nopCommerce Tips: Review of nopDroid, nopCommerce Manager for Android

Last Updated on Thursday, 10 January 2013 12:00 Written by Carole Bennett Thursday, 10 January 2013 12:00

We have a tremendously talented nopCommerce community, many of whom create some impressive add-ons to extend the capabilities of this powerful e-commerce product. Today, we’ll review the nopDroid add-on by JF Softdev, the nopCommerce manager for Android.

Let’s start with the basics; first, download the proper version of the nopDroidConnector for your nopCommerce instance. Unzip the folder, and extract the Misc.NopDroid folder. Drop the folder and contents into your Plugins folder on your nopCommerce site, or under your Nop.Web/Plugins folder in your Visual Studio solution.

mojoPortal Tips: Review of Web Invoice Pro Plugin for mojoPortal

Last Updated on Monday, 7 May 2012 04:27 Written by Carole Bennett Wednesday, 16 May 2012 12:00

mojoPortal is an amazingly robust and easy-to-use content management system (CMS); the features built into the default system for free are quite powerful, and meet the needs of most users. However, some power users need more robust capabilities, expecially in a commercial context – and that’s where the premium plugins offered by Joe Audette for mojoPortal come into play. Today we’ll discuss the Web Invoice Pro plugin, and how it can help out your business clients.

What Web Invoice Pro Does For You

Simply put, the Web Invoice Pro plugin-in allows a site user with the proper permissions to send an invoice from the mojoPortal installation to any client with an e-mail address, and receive payment for the invoice through your mojoPortal-based website.  If you leverage a requirement users to register with the site before having access to this feature, you’ll provide them with the benefit of being able to see a history of their invoices and payments under their user profile, as well as being able to pull up payment history reports – a huge boon for small business operators.

Installation – Simple, As Always

mojoPortal Tips: Review of the Site Membership Pro Plugin for mojoPortal, Part 2

Last Updated on Monday, 7 May 2012 04:27 Written by Carole Bennett Wednesday, 9 May 2012 12:00

In Part 1, we covered how to install and set up an instance of the Site Membership Pro plugin. Now we’ll cover how to enable the e-commerce capabilities, and review the user experience side of how the plugin works.

First of all, you’ll need to determine which of the following you’ll want to use for your website payment processor:

• Authorize.net
• PayPal Website Payments Pro
• PayPal Standard
• Google Checkout

Do keep under consideration that you’ll want to leverage SSL for Authorize.net or PayPal Website Payments Pro; for an overview of how SSL works with mojoPortal, read the article “Use SSL” on the mojoPortal site.

Once you’ve chosen and implemented your payment processor of choice, using the instructions at the links above, it’s time to review the end user part of the process.

mojoPortal Tips: Review of the Site Membership Pro Plugin for mojoPortal, Part 1

Last Updated on Thursday, 3 May 2012 07:37 Written by Carole Bennett Friday, 4 May 2012 12:00

Today we’ll cover the new Site Membership Pro plugin for mojoPortal. The plugin comes to us as a premium add-on from Joe Audette, chief architect and creator of the original mojoPortal project. As usual, Joe’s done a great job; we’ll cover the basic workflow, and my observations about the use of the product.

I’ve been waiting for quite some time for this plugin to be released; one of my clients has a premium training course that they would like to allow users to subscribe to on an annual basis, and this product fits the bill perfectly.

We’d already created a role for the premium training users, and configured access to the premium content to be limited to that role and the Administrator role via mojoPortal’s built-in access controls. Previously, the client had to add the subscriber to this role manually, after signing them up over the phone. Tracking subscription expiration was completely manual and hit-or-miss; with the new Site Membership Pro plugin, this is no longer an issue.

mojoPortal: Product Review of Form Wizard Pro

Last Updated on Monday, 3 October 2011 02:50 Written by Carole Bennett Wednesday, 5 October 2011 12:00

One of the most appealing aspects of using open-source software is the ability to create your own additions and extensions to the base application/framework. However, re-inventing the wheel rarely appeals to anyone, much less developers on tight timelines. That is the reason I chose to leverage the Form Wizard Pro by Joe Audette/Source Tree Solutions, an add-on module for the free mojoPortal CMS.

Installation, as usual with Joe’s “Pro” series of add-ons, went smoothly; once installed, the Form Wizard Pro is accessible from the “Edit Page” screen, just like the built-in features that come bundled with mojoPortal.