What is new in this version:

Dynamic page profiles

Page profiles is a system that let you organize your pages into groups and attach them to profiles. You can create in that way individual layouts for any page, doesn’t matter if it is a product, a category at any level, the front page or a information page.

For each profile you can do individual settings for any of the modules. You can set for example the position for the boxes (left, right, both columns, not at all), their order and even their content (only for mini template system boxes) specifically for each page profile. Same you can do for banners and any other modules.

You can create of course an unlimited number of page profiles and assign to them any page, any product, any category and any manufacturer.

You could put for example all your information pages into one page profile and display on the left column a menu about any other information pages you have. Same you could do with the account pages and display there the same box on the right column and with an other content, say a menu about any other account pages.

You could say that you want products of category “hardware” to display the “new products” box and products of category “software” not to display any boxes. Or you can pick a particular product and make individual settings just for this one

Please check here about how to use page profiles

Automatic module upgrades

Till now, the only way to upgrade a module, say a banner module or a box etc in order to add or change any settings was, to disable it and enable it again. In that way all previous settings got lost

The new system allow to upgrade modules without uninstalling them, the module upgrade by itself, the new settings are available and all old settings are kept. All you have to do is to click once on each of the installed modules.

Many new settings, that have been on a “waiting list” can and will be implemented now in the coming weeks

MailBeez intergration

Since we discovered a very strong demand for powerful email marketing tools, we decided to include a real good one by default: MailBeez.

MailBeez is a modular system for the implementation of fully automated after sale email campaigns that gives you the tools to create fully automated and personalized eCommerce email marketing campaigns, easily administered from within your store’s existing admin area.

The system is completely integrated into the store and all you have to do is, to enable it in your administration panel

Additional module settings

Using the new auto upgrade function right away, we created some nice new settings for already existing modules

• Superfish menus (The fly-out link boxes and the drop down main navigation): You can now set the speed of the animation and the time the menu stays visible on the screen after the mouse moves away
• Template: You can now set the background color of the header content, this is the area covered mostly by a header image, it can be however that you have either some html text in there or a transparent image, so the background color setting can be very handy.
• Template: You can set the horizontal margin for the store logo, additional to the already existing vertical positioning, so you can now place it perfectly to anywhere you want
• Front page banners: Due to popular demand, there is a new setting to set the order the banners appear, to be either fixed (according to the sort order set at the banner manager) or random. This makes perfectly sense for the front page, since it can be that you don’t want your page visitors to see always the first banner of your banner group

Custom Script files

In the same way as it is done already for custom css settings, there are now 2 new files available for each template to be used for any custom scripts you want to use on a specific template.

Any custom scripts will be placed automatically either before the closing </body>  tag or before the closing </head> tag depending on the file you place the script into.

In that way you can add and use any scripts on your website without to modify any of the existing osCommerce or Mini Template System files

Additional to all this, there are several improvements made to almost all areas of mini template system. Thank you all for the valuable feedback

The new version is available to download right away. Upgrade packages have been sent to all mini template system users, as usually free of charge.

In case you didn’t receive the upgrade email please get in touch so we can resend it

The page can be found here and this is how it look like

In case you don’t have it already, you will need to create a google+ profile, that is however very easy to do and wont take you more than a couple of minutes

Mini template system users, please add us to your circles. We created already a special circle for all users of mini template system where we will post all kind of tips, future release plans, stage of development and use it also as a discussion board about anything related to mini template system.

Also available, links to free addos optimized for mini template system, prerelease packages that you can try out as “beta” testers and much more.

Lets meet on Google +

Multi language compatibility improvements: Improved multi language compatibility for banner manager and link manager. There are no issues any more doesn’t matter if an additional language will be installed before or after activating the mini template system modules

Banner manager improvements

• New banner image has priority over existing image. There is no need anymore to empty the “existing image” field manually if you want to upload a new image
• You can now exclude the display of products, categories or manufacturers on the banner edit page for cases with many products. In this case, the radio selection fields are replaced by a input field to enter the product/category or manufacturer id  manually
• The url of an existing banner can be reset. This was a missing feature of the original release

Link manager and menu maker improvements

• Separate menus per language: You have now the ability to create menu’s of different content per language. So you can for example display a particular menu (consisting of links to products, categories or any other links) in English and a completely different one for example in Spanish, depending on the language/country specific preferences of your visitors
• Cross sell menus: You can now create completely customized menus by freely selecting any product, category or manufacturer and of course any internal or external link and adding it to any menu level. Your menus have not to follow your products/categories structure any more.
  This is a very useful feature in case you want to create “cross sell menus” grouping items of different categories into the same menu section.
  If for example, you have a category fruits (lemons, melons, oranges), a category juices (lemon juice, melon juice, orange juice) and a category books (about melons, about lemons, about oranges), the regular display would be to create menu items that follow exactly this structure. What you can do now is, to create a menu item “all about lemons” and list under it the fruit, the juice and the book and any other related links
• You can also exclude the display of products, categories or manufacturers on the link manager page for cases of stores with really many products. In this case, the radio selection fields are replaced by a input field to enter the product/category or manufacturer id  manually
• You can now set a “status” for complete link groups, to easily enable or disable them anytime

Various other changes and improvements, thank you all for your valuable feedback

What is new in this version:

• Maximum fly out levels: The maximum fly out (or drop down) level of the menus can now be set via the module administration. For the link boxes and the main navigation bar, you there are 2 different settings, one for products and categories and an other for regular links and link groups. This is a very useful setting in case a store has a very deep category structure that should not be displayed completely in a fly out menu.
• Smart menu items: In case a menu item link to a category, and that category doesn’t have any subcategories or active products, the link on the menu item becomes inactive automatically. That mean that, even the menu item still exist in the menu, it can not be clicked by the store visitors who would get to a unpleasant “product not found” page
• Various improvements to the parent and active states of menu items. Please note that the state “parent” apply still only to menu items in a categories/products structure. We hope to change this in the near future too.
• Various improvements to the “logic” of the menu creation that will output a correct unordered list even under unusal circumstances.

An email has been sent out to all mini template system users including the upgrade. We would like to thank them all for their valuable feedback. Special thanks for the inspiration to Jorge from ibisstudio who is doing a great job for one of his clients using our system

This is a maintenance upgrade that addresses following issues:

• Link target attribute for menu maker fixed. In case a top level menu element, or the box heading in case of a link box, was linking to a product category, the link was opening in a new window
• Protection added to top navigation bar, to avoid the error “division by zero” in case no link group has been selected. If this is the case, an empty navigation bar will be displayed until a link group is selectd
• z-indexes of several elements, like columns, menus, footer, shadows etc have been adjusted
• Various changes to improve w3c validation. The template ensure now a 100% validation, unless html5 elements are used, for example the option to display “captions” on the front page banners
• 2 new shadow schemes added (20_b and 23_b) that offer the option of a wrapped footer. Like all shadows used, they are pure css shadows and do not use any images to create the effect. The new shadow work well in all browsers including internet explorer.

An email has been sent out to all mini template system users including the upgrade. We would like to thank them all for their valuable feedback

What is new in this version?

Banner manager

The new optimized banner manager allow to create, configure and manage banners in a much more efficient way than the default osCommerce banner manager. Some highlights:

• Banners can contain either an image or any html (for example a youTube or vimeo video). Additional a title and text can be added
• Banners adjust automatically to the page dimensions
• Banners can be linked to anywhere: For example an external page, any internal page, a category or a product. The process takes advantage of the existing link manager that got introduced in version 1.2, all possible link targets are available in a well structured tabbed panel, and selectable via radio buttons. Link targets can be previewed directly in the administration panel
• The banners link target can be set to open either in the same or in a new browser window
• Banners themselves can be previewed directly in the administration panel

Banners configured via the banner manager can be displayed on various areas of the store. The actual banner display style is set there. That means that the same banner can be displayed in a different way depending on where it is getting displayed

Please read more about the banner manager on the usage page

Front page manager

The front page manager is the first step to a direction of a completely modular store layout. The content of the front page can now be configured via the administration panel. Following modules are available at the first stage:

• Banners: Any banner group as defined via the banner manager
• Categories: Any level of categories (for example the top level categories, or any sub category)
• New products
• Specials
• Bestsellers

It can be chosen of course what category the displayed products should belong to (for example all products or products of a specific category)

The sort order can be set, so it’s easy to configure what module should be displayed on top of the page, what next etc

There are various display styles available: For example each module can be displayed as a slider or as a grid

There are many settings available to configure the content of each module: For example image, title, short description, buy now button, price etc

Finally there are many options available to configure the final display: Users can choose to use the active ui widget style (as set for the rest of the store), the predefined css style (depending on the color scheme in use) or they can do custom settings about almost any detail of the module

Language “box” in the header

This is in real not a “box” but meant to replace the “languages box” of osCommerce and to reduce in that way the amount of unnecessary boxes in the columns

In case the store has more than one languages installed, the relevant language flags will appear on a clearly visible and easily accessible part of the template, that is for the basic template the top left corne, just before the “login” and “create account” links. In case there is just one language installed, no language flag will be shown

Custom stylesheet

A custom stylesheet has been added. Any custom css modifications can be added into this file and will override any other css settings, except anything that was set in the administration panel. In that way store owners or developers can use css settings to fine tune their stores appearance without having to modify any of the existing files. Future upgrades will be much easier in this way. Custom stylesheets are template specific of course, so that each template can get it’s own specific customizations

Various other smaller issues have been fixed, for example the z index of the logo and the menu fly outs thanks to the valueable feedback of all mini template system users

What is new in this version?

Link manager

Links are one of the most important part on a online store. It’s basically the only way to get from one page to an other. Unfortunately, the default osCommerce doesn’t make it very easy to add new links, there is no other way that typing them directly into the php files.

Mini template system introduces in this version a new way to manage links directly in the osCommerce administration panel: The all new link manager

Links can be created easily: Links to internal pages are updated automatically: Any osCommerce page, that is meant to be displayed on the screen is available to the system without any other action. Links to external pages can be entered just by typing in the url. That’s it.

For every link users can set a name and a description, that will appear as the link “title” on the page. Links can be set to be active, inactive or visible only to registered or not registered users. Of course, any link can be previewed directly from the administration panel

Links can be organized easily: Links are organized into link groups, according to how they should be displayed on the page. Links to internal or external pages can be mixed without any worries, the system will always create the links in a proper way. Links can be part of multiple link groups, each group can contain any number of links or subgroups, link groups can be copied or moved, to mention just some of the basic administration functions, you can also set the sort order of the links in that group or the link target (same or new window) and much more.

Additional to this, product categories or products can also be added to to a link group at any stage. This has not to be the top of your products category tree: Any level of of the product categories can be added to ay level of any link groups. This feature open a wide spectrum of opportunities, in fact users can create multiple product menus, not limited by the default category structure, adding into that structure any links related to the particular product category.

More about this in the usage page.

Menu maker

Here it goes about displaying the link groups, as they have been created using the link manager. The page areas to display links are either the top navigation bar or link boxes, displayed in the side columns.

The menus use the “superfish” jQuery script to generate a nice and smooth fly out/drop down effect. More options, like a tree or accordion effect will be added soon

In both cases, navigation bar or link boxes, there are  several configuration options available: So you can set the height and width of the menu items, various background and text colors and much more.

Some more highlights:

For the link boxes, the system recognizes if the box is on the left or right side of the screen and adjust the fly out effect automatically to be to the right or left. Also, the box header can be displayed or not, choosing not to display it, 2 or more boxes can be “glued” together, creating the visual effect of a single menu.

For the top navigation bar, the width of the top level items can be either equal for all, or set individually for each, so there is no problem of having large and very narrow titles at the same time.

There are many more options available, more about this on the usage page

Superfish categories

That’s a new box to display all of your categories using a smooth jQuery superfish fly out effect. It is meant to replace the ordinal osCommerce categories box.

There are various configuration settings available, like width and height of the menu rows, all kind of color settings etc. It can also be set to display products or not. . The box can be displayed on the left or right column, the fly out effect will adjust automatically to the right or left. A nice side effect: he box uses less database queries than the default osCommerce box to generate the output.

Internet explorer shadows

More internet explorer compatible shadows have been added. Following shadow combinations will now also display on internet explorer, n the limits of course the browser permit:

• shadow_10_a.css
• shadow_10_b.css
• shadow_10_c.css
• shadow_11_a.css
• shadow_12_a.css
• shadow_20_a.css
• shadow_22_a.css
• shadow_22_b.css
• shadow_22_c.css
• shadow_23_a.css

Anything that can not be displayed, because of the known lack of internet explorer shadow support, will fall back into a internet explorer compatible display.

Various other smaller issues have been fixed, thanks to the valueable feedback of all mini template system users

What is new in this version?

Flexible page width

By default, the page with of any osCommerce store of version 2.3.1 is set to 960 pixels. This comes because of the usage of the 960gs grid system, that set the page width, as it’s name says, to 960 pixels. This width may fit the needs of the majority of the store owners, but not all. There are many cases where a store needs to be wider (for example if there is the need to display very large images), or leaner (if for example the store target a group of visitors who use older computers with a smaller screen width)

Mini template system includes in it’s newest version the option to set the total page width via your administration panel. Following widths will be available to select via a drop down menu: 840, 864, 888, 912, 984, 1008, 1080, 1128, 1200 and of course the default 960 pixels. Even this should be covering all of the cases, it is very easy to drop in a new page width, please refer to the usage page for more information

Additionally, the header banner adjust it’s width automatically, according to the total page width, that mean that users have not to remake/reload the banner each time they want to change the page width

The feature is included in the demonstration store, in group “general settings” you can try it out

Faux columns

Faux columns means “fake” columns. It refers to the visual effect to have columns expanding till the bottom of the page, even they are not filled with content. This can be desirable, depending on the websites style/design. It is in any case a very useful design tool.

In the most of the cases the “faux columns” technique is described and used with the help of background images. That would mean that each time a store owner would like to move the columns to the left or right , or change the column width, or change the total page width, new background images would need to be created. That’s why mini template system does not use any images, but a pure css solution.

The “faux columns” setting can be set via the administration panel (yes/no) and is of course available in the demonstration store under “general settings”

Please keep in mind that, in order to get the desired “faux” result, at least a background color and/or a proper shadow scheme (like for example shadow_31_a) should be used, but that’s up to anyone. Please refer to the usage page for more information about

Various small issues

Thanks to the feedback of the first mini template system users, various smaller issues could be identified and fixed. Thank you all for reporting those issues

The system is available in 2 forms:

• As a “modular package“: This package contains all necessary files and instructions to install mini template system on an existing osCommerce store, that it based on version 2.3.1
• An a “osCommerce package“: This is a complete osCommerce installation (version 2.3.1), exactly as offered on the official osCommerce website with mini template system pre-installed

In case of the modular package, there are very detailed instructions about new files that need to be uploaded and existing files that need to be replaced/modified. Unless you have a very heavily modified store, installation should not take more than 5 minutes. However we are ready to assist solving any installation issues that could appear.

Detailed usage instructions, tips and tutorials will be published on this website

What is new in this version?

• more features: more features got added to configure the basic appearance of the store, such as the height of the header and the position of the logo (vertically and horizontally)
• colorpicker: To set and change the colors of various areas of the store a jquery colorpicker got added. The background colors of 7 store areas and the text colors for 6 areas can be chosen via the stores administration panel. Additionally there are settings to use or not custom colors for the background or the text (there is always the selected color scheme “jumping in” for any missing color definitions), also settings to what areas exactly the colors should be applied
• more ui themes, shadows and colors: The installed ui themes are now 19, color schemes  are 6 and shadow combinations are 19.  This gives a huge amount of configuration options
• internet explorer support: Since internet explorer does not support shadows, rgba colors, rounded corners and other nice css features, a “downgrade” was necessary for users of internet explorer, so that the page displays properly. Even 3 shadow combinations are possible
• administration preview: It’s now possible to preview any new template settings in a separate pop up window in the administration area before “going live” with them
• new demonstration panel: Because of the increased amount of configuration options, the demonstration panel is divided into 3 sections: general settings, background colors and text colors. Each section contain all related configuration options in a nice pop up window, based on the jquery ui dialog feature

A release date is planned for tomorrow, December 30 2010