nopCommerce Tips: Review of the nopCommerce Fashion ThemeRoller

Last Updated on Sunday, 7 April 2013 11:58 Written by Carole Bennett Tuesday, 9 April 2013 12:00

Those clever folks at Nop-Templates have just raised the bar again, with the addition of the ThemeRoller for their nopCommerce Fashion Theme. For users who just want to tweak the color scheme of the Fashion Theme for their branding, this is a wonderful option. Let’s take a look at how this ThemeRoller works.

First of all, let’s take a look at how the Fashion Theme Template by Nop-Templates looks straight “out of the box”.

nopCommerce Tips: Review of the Nop Customer Reminder

Last Updated on Monday, 1 April 2013 05:21 Written by Carole Bennett Tuesday, 2 April 2013 12:00

I’ll admit it; I’m one of those people. I love to window-shop, and price-comparison, and bargain-hunt. I’ve made it a rule that if I want to buy something, even if I add it to the shopping cart, I have to give it a certain amount of time before I click that “buy” button. My theory has always been that if I really want it, I’ll remember to go back for it later. Some of my favorite sites have gotten wise to this tactic, and send me “cart reminders”, to keep those items fresh in my mind. nopCommerce-based sites can now offer the same functionality, using the new Nop Customer Reminder by Nop-Templates.

nopCommerce Tips: Review of the Nop Quick View Plugin

Last Updated on Wednesday, 27 March 2013 07:57 Written by Carole Bennett Thursday, 28 March 2013 12:00

The out-of-the-box configuration of nopCommerce provides a very impressive level of functionality for most e-commerce needs. However, with the addition of 3rd-party products, a truly professional level of presentation can be achieved. Today, we’ll cover the newest nopCommerce plugin from Nop-Templates, the Nop Quick View.

The Nop Quick View is best used on sites with a large amount of products per category. Rather than the click-into-product, and then back, and possibly losing your place in the category or search results, the Quick View allows the user to hover over the product icon, and then click on a “Quick View” button that allows more detail to be displayed in a lightbox format. Here’s an example:

nopCommerce Tips: Review of Nop-Templates Jewelry Template

Last Updated on Wednesday, 13 February 2013 08:29 Written by Carole Bennett Wednesday, 13 February 2013 12:00

The lovely people over at Nop-Templates have been kind enough to let me have access to their new Jewelry Template for nopCommerce; today I’ll put it through its paces, and see if it lives up to the quality of the other templates they’ve released for nopCommerce.

I’ll be reviewing the Jewelry template by Nop-Templates using the latest version of nopCommerce at this time, 2.81.  Upon opening the .zip file I’ve downloaded, I see that theme versions are also available for 2.65 and 2.7 – brilliant!

I’m leveraging Visual Studio 2012 and MSSQL 2012, downloaded from the Microsoft site as a part of my Website Spark membership. I’ve followed the usual steps to set up a new instance of nopCommerce on my local server, and copied the Jewelry theme files into the Presentation/Nop.Web folder.

nopCommerce Tips: Review of the nopEssentials Facebook Plugin for nopCommerce

Last Updated on Saturday, 12 January 2013 12:00 Written by Carole Bennett Saturday, 12 January 2013 12:00

Integrating your social media into your e-commerce solution is a terrific way to keep your customers engaged, and encourage your Facebook followers to cross over into your e-commerce site for their shopping. For e-commerce shops that leverage nopCommerce, this required a manual process to paste site links into their Facebook page. Today, we’ll review another alternative – the nopEssentials Facebook Plugin for nopCommerce.

Keesjan Van Roeden was kind enough to allow me to review a copy of the plugin. As of this time, versions 2.6, 2.65 and 2.7 are supported, and provided in the download. Also included is a .pdf file with step-by-step instructions on how to create your Facebook app, a prerequisite step for allowing your nopCommerce site to publish to your Facebook page using this plugin. The .pdf document is well-written, and the screenshots make it easy to follow along with the directions.