We are happy to release the new MTS version: 1.6.0

Following is new:

1) Pages

This is a brand new system to create pages in admin.

Pages can be anything, static pages, special landing pages for promotions of products, a image or video gallery

Pages can be edited in your admin panel using ckeditor, you can easily format the text, upload images to the page content etc

Other page elements are a meta title, the meta description and a short description. You can upload a small and a large image for each page, that are used in the modules that list the pages

Pages can have a parent/child structure of any depth, the status can be switched on or off and you can also decide if you want to show a page to registered customers only, to unregistered customers only or to both categories.

There are 6 page templates available – more will be added soon

  • Single page: That is a page that display its content as set in admin
  • Parent page: That is a page that list the small image and the short description of all its child pages
  • Products: You an select a product category and display it on that page.
  • Manufacturer: You can select a manufacturer and display its products on that page
  • Image gallery: That is a page that you can use for a nice gallery of images using the MTS banner manager and the existing banner modules
  • Video gallery. This work same as the image gallery, the template use some extra code to make your youtube (or vimeo) videos have a nice responsive behaviour

2) New Modules

  • New Module to display pages on the front page. The module will display the child pages of any selected parent page on your stores front page. here are various configuration options available, so you can create a very “information style” front page of you want
  • New all pages manufacturers module. You can now display your manufacturers on any page you like

3) Improvements to the modules

  • Variable width for modules. Modules can now occupy any percentage of the screen and display inline with other modules side by side. This allow very nice banner and product displays
  • Hide the “buy now” button if product is out of stock or if the product price is zero. There is a new setting that let you hide the button in case the product is out of stock or if you don’t have a price set
  • Sort by sort order. In case you have a “products sort order” modification installed, you can sort the products that way and let your visitors use it
  • Show all products of all subcategories of a given parent category, does’t matter how deep the category structure is.
  • Hide empty categories in category modules and menus. Empty categories do not contain any active products, neither themselves or any of their subcategories. You can decide if you want to show or hide them
  • Hide manufacturers with no active products. You have now he option to show only manufacturers that have products. The feature apply to both manufacturer display modules (front page and all pages)
  • Badges. You can now add “badges” to each product of the modules that display products. Badges are available for “new product”, “specials” and “bestsellers”.
    The “specials” badge display automatically in case the product is a special. For the “new product” badge you can set the maximum “age” of the product (e.g. 30 days). Same for the “bestseller” badge where you can set the minimum amount of units sold

4) Template improvements

  • Compile css in admin side upon saving he template instead of creating it in real time on the front side. Several css files are merged into a single minified css file.All shadow files are LESS files instead of php files, parameters like shadow colour, opacity and intensity are pushed via the template class when saving the template.. Special shadows for old Internet Explorer versions compatibility removed
  • New shadow combination 20_c. This wrap the top heading line and the body into 2 separate containers, leaving the main header area at the same “level” as the page background
  • Better logo behaviour. You can decide if you want to adjust logo size or not, this depend on the visual result you want to achieve

5) Various improvements and corrections

There are many smaller and bigger improvements done all over the system, like

  • Structured data corrections for modules that list products.
  • Container width correction for breadcrumb
  • Separate module title for new products module
  • Better calculation of description size in case you decide to show a short description in the product modules
  • jquery.cookie.js file renamed to ligri.js. Some servers were blocking the jquery.cookie.js file
  • Less intrusive and easier installation. MTS use now its own language files only, no additions to existing language files needed, new language installation is handled intependet
  • cPath calculation correctios: cPath was not set correctly in case of manual category links
  • Image thumbnailer parameters and image quality adjustments
  • Accept category request for product listing module. The product listing module can now be called by requesting a specific category. In plain words, you can tell the module “show me category 123”. This is used by the (new) pages feature, where you can attach to any page any category you like

Thank you all for your valuable feedback, pointer, questions and suggestions.

The new version is available to download right away. Existing mini template system users will be notified by email. Upgrade packages will start sending on Monday 14/11/2016. Please be patient up to 48 hours before asking why you didn’t receive the upgrade. Please note that upgrades are sent to the email that you used when purchasing MTS

Existing users, please note, that you can perform the upgrade on any osCommerce version 2.3.1, 2.3.2, 2.3.3, 2.3.3.1, 2.3.3.2, 2.3.3.3, 2.3.3.4 or 2.3.4