blackcat

To the general Mambo community, and especially all of you hardworking Mambo and Mambo-CMT developers, Greetings!

Here's the website I'm discussing in this post:
http://www.blackcatplanet.com

We're currently running Mambo 4.5.2 and several components, which I will list (way far down!) below. I'll also list our needs for our Mambo site, current questions we have, and problems/bugs we are running into. Any help with any of these issues and questions would really be most appreciated. We have been learning a great deal, but we are a few months overdue now for opening up for business, and we really need to speed up the learning curve!

Thanks so much for your hard work on this stuff, Mambo and its addons have been a pain but a worthy one, the benefits being well worth the hassle. You've done a great job, please keep it up! Also, much thanks in advance for your time and prompt response(s).

- FYI at the time of this writing, http://www.mambo-phpshop.net/ is currently returning a "document contains no data" error and will not load. -


Okay, here goes....


************************************************
The primary goals of Black Cat Planet currently are:

- to offer various products through my website that will be drop-shipped by independent vendors when order is input

- to have the process as automated as possible - shipping configured accurately, order info forwarded to the appropriate vendor(s) involved in fulfilling the order, tracking number(s) emailed back to me and the option to forward the tracking info to the customer

- to offer a centralized location for black cat and cat information, news, art, stories, humor, pictures, all black cat related content and all other cat related content

- to offer a centralized Lost & Found Resources area, where people can post and read posts, get various lost pet resources, and hopefully be able to link up lost & found postings - it would be great if there could be a way of customizing a user's view to local area things too

- to offer users the ability to log in, post on the forum, and submit content for recurring contests (best cat pics, best art, best story, etc), which can NOT be rated until the deadline has passed, and after the deadline users can vote for a specified amount of time and the winner(s) awarded prizes or discounts etc. based on the voting process (a good example of this would be http://www.3dfightclub.com, which uses PHPBB and has challenges where the users post an image, the users vote afterward, and the record of contest(s) won is viewable to the user with a link to the contest.) We really liked PHPBB's functionality but at the time we were looking there were no mods for Mambo, and we're leery of changing now...although, did I see something recently that said that the next release of Mambo would have Community Builder or PHPBB built in? which is correct? will this affect us as upgraders?

- I do not want people to be able to upload their own pictures for avatars, I want to pretty much limit them to cat-related avatars only, and allow them only to submit avatars for consideration of adding them to our main gallery; however I do want them to be able to upload large pictures for the purpose of the contest categories (best cat pic/art, etc.) Does excluding one necessarily exclude the other?

- to integrate the site well enough that users hopefully do not have to register multiple times for shopping, forum, etc. - they have an account or profile page where they can subscribe/unsubscribe to various newsletters, and change prefs, etc.(i.e. change prefs for other components from within CB?) ONE username and ONE password, and automatically able to use all our services with one registration process

- to be able to VERIFY not only the password during the registration process, but also the EMAIL address (i.e., add a second field for email address just like the second field for verify password, and have it NOT process unless all four fields are input correctly - both email addys match, both passwords match=successful; if either email or password is unmatching=unsuccessful please go back and try again) I want this because the first three actual real people to register on the website ALL accidentally typed in their email address wrong, only by one character, but it happened consistently enough that I want to prevent that.

- to also verify real people by use of the email activation link

- to have a welcome email automatically sent out with the user's name, email address, and password OR password hint (this would require a password hint to be integrated with the registration process), and also be able to have it automatically include a coupon for the site as a gift for new member sign-ups (and of course the coupon would only be good for one use)

- to be able to assign "vendor" privileges so that my vendors can modify their own sections, and to be able to send out another email at that point notifying them of important info and directions on how to access and operate that area, and of course their username, email address and password (since most will be signed up manually and will not be choosing their own password until after they log in).

- to be able to set my newsletters to send out *automatically* at a pre-specified date and time to whatever groups are specified in advance

- to show on my front page: latest news about the site, certain forum posts, rss cat pics in sidebar (requires shrinking of images - already have exsiting rss image feed from www.flickr.com, but pictures are too big - can they display in two columns?); and also be able to show about 6 to 12 (in a three column layout) random or top-selling products

- I do not currently have a secure server and therefore do not want to store user's financial or personal information yet; however this would be useful to have later on when I get a secure server, so that users do not have to re-enter their data for purchases.

************************************************** ********
Currently Installed Components (and any known problems or bugs with them):

Community Builder 1.0 beta4 (tabs don't show properly in Firefox browser, although the CB tabs on Mambojoe.com show in FireFox, so we think it's something wrong in our CSS file somewhere - we tried the CSS code provided for this but didn't get any results); welcome email does not generate during registration process but can be generated manually within user admin by "unapproving" and then "reapproving" the user; however, the welcome email generated does not have the password included in the [DETAILS] field, the user name and email address each have \n appended to them, and also the text of the welcome email has double backslashes's (\\) showing up before each apostrophe (') that was in it.

mambo-phpshop v1.2 (having problems figuring out how to do drop-shipping calculations or somehow account for my cost of shipping on the orders; "List Categories" page now shows 0 products in each category, even though products exist and most are in multiple categories; user's name and email address info is not carried into phpshop, they have to log in separately, would like to bypass this and allow them to purchase as soon as they register with BCP; coupon does not deduct discount amount from total shown in checkout process; random products module does not display in multiple column layout, only one long column of products - need to change to three column layout like category browse flypage); also would like to enable "checkout without registration" option for people leery of registering who still want to shop our site, we can't seem to figure out a way to do this.

CafePress component v2.0 (very much on the search for 2.1; the component works but the links for "Additional Photos" are pointing locally - we need to add "http://www.cafepress.com" to the src link and haven't been able to find the command file to change it; also we can change the .gif for the add to cart button to match the one for phpshop, but phpshop overlays text from the english.php file on top of the add to cart button - we need to be able to add the text to the phpshop one, or else perhaps just make an image based button with the text added to match the other text) We have posted to forums and emailed the component author but have had no success with a response.

SimpleBoard forum 1.0.4-Beta2 (we haven't really configured much here, I can't think if there are any problems with it or not)

MyPMSII v2.0beta - just started using it recently

AkoComment v2.0 - just started using it, not yet familiar with it

Mambo Flash Games v0.1 - we can't get the text of "mamboflashgames" to say instead "Games" or Black Cat Planet Games" on the games page. This seems to be linked to the installed component name, perhaps uninstall, then reinstall, being careful to rename it Games?

Yanc (newsletter) v1.4 (subscribe area has typos/mistakes in some of the error messages; can be seen by users when they get an error message)
************************************************** *********

General Questions

The general questions I had made this post too long - they're in the reply, below!

************************************************** *********
That's all I can think of for now, I'm sure it will be quite enough to chew on and keep me busy if I get any responses.

Once again your time, energy, and help are appreciated!! Thank you!! Thank you!! Thank you!!

Two-Person Admin Team
http://www.BlackCatPlanet.com

blackcat

General Questions

The general questions I had made this post too long - they're in the reply, below! I saw something recently about a patch to 4.5.2.1 - how stable is this upgrade, have many tested it out yet?

I saw something also about a new complete package install of Mambo 4.5.2 with mambo-PHPshop included. We installed ours separately a few months ago and have been upgrading to where we are now. Would uninstalling and instead installing this new package file, and installing our components again over that, be a better option than working up from the current mess?

This one you'll probably laugh in horror at: I can't seem to see a "backup" option anywhere, although everyone always insists on backing up your site before making major changes. And I saw mention of a menu item in the admin panel; System > System Info - but in our System menu, we only have Global Checkin and Clear Cache. Could we be missing some really important menu items?

That's all I can think of for now, I'm sure it will be quite enough to chew on and keep me busy if I get any responses.

Thank you Thank You Thank you again!!

LenaHess

Hi blackcat,

the backup-option does not exist up to now - but there are several components you can install which provide this functionallity.
Have a look at BigAPE Backup or DBadmin.

blackcat

Thanks! you're the first person to answer even one of my questions - appreciated!!

sokratex

Hi BlackCat
It is recomended to apply the patch as it take care of some issues that can emerge. Read the changelog to see what has been made. Personally i have implemented them to all my running mambo sites.

My advice to you is to post short and to the point questions about one concrete problem at the time. Use the notification to follow up on the response.

Use the local forums and post there (i.e mambojoe,com etc.) Start searching the forums and google and try different approaches. If this is something that have happened to others than it is likely to find post about out there or here.

Good luck.

PS! If you find the problems to be to many and over your head and time is running out then cry for help from the professionals over at mambolance and other freelance php coders. They most certainly can take on these problems for reasonable fee. Remember it costs but can save you a lot of headache and time.

__________________
---there is no honor in breaking in through an open door--

shonne

I have a Big Problem . I'm trying to install Mambo 4.5.2 onto my webserver.I already have 4.5.1 as a package that cam with my website bu I want the newer version of Mambo which is 4.5.2 . I installed it in my directory but I have a probplem giving it a Database name to go through the next step. I need Help. Do I have to erase my Mambo 4.5.1. Also how can I get a database name that mambo would approve. Someone please help me with step by step instructions. Email Shonemitchell111@peoplepc.com. Also I want my domain name directed to my mambo website after the installation is competed.Plea someone help me.