Blog

Video Tuesday: Building Zips July 28, 2009

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Today we're showing you how to dynamically create zip files using Vae's <v:zip> tag. For more videos and examples, check out our Documentation and Integration Center.

Video Tuesday: Permalinks July 14, 2009

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Permalinks keep your address bar clean, is good for SEO, and is easy to implement with Vae. As always, check out our Documentation and Integration Center for more videos and tutorials.

Using <v:rss> With Google Product Search July 08, 2009

As you may know, <v:rss> makes it easy to quickly create an RSS feed from any Collection in your site. Vae also takes this a step further by making it easy to create an RSS feed that can be submitted to Google Product Search, so potential customers can locate your items when querying this search engine. In this mini tutorial, we'll create an RSS feed that's ready to submit to Google Product Search.

Here's our example Collection that we're going to be working with; it's called "Records":

<v:rss> works with any Collection, so you can quickly create RSS feeds from your existing Collections.

Next, we'll need to write the code inside our rss.xml file. Normally it takes just one line of VaeML code to create an RSS feed; since we're submitting this feed to Google Product Search, we'll have to add some Google Base tags. Here's the contents of our rss.xml file:

<v:rss title="Action Verb Records" description="Records" path="records" title_field="record_name" description_field="description">
<g:condition>new</g:condition>
<g:id><v-></g:id>
<g:payment_accepted>Visa</g:payment_accepted>
<g:payment_accepted>MasterCard</g:payment_accepted>
<g:payment_accepted>AmericanExpress</g:payment_accepted>
<g:payment_accepted>Discover</g:payment_accepted>
<g:price><v=price></g:price>
</v:rss>

And we're all done! When we load up the RSS file in our browser, we can see the contents of the Collection is now accessible via RSS:

If our customers wanted to easily stay up-to-date on what records we have for sale, they could subscribe to this RSS feed using any browser or RSS client. Since we can use <v:rss> to output the contents of any Collection, we could just as easily create an RSS file for our blog or any other Collection our customers might want to subscribe to.

Since we integrated the Google Base Tags into our RSS feed, it's ready to be submitted to Google Product Search [just follow Google's instructions]. After we submit it, our records will appear in Google Product Search results, and we'll have increased traffic to our website without much effort.

Video Tuesday: <v:formmail> July 07, 2009

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Vae's <v:formmail> helps you quickly make a form that submits to an email address.

Want more videos and tutorials? Check out our Documentation and Integration Center.

New Feature: Quickly Add New Child Collection Entries July 01, 2009

 When two Collections are linked by an Association Structure [single], it sometimes can be a pain to add a new entry to the Child Collection, when creating a new entry in the Parent Collection. Vae loves making your clients' lives easier, so we've added a new feature to make alleviate this issue. The Association Structure [single] create screen now contains a checkbox called Display "Create New" option. When enabled, it gives users the option of adding a new entry to an associated Child Collection, when modifying its Parent Collection. Confused? Let's try an example.

Here we are creating an Association Structure between two Collections called 'Shows' and 'Venues':

Notice the enabled Display "Create New" option. Now, when we add a new 'Show' to the 'Shows' Collection (aka the Parent Collection), we can select "Create New Venue" from the Venue select menu. We're then presented with an inline form where we can create a new Venue, without having to navigate to the Venue Collection:

Great. Now the next time a band on Action Verb Records goes on tour, we can easily add new Venues as we add new Shows.

Video Tuesday: Image Sizes June 30, 2009

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Today we bring you a video on Image Sizes. Image Sizes allow you and your clients to crop your image files immediately after they are uploaded, and display them in the cropped format on the website. Vae lets you specify multiple Image Sizes, making it possible to display both a thumbnail version of an image and a larger one on the same site, without uploading more than one image. See our documentation page on the Image Structure for more information.

Our Documentation and Integration Center contains many more videos and tutorials. Check it out!

It's Easy to Integrate Coupon Codes June 25, 2009

Following up with yesterday's lesson on setting up coupon codes, today we'll show you the code to accept coupon codes. Once you've set up your Coupon Code in the backend, all you need to do is add a simple code snippet to your store's page:

<v:store:if_discount>
 Special Offer code applied.
 <v:else>
  <v:store:discount>
   If you have a Special Offer Code, enter it here and click Apply: <v:text_field name="discount" />
   <input type="submit" value="Apply" />
  </v:store:discount>
 </v:else>
</v:store:if_discount>

We used the <v:store:if_discount> and <v:store:discount> tags to allow the user to input a coupon code. Lets see how this renders:

After entering our 2buxoff coupon code (that we created yesterday), we can see the discount is reflected in the total:

It's Easy to Setup Coupon Codes June 24, 2009

The thought of adding coupon codes to your site's Store might make you worry about keeping track of convoluted rules, but we've done our best to keep this feature of Verb's eCommerce uncomplicated. To add a new coupon code, just click on the 'Coupon Code' subtab of the 'Store' tab. With two clicks, you can have a new coupon code. When you create a code, there's lots of options that you can choose to specify (or not):

Note all the fields that you can work with here:

  • Code: The alphanumeric code your user will need to type in to redeem their discount.
  • Description: A description of the coupon, for your own reference.
  • Fixed $ Amount: Removes a fixed amount from the total price.
  • Percentage % Discount: Removes a percentage from the total price.
  • Coupon Start Date: Allows you to specify a certain date when the coupon will start to be functional.
  • Coupon Expiration Date: The date at which you want to coupon to cease functioning.
  • Number Available: The total number of times this coupon may be used (by all customers) before it stops functioning.
  • Max Uses Per Customer: The total number of times this coupon may be used by a single customer before it stops functioning for them.
  • Minimum Order $ Amount: The minimum amount the customer may be spending before the coupon code functions.
  • Minimum Number of Items In Order: The minimum number of items the customer must have in their cart before the coupon code functions.
  • Apply discounts to shipping fees?: When checked, this sums the total with the shipping costs before applying the coupon code.