from being ordered when they’re not in stock. We apologize for any inconvenience.