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.

No, we are not finished with the web-to-print infrastructure upgrade, but there is a breather and a light at the end of the tunnel.

A critical piece of file replication s/w went live last night and seems to be holding on OK. Fingers crossed.

In the meantime, it came to our attention that we missed a few very embarrassing bugs in order lists. First, Next, Last, Previous links didn’t always work. More like they worked only occasionally. They should be fine now. Sorry about it.

By popular demand, we removed Feedback text box for unregistered users. They can always click on Contact Us link and send you an email. Too many users were sending important information without leaving any contact details.

Logged in users get Feedback text box in the same place as before.

Users cannot complete registration if they register for your web-to-print, do not confirm their email address, you add them to a web-to-print catalog, they click on the registration email and get the 404 page.

Workaround: email admin@zetaprints.com every time you get an email about a new customer and add the customer to a password protected catalog.

Expected resolution time: 24hrs.

Some fields are too small to take a particularly lengthy user input, but users do not always notice this. One option is to set a maximum field length.
We plan to make the graphic processor return information about any truncated fields back to the user. It will only work with paragraph text frames because artistic texts do no have bounding limits.

Access URL will be automatically recognised when a printer logs in using a new access URL for the first time. The URL needs to be entered manually at present. It’s quite confusing for many printers.

Some template settings are common across all templates in a catalogue. There will be an option to set default template settings per catalogue, but they can be overridden in any template, if needed. Fields like Payment Required, Terms of Printing and “Hide” are the most likely candidates.

Templates get more and more settings that take space on the screen in Template Details and Edit Template Details forms. The forms need to be more compact, but will not be split into multiple forms at this stage.

Some image properties such as paragraph wrapping, shade and a few others are not applied to user images correctly, which causes a lot of grief with some templates.

Users should not wait for their order files to be prepared. The plan is to change the final file preparation to an asynchronous process where the user gets an instant message that the order is being processed. The order page will be refreshed every 10 seconds. The payments will still be processed and the order should be completed by the time the payment is done.

Previews should be updated one page at a time. Currently, all pages are updated at the same time.