An update was rolled our a few hrs ago to all web-to-print sites.
We changed the way web-to-print users register for public catalogs where registration is required.
They now see a small registration form as part of the order form where they are asked to enter their email address or log in. The ORDER button is disabled until they either register or log in.
There are a couple of known issues with the update and we’ll be working through them in the coming hours.
At the same time we launched a “garbage collector” to delete old order files. You may notice that web-to-print orders older than 3 months don’t have the files any more. You can regenerate the files, if you need to. No charges apply.
Users will see a message saying that files were archived, if the files were actually available to users. In most cases they are not.
The plugin can connect to your catalogs and users will be able to email your designs as e-cards.
It is not possible to email directly from Flash. The server-side part of the plugin handles all the configuration and emailing.
There are a couple of minor glitches, still, but overall it is usable.
This service is free. You are not paying anything. There is a link on every design page in Flash to jump to the ordering page.
Make a few simple templates your audience may want to use and let them have a bit of fun before they are ready to order. Ideally, you need to approach other blogs and ask them to embed this to get more traffic to your site.
Magento
We’ve been flat out working on Magento web-to-print integration. It is now in a stable beta stage. You can grab it directly from Magento website. Contact admin@zetaprints.com if you run into any glitches. We are giving full installation assistance at this stage. This is an open source project, so you can always get your own developers to turn it into a web-to-print store you want.
Add custom blocks of text to let you write your own emails and insert some user or order details.
Improve search, including searching by size and download file type.
A re-designed PayPal Pro plugin for WordPress is coming out soon too. It should reduce number of declined transactions as PayPal may get fussy with it’s hosted payments page.
We fixed an old bug that prevented printers completing saved web-to-print orders on behalf of customers.
As a bonus, there is a choice of checking out or updating the preview from a a saved web-to-print order. Users don’t need to update a preview to check out a saved order. There is a risk the preview and output files can be out of sync if the template files have changed since the order was saved. Keep an eye out for a day or two. We are fixing up this one as well.
There is a small number of web-to-print users with very tight security settings in their browser. Some of them made it intentionally tight, some are using a computer configured by someone else. The first category enable/disable cookies and JavaScript as needed. The second have no idea.
We added a special notice for them and help pages on how to resolve it. Unfortunately, only so of them can do it themselves.
Please, synchronize your custom web-to-print help pages to make sure the links to instructions are not broken. The easiest way to do it is to copy our content as is.
How to test the messages and links
Disable cookies and JavaScript for for your domain (temporarily!) and click on Home or any other link and you should see the warnings at the top – left corner.
We are still adding final touches to our new open source e-cards plugin, but here it is nonetheless.
It can be embedded into any web page just as I embedded it here. Embedding string:
Variable parameters
Width: set to width in pixels or % (in 2 places)
Height: set to height in pixels or % (in 2 places)
Data source: this is an address of RSS feed for the catalog you want to show. The catalog needs to be public.
What for?
Don’t ask. It’s one of those pet projects. Maybe there is some use for it.
The most obvious is to promote your products. Build a catalog with a few simple templates that work well in small size and are fun. Embed the plugin on your site. Ask others to embed it. The user may want to click through to your site and actually order something after playing with these small designs.
Your suggestions on what features to add are welcome.
We’ve been stuck with some new features for the last 2 weeks. Things piled up and the update got much bigger than we expected. Usually, the updates are small to minimize the impact. This time it’s going to be noticeable.
The roll-out will start on Tue evening, Australia EST time zone or GMT +10. Some downtime is possible if we need to restart the cluster.
Web-to-print preview page changes
Tabbed interface to bring description, prices, options, checkout, links, etc into a single manageable group.
Image fields get tabs as well to allow image uploading, stock photos, composite orders (use previous orders as images).
A color picker (RGB and CMYK) for image fields.
Checkout form has moved to the top.
Image management page
Additional field properties to allow a combination of user images, stock photos, color picker, etc.
Order list
An interactive calendar to pick dates instead of entering in the search form.
Please, go to your details page and choose a time zone for your web-to-print portal.
All orders used to be in UTC +12. Now they are in UTC time, unless you set your time zone.
Navigate to DETAILS page. The drop down list of zones is in the second group of controls. Check if you need daytime saving. Press SAVE button. Check if the time was set corectly when it displays your details summary. Go back and adjust, if needed.
We set time zones for some web to print portals where we knew the time zone for sure. Please, double-check anyway.
We’ve been stuck with an infrastructure upgrade to our web-to-print system for months now, but there is a bit of light at the end of this long dark tunnel.
Bug fixes and minor updates
A few old (and new) bugs were fixed in the last few days. Error pages were all messed up, permalinks didn’t always show correctly, non-Latin letters were getting into user-friendly URLs, etc. About 20 bugs were fixed today alone.
Several areas got minor improvements that you may or may not notice.
The most notable update is the change to how optional web-to-print template features are handled.
They used to be all optional and users kept missing them. Now users have to make a choice from the list, unless the list contains a blank option (nothing). The value is not cached in the DB, meaning that they have to make a choice for every order.
Infrastructure preview
Our architecture is based on a small cluster of computers. We had a reasonably reliable application cluster for all the image and vector processing, but the DB and web servers were not flexible enough to grow beyond a certain size. We reached that size back in September 2008. Now the main problems are behind and new web and file servers can be added as needed. It is as easy as slipping a new box in the rack. Still quite a few things to iron out before checking this off as “done”.
Performance and missing files
We keep “loosing” files from time to time. They may disappear for a few seconds, a few minutes or a few hours. Approximately 10 files were affected today, which is a fraction of a fraction of a percent of daily volumes, but still, it is not acceptable. We are working on this elusive problem and your help will be greatly appreciated – just tell us that something’s missing as soon as possible.
Peak hour performance can be slightly degraded. We run on 1/2 the power of the database. It was OK for low traffic over holidays, but it started picking up today. We need few more days before the DB servers are back into full swing.
