ASPDotNetStorefront comes with a wide selection of utility functions you can use inside an XML package, but sometimes you need something a little more specific.

Let’s walk through adding a custom function that gives a greeting to a person based on the time of day.
(more…)

Every e-commerce business is unique and AspDotNetStorefront’s built in reports often fall short of the reporting you need.

In this article we’ll show you how to build your own custom reports in using SQL queries in AspDotNetStorefront.

(more…)

If you’re tired of wading through an inbox full of garbage to find legitimate emails from your customers, this quick fix will save the day!

If you’re using an older version of AspDotNetStorefront you’re probably overwhelmed with the junk mail coming through your built-in contact form on a daily basis.

You should upgrade. AspDotNetStorefront 8.0 is packed with great new features, enhanced security, and a completely redesigned Admin interface that will make your life a lot easier. Learn how to upgrade to AspDotNetStorefront 8.0.

If you’re not ready to make the change, here’s how to activate an incredibly helpful piece of code that will prevent a whole lot of junk mail from getting to your inbox.

(more…)

Custom buttons add flavor and increase the impact of your site. But, firing up a graphics editor just to change some text gets old fast.

Here’s how to make custom buttons which will reduce load times and give you the ability to easily edit each button text individually.

(more…)

In an earlier post, Ryan posted a few links to some tools to help you increase productivity. Here is a similar list of development related tools that I simply cannot live without.

In development, especially for AspDotNetStorefront, there are two tools which you absolutely must have in order to do any kind of extensive development in the .Net Framework. (more…)

In an earlier post, we talked about using the Extension Data field as extra storage space for additional product information.

But what if you need a more organized version of that information, in a hierarchy of sorts?

Most of the time, that would mean adding an additional table to the database, and adding an additional field in the Admin site so users can store that information. This can be tricky to do, and may also take your site off the upgrade path.

Fortunately, we’ve got a great way to store extensible structured data in the ExtensionData field, but there’s no way to directly manipulate and query text in XSL.

This tutorial will show you a quick way to get that extension data out as pure transformable XML. Before reading on, you should already be familiar with XML Packages, and have a basic knowledge of SQL.

(more…)

Out of the box, the Extension Data field isn’t used for anything, and the Xml packages don’t use this field unless you customize it in, so you may be wondering ‘what does it do?’

The quick answer? Anything you want it to!

This tutorial will show you how to use the Extension Data field to add additional information to your product detail pages. To complete this tutorial, you need access to your site’s Xml Packages folder, and a basic knowledge of HTML.

(more…)

In every AspDotNetStorefront site, there is a contact form page that visitors can use to send you a message.

This is set up as a topic, and you can find it by going to www.yourdomain.com/t-contact.aspx.

This page can be modified through the HTML editor just like any other topic by going to Content > Manage Topics in version 8.0 or Misc > Topics in earlier versions.

Here, you can make any changes you like to the layout of the page, but what about modifying the actual email you get in your inbox when the contact form is submitted?

Unfortunately, there’s no HTML editor for that. Luckily, we found a great feature built right into AspDotNetStorefront that allows you to customize the contact form! Without this feature, you’ll still get your contact form results in your inbox, but using this feature will allow you to change the way it’s displayed.

This is especially useful for quoting the original message in an email response to the visitor, but if you don’t want those extra strange form tags to show up. What’s a ‘B1′? Who knows…let’s get rid of it!

This tutorial will show you how to turn this:

Name=Nicole Swan
Phone=541-201-9965
EMail=nicole@vortx.com
Subject=Contact Form Submit Test
S1=This is a test message submitted from the Contact Us page.
B1=Submit

into this:

Name: Nicole Swan
Phone Number: 541-201-9965
Email: nicole@vortx.com
Subject: Contact Form Submit Test
Message: This is a test message submitted from the Contact Us page.

This tutorial requires a basic knowledge of HTML and XML Packages. If you know a little HTML but you’re not familiar with XML Packages, read on! This tutorial will help you get to know them.
(more…)

One of my favorite features in AspDotNetStorefront also happens to be one of the least used.

Many products in your eCommerce store may end up having extra long product descriptions, and sometimes, that may cause the user to have to scroll to read it all, or they may miss other valuable information on that page, or they may see the 10 mile long product description, decide they don’t feel like reading that much, and close the page altogether!

So, how do you keep your product detail pages short and sweet without losing all of that valuable information? Spec Sheets!

Spec sheets are great for storing additional information related to the product that there just isn’t room for on the page. This feature creates a link for you on the page that goes to a pop up window that contains your extra details. This can be a bullet list of product specifications, manufacturer content, warranty information, or anything else product related.

The page is even HTML, so you can put any text or images in here you like.

(more…)

If you’re using Image Filename override in your AspDotNetStorefront site, you’ve probably noticed some missing icon images in your related and upsell products sections.

Don’t panic, there’s a quick fix!

Go to the root directory of your AspDotNetStorefront site, and open up the XmlPackages folder. In there you will find XmlPackages that are used to control the display of your related products and upsell product items on your product pages.

Look for the file named: ‘relatedproducts.xml.config‘. Open this up in your favorite text editor, notepad will work just fine. (more…)