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

Following is new:

1) Structured data

All modules include now structured data according to google recommendations and guidelines. The breadcrumb include now all required properties, the product modules are using “Rich Snippets”

According to google, “When your web pages include structured data markup, Google (and other search engines) can use that data to index your content better, present it more prominently in search results, and surface it in new experiences like voice answers, maps, and Google Now.”

2) New module: cookie consent module

We created that module for all stores that need to comply the european cookie law by informing users that your site has cookies

The module display a layer upon page entry, informing visitors that cookies are used and asking them to accept. You can optionally add a link to a page that explain your cookies policy (like e.g. privacy.php).

There are various styling options available, so you can create a unique looking cookie consent message, without having to touch a single line of code

The module is based on the latest version of the silktide Cookie Consent module

3) New module: back to top module

A completely customisable floating “arrow” that lead visitors back to the top of the page. Simply enable in admin and let your imagination free to create a great looking arrow. Maybe just a small detail, but details make often the big difference

4) New options for product modules

• Hide products out of stock: You can now decide if you want to display products that are out of stock or not. There is a separate setting for each of the modules that display products
• Additional product sorting option: date modified. You can now sort products by date modified, for example you can show that products first where you recently changed the price or some specification etc. That is useful in case you have older products that would never make it to the top of the listings using any of the other listing criteria. You can use “date modified” as a initial sort order for any of the product modules. You can also enable it as a sorting option for the product listing module

The new features apply to following modules

• Front page: New Products, Specials, Bestsellers
• Subcategory pages: New Products, Specials, Bestsellers
• Product listing pages: Product listing module

5) Separate sorting settings for new products, specials and regular product listing pages

Till now there was a common setting for the initial sort order for all product listing pages. Now you can set a different sort order per page (new products, specials, listing within a category). So, for example, you can set the sort order for new products by date added, for specials by price and for regular category listings by products name

6) Limit the “age” of new products shown

You can now limit the “age” of the new products shown on the “new products” page and in the new products modules (on the front page and on the subcategories pages)

This gives you much of flexibility, some examples:

New products page: The new products page was showing till now all of your products (sorted by date added if you had this selected). Setting the age to e.g. 60, it will show only the products added in the last 60 days. Your visitors can sort the list by any criteria they want (e.g. by price), they will still get only the products of the last 60 days instead of all

Product modules: You can limit the age for example to 60 days and set the sort order to e.g. “name”. So you’ll get the products of the last 60 days ordered by product name alphabetically

7) New theme options

We added some great new options that give you a much better control over the boxes in the left/right hand columns. You can now set border colours, border radius, margins etc regardless the ui theme you have selected

There are also 3 new great looking ui themes, you can easly select them in admin and try them out

8) Various improvements and corrections

As usual there are many smaller and bigger improvements done all over the system, like

• Breadcrumb is build up using a different function, that ensures a correct display even if some breadcrumb element is not a link (for example on the checkout confirmation page)
• Hide the list/grid switch in case the product listing default to a grid display (this is happening on small screens, when a “list” display wouldn’t look nice anymore)
• Category path (cPath) correction for subcategories modules
• Improvements of the behaviour of the “banner boxes” on small screens and in case they display after the main content. This result in a “smarter” decision about how many banners to display side by side
• Correction of the top heading menu that was causing a horizontal scroll bar in some cases on small screens

Thank you all for your valuable feedback, MTS is getting better and better because of that

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 Friday 8/1/2016. 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

Minimum php version requirement is 5.3

Following is new:

1) New modules

• Banner boxes. This is a new series of modules allowing you to display banner in the left or right column of the store. Each module has various available settings,, similar to the content banner modules. You can display banners as a slider or as a grid having the one under the other. The modules have a very nice responsive behaviour, that you can also configure in admin
• Front page manufacturer module. You can now display your manufacturer logos on the front page, there are various configuration setting available, same like for the other modules

2) New features

• New “full screen position” for banner modules. You can set each banner to display as full screen, covering 100% of the screen regardless the store width that you use. You can display a banner in “full screen” mode, either on top (after the header) or at the bottom (before the footer) of the page
• Setting added to allow <br> tags in product descriptions on the product listing pages and in the various modules that display products. The rest of the html formatting you use is still stripped out
• Separate “sort by” options for the product listing module not related to the content displayed. That mean that you can e.g. let people sort the listings by “weight” and “date added”, while you don’t display that information on the screen. The opposite is possible to, to display e.g. the quantity and while you don’t allow a sorting by quantity. The exact configuration is entirely up to you
• A number of new colour settings allowing you to use nice semi transparent colours almost everywhere. For each area you can set the colour and its opacity and create that way very interesting effects. Also added many settings for detail areas, for example the slider controls, where you can now create great looking arrows, entirely css based and just by doing settings in admin

Also included: 6 new great looking ui themes, try them out

3) Improvements and fixes

- thank you all for your valuable feedback

• Improved SPPC compatibility for the product listing module
• Improved behaviour for the main navigation when switching from collapsed to expanded mode or when you resize the browser window
• Fixed the “division by 0” problem for banner and product modules. The problem occurred if you accidentally left the valuees for “total number of products”, “maximum number of products per row” and “minimum number of products per row” empty
• Double listing of “linked” products in advanced search results fixed
• The link to the shopping cart page, within the shopping cart drop down in the header, appear now on the top of the list of products in case there are more than 4 products in the shopping cart
• Improved behaviour of “faux columns” and top heading image in case you use the 100% store width
• Improved behaviour of the top heading area in case you set it to be “sticky”
• Improved display of shadow numbers 31 and 41

As usual, there are also many improvements and fixes that affect the processes happening “behind the scenes”

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 30/11. 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

Minimum php version requirement is 5.3

This is a major mini template system upgrade, following is new:

1) A new, great and fully responsive theme.

We are very happy and proud to release after really a lot of work, our responsive template.

Our development had 3 targets and we think that we achieved all of them

• compatibility with the existing osCommerce release, the existing add ons and the many users who use osCommerce 2.3.4 or already use MTS
• the highest possible grade of flexibility: We want you to decide yourself about the way your store look like and about how it should behave on various screen sizes
• the less possible core code changes

The new responsive template work on the current 2.3.4 osCommerce release (and any previous release of the 2.3 series) . There are no core code changes necessary in order to get it working – other than to install MTS itself of course, that is an easy task as many of you know

In other words, you can simply install MTS on any store of series 2.3 and have a responsive store that you can configure as you like

We are using LESS to transform the existing grid system into a responsive framework. The whole system is dynamic, in the meaning of accepting settings you do in your administration panel. So, for example, you can

• set the total store width your self or set it to full width of 100% of the screen
• set the breakpoints for the different screen sizes your self. You can set your self what e.g. a “medium” screen is, you don’t have to use 992 pixels or whatever
• decide your self about the layout for each breakpoint. So you can decide what to do with the columns for a small screen and do a different setting for a extta small screen. If you want to hide them, display left, right or under the body, that is your choice for each breakpoint.
• also decide about the behaviour of many modules. For example, you can set the breakpoint where the main navigation turn from expanded into a “hamburger” button your self. Similar settings are possible all over, we’ll update the usage instructions for more details

The LESS files are compiled and minified automatically into regular css files upon saving the settings

2) main template improvements

There is a whole new and long list of available settings for both, the new responsive or the existing static templates. You can control now almost every detail of the store, including header and footer colours (and responsive behaviour for responsive templates)

For example, you can set a “sticky” top bar, that will stay in place while you scroll down the page. Same you can have for the main navigation if you want. That “sticky” status accept different settings, so you can have a different colour or a different height if you want

What we want to point out are the “dynamic shadow settings”: Even shadows are not that much in fashion anymore, they are still a very good way for setting the overall page layout. So we made all shadows “dynamic”, in the meaning that they accept settings you do in your administration panel. For each shadow scheme, you can now select the shadow colour, the shadow intensity and the colour opacity. It is your choice to have a very strong or very light, even invisible shadow

We included the latest jQuery and jQueryUI versions and created a couple a new nice themes

3) Various improvements to all modules

All modules, including banners, product modules, menus, main navigation are responsive, in case of course you use a responsive template. There are breakpoint specific settings you can do, for example, you can set the maximum and minimum items per row for any product or banner module, you can decide if you want to allow “orphan” rows or not and much more.

There are also automated adjustments where you don’t have to worry about: For example, in case a super fish fly out menu has to display under the main body in a small screen, it turn itself automatically into a accordion menu – a “fly out” wouldn’t make a sense of course on small screens

Beside that, there are many new settings and small improvements done, for example:

• For the product modules, you can now set a different image size for each of the modules that display products, you can set the display order and of course do a lot more design settings, shadows, border, opacity of colours and much more
• For the fly out menus, there is now a “hover intent” script preventing the menu to expand “by accident”: It expand only after the mouse rest for a short while over the menu tab. If you wish you can set the menu to act only “on click”. There are separate colour settings for top and flight level, you can even set the colour of the arrows that indicate deeper levels in the menu
• For banner modules, beside all other improvements to the banner manager itself, there is a whole new list of settings you can do for each banner module, including colours, shadows, coption manipulation etc etc. Additional, there is a unique id added to each of them, that allow a very specific individual styling for each banner via css in case you need that

4) Banner manager

We did a complete rework for our banner manager.

Multilingual banners: this was a request of many MTS users who have multilingual stores. You can now upload a separate image for each of the store languages and of course add a different banner text for each language.

The language specific image is optional: You can skip it, in that case the system use the default banner image. That way you can upload additional language specific images only for banners where you need it, for example banners that contain a text as part of the image

Banner link: Additional to what you could do till now, link the entire banner to a url, you can now create a link or button as part of the banner body. You can set the link target as you like, name the link (or button) as you like individually per language and do various settings in the banner modules

New admin layout: A much nicer and much more organised admin page to help you setup your banners in a more efficient way

5) A new product listing module

This is a very nice and flexible module that will let you setup your product listing exactly the way you want it. The module allow a listing in “grid” or “list” mode, allowing a switch by the page visitor. For responsive templates, the module switch automatically to “grid” mode after a given screen size, this is the size where a “list” mode make no sense anymore. Also possible;e: Display your products in a slider mode

The grid/list switch is part of the product listing toolbar, that contain also a nice drop down for the sort order of the products.

The entire module is completely configurable, you can do settings for the whole area, for each product box, set any colours, shadows, borders etc, you can decide about the display way, decide about the information you want to display, set the image size etc etc. Even the toolbar or the pager can be designed down to the smallest detail

The module is also used on the new products page, the specials page and the advanced search results page

6) New module group for category pages.

You have now a special set of modules available for all pages that display subcategories: Available modules are:

• categories module
• new products module
• specials module
• bestsellers module available,

Each module display subcategories and products of that parent category. The configuration settings for each module are same as for the front page modules, the modules are responsive

7) New admin interface and improved functionality

Till now each setting for each module, had its own “row” in the sidebar. As a result, the sidebar became very long in some cases, making it hard to find and do the desired settings.

What we did is, to combine options into sections and each section into groups of options. Each section is poping up in a fancy box window, so you can set all options much more easy and intuitive

A second advantage of this new system is, that the database rows that each module occupy in the configuration table are reduced to a minimum. While before we had e.g. 40 database rows for 40 settings, now we need just 4 database rows, one for each section

That way, we could add more settings, and give you much more control over the design.

In case you are interested in the technical background of the whole system, there will be a post on the multimixer blog soon

8) Improved module upgrade functionality

There is no need to un-install and re-install any module in order to upgrade it. We developed a function that is doing the upgrade completely automatically: New database records are added, redundant database records are removed, database records are merged or assigned to new keys as needed

9 ) combine and compress css files

Various css files are included into new common file, are getting compressed there and send to the server as a single minified file. This reduce the server requests and improve speed. The process is automated, there is nothing you have to worry about, it simply work behind the scenes

10) Various small improvements

like:

• Change of execution for the main navigation: In case the link group selected don’t exist, main navigation display the default navigation of header.php instead of returning empty string
• A new smarter text truncate function for front page and product listing modules
• We Noticed that some users are adding html tags to the product or manufacturer name, that is not correct or at least not necessary. All MTS modules do strip that tags out before printing anything to the screen
• Central query for banners and product modules. Query results are stored and kept available in the system, so they can be reused if necessary instead of making a query again
• A new smarter “cPath” calculation for all menus

There is much more of course, smaller and bigger improvements and changes, like e.g. reducing the overall filezize, optimising processes, that all happens behind the scenes.

The new version is available to download right away. Existing mini template system users will be notified by email, as usual free of charge. Upgrade packages will start sending on Monday 13/7. 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

Minimum php version requirement is 5.3

The demo store is still based on the previous MTS version 1.4.05, we are working on the update.

If you want to take a look at the new version, please check here: Responsive MTS example

This is a long awaited upgrade including a responsive template layout and a long list of improvements, working on any osCommerce store of version 2.3.xx and compatible with all existing add ons

The release will be in the next days. The upgrade is free for all MTS users

It is highly recommended to do the upgrade, the upgrade process well documented, please check the detailed upgrade guide, you can also download the upgrade package here

A new version of Mini Template System has been released already to ensure compatibility with the latest osCommerce version. Please do the MTS upgrade to version 1.4.05 before you do the osCommerce upgrade to version 2.3.4

Please be attentive with following files, they can not be replaced but need to be edited manually, since they have been modified for the needs of mini template system:

• catalog/product_info.php

• catalog/admin/includes/application_top.php
• catalog/admin/includes/column_left.php
  
• catalog/admin/includes/template_top.php
  
• catalog/admin/includes/languages/english.php

• catalog/includes/application_top.php
• catalog/includes/template_top.php

• catalog/includes/modules/boxes/bm_currencies.php
• catalog/includes/modules/boxes/bm_languages.php
  
• catalog/includes/modules/boxes/bm_order_history.php
  
• catalog/includes/modules/boxes/bm_product_notifications.php
  
• catalog/includes/modules/boxes/bm_card_acceptance.php (new box in version 2.3.4)
  

The changes required by the osCommerce upgrade are not related to the modifications done to that files by MTS, so, it should be easy to figure out what you have to do.

There are however a couple of points that we would like to focus on, that could cause a confusion during the upgrade process. You can download a quick upgrade help guide here. Please note that instructions provided here apply only to mini template system users

In case you need any further help, please get in touch, we’ll be happy to assist you

We would like to thank the development team and the contributors for the great job done, we know about the hard work involved and really appreciate that

What is new in this version:

osCommerce 2.3.4 compatibility

A number of files has been upgraded to ensure 100% compatibility with the latest osCommerce version 2.3.4. Please note that MTS is backwards compatible with any of the previews versions of the 2.3 series of osCommerce

Script updates

Following scripts have been updated to ensure compatibility with the latest jQuery version 1.11.1

• Fancybox: Even it is not used in the latest osCommerce version any more, there are many existing websites who are using it and may not wish to change to “colorbox”. MTS will detect the correct version of Fanxybox, depending on the jQuery version you are using
• bxGallery: Same as above, the script is not used in the latest osCommerce version any longer, we updated the script so you can keep using bxGallery on your website if you want, not depending on the osCommerce or jQuery version you have
• Superfish: This is the script that create the menus in MTS, and has been updated to work on the latest jQuery version. MTS detect the correct version of Superfish depending on the selected jQuery version
• jQuery version: The latest jQuery version 1.11.1 is added, you can select it in your admin under the main template settings
• Colorbox and Photoset grid: Both scripts are added to MTS too, since they are used in osCommerce 2.3.4

The new version is available to download right away. Existing mini template system users will be notified by email, as usual free of charge. 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, or 2.3.3.4

A osCommerce upgrade to the latest version 2.3.4 is not required. In case you plan to upgrade your osCommerce installation to version 2.3.4, please make sure to upgrade MTS first

What is new in this version:

osCommerce 2.3.3.2 compatibility

A number of files has been upgraded to ensure 100% compatibility with the latest osCommerce version 2.3.3.2. Please note that MTS is backwards compatible with any of the previews versions of the 2.3 series of osCommerce

Template improvements

An improved way of checking the preview mode variables. The “preview mode” is a feature to preview a template in admin before switching it live for the store visitors

A better way of shadow selections, specially for internet explorer. You can see an overview of all available shadow combinations here

Link manager upgrade

• It is possible now to set the link status for internal links too. The “link status” is a feature to enable disable any links and make them visible/invisible on the front side
• Double button placement for updating and adding links. This is a small improvement following our users feedback
• Preview link column added: You can now preview any link in admin to make sure it goes to the correct location
• You can now add internal links manually. This is specially useful for pages added dynamically by other add ons such as article manager etc

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. 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 or 2.3.3.2

It is highly recommended to do the upgrade in preparation for the next version (osCommerce 2.3.4.), the upgrade process is easy and well documented, please check the detailed upgrade guide.

A new version of Mini Template System will be released in the next days to ensure compatibility with the new osCommerce version.

We would like to thank the development team and the contributors for the great job done. It is great to see the new schedule of regular upgrades, we know about the hard work involved and really appreciate that

It is highly recommended to do the upgrade in preparation for the next version (osCommerce 2.3.4.), the upgrade process is easy and well documented, please check the detailed upgrade guide.

Mini Template system users can follow the documentation and perform the upgrade, there are no special instructions necessary, none of the affected files is modified in any way by MTS

We would like to thank the development team and the contributors for the great job done