Recently, I was asked to list the main changes in X-cart shopping cart solution since version 4.0 and I could not easily find this information on X-cart site so had to do some digging. Upgrading X-cart store is not the easiest task but we’ve done this several hundred time by now and will be glad to help. The links below will help you to see what you will get and if this worth the trouble and expense. To find out which version you are currently using, go to “Summary” menu and search for “X-Cart version” number.

Below is the list of the major changes since version 4.0:

Changes in 4.1: http://www.x-cart.com/news/xcart-4_1_0_released.html

Changes in 4.2: http://www.x-cart.com/news/x-cart-v4.2-released.html

Changes in 4.3: http://www.x-cart.com/news/xcart-430-released.html

Changes in 4.4: http://www.x-cart.com/news/xcart-440-released.html

Changes in 4.5: http://www.x-cart.com/news/xcart-4.5.0-released.html

Let me know if you have any other questions or if you want our help with this upgrade – I’ll send you the list of things to be done and an estimate.

Best regards,

Anton Pachkine
FinestShops E-Commerce Management
Hosting | Customizations | Design | Marketing
www.finestshops.com | 1-800-675-0162

Follow me on Twitter and let’s connect in LinkedIn!

P.S. – Have you considered a makeover of your Internet store to improve online sales? If so, give me a call or email me at sales@finestshops.com. Our turnkey e-commerce system will help you sell more while devoting less time to website maintenance.

At the end of April, 2012 Google made another algorithm change and which affected traffic dramatically for some online stores. After several clients called me about this, I did some research and found a couple of articles which may help them and others:

1) http://www.micrositemasters.com/blog/penguin-analysis-seo-isnt-dead-but-you-need-to-act-smarter-and-5-easy-ways-to-do-so/

2) http://www.seotrainingsw.com/2012/05/google-penguin-update/

Please contact your SEO consultant for more information before making any changes to your store.

Best regards,

Anton Pachkine
FinestShops E-Commerce Management
Hosting | Customizations | Design | Marketing
www.finestshops.com | 1-800-675-0162

Follow me on Twitter and let’s connect in LinkedIn!

P.S. – Have you considered a makeover of your Internet store to improve online sales? If so, give me a call or email me at sales@finestshops.com. Our turnkey e-commerce system will help you sell more while devoting less time to website maintenance.

There is a lot of uncertainty about payment card industry PA-DSS (Payment Application-Data Security Standard) compliance, and I want to give you my understanding of the subject. It’s important to note that I am not a certified PA-DSS consultant, and I urge you do your additional research for complete information. But this will provide you with a starting point. Please send me a note if you find anything inaccurate or would like to add something.

Of the various compliance issues, the most important is this:

Merchants must not use known vulnerable payment applications that store sensitive authentication data post authorization. Storage of sensitive authentication data post authorization is strictly prohibited by PCI-DSS and Visa International Operating regulations.

Compliant or not, if you’re still saving credit card numbers with every order, stop. Please contact our support team if you do not know how to make this change. Essentially, there are two aspects to compliance: PCI compliance, and PA-DSS compliance.  We’ll take a look at the two individually.

PCI Compliance

PCI compliance is confirmation that the software you are using on the server and have installed on your website does not have any known security issues. PCI compliance can be verified by a number of PCI scanning services, such as SecurityMetrics or McAfee Secure (which service is included in all our packages).
After a scan, we check the report and, if required, install the necessary patches and adjust configuration of your website in order to pass compliance. At this time, we offer this service at no charge to our clients. Simply contact our support team requesting such a scan. After the successful scan, you will be provided with PCI certification, which you can pass on to your bank or merchant account provider. Usually, this is enough for them to mark you as PCI compliant.

PA-DSS Compliance

PA-DSS compliance ensures that you are using a PA-DSS compliant payment application. There are three ways to earn PA-DSS compliance:

1. Use a PA-DSS compliant shopping cart. The only PA-DSS compliant open-source shopping cart I am aware of is Pinnacle Cart. It is a nice shopping cart, but there are drawbacks. It does not offer a wide variety of designs, nor third-party add-ons, and it does some lack some features. (For more information on the advantages and disadvantages of different shopping carts, read my article that addresses the matter at this URL : http://www.finestshops.com/review-of-ecommerce-solutions-magento-interspire-pinnacle-cart-x-cart.html)
Out of the box, X-Cart and Magento are not PA-DSS compliant. This is primarily because of the huge number of third-party add-ons and extensions that available for those systems. It’s just not possible to certify all of them because software certification costs roughly $100,000 and the process can take months to complete. Plus, if you were to install uncertified add-ons into a certified shopping cart, your shopping cart would lose its certification.

2. Use a PA-DSS compliant payment module in your shopping cart. Rather than certify your main shopping cart, X-cart and Magento went in a different direction, creating PA-DSS certified payment modules. With one of these modules, you can do anything you want with the software but still maintain the PA-DSS certification.
For Magento, you need the Payment Bridge module, which cannot be used with the Community edition. Instead, you have to switch to Magento Enterprise, which is slightly overpriced, in my opinion.
For X-cart, you can use the X-Payment module ($1,189) or the Authorize.net DPM module ($204.95). You should know, however, that the Authorize.net DPM module is sometimes viewed as non-compliant by banks, so you should check with your bank first.

3. Use a payment page hosted by your bank or payment gateway. This is the safest and least expensive option, eliminating any potential compliance snags. There are many payment gateways, such as PayPal Standard, Authorize.net SIM, CreSecure and many others, that make this option available. Each offers a different degree of customization.
This method does add an extra page to your checkout process (as with X-Payment or Payment Bridge), which will be hosted on another domain. But personally, I feel much more secure entering my credit card information on Authorize.net or PayPal hosted pages, so I consider it an advantage in our unsecure times.
Please contact your current payment gateway to see if they offer a hosted payment method. Or feel free to contact me if you need more information.

Best regards,

Anton Pachkine
FinestShops E-Commerce Management
Hosting | Customizations | Design | Marketing
www.finestshops.com | 1-800-675-0162

P.S. – Have you considered a makeover of your Internet store to improve online sales? If so, give me a call or email me at sales@finestshops.com. Our turnkey systems can help you sell more while devoting less time to online store maintenance.

Qualiteam released a security update today affecting X-cart versions 4.1 to 4.4. We will be updating all our hosted X-cart stores at no charge but need some information from you to apply that patch. Please open a ticket at https://www.mystorehelp.com or email to support@finestshops.com and we’ll add your store to our update queue and send more details.

Best regards,

Anton Pachkine
FinestShops E-Commerce Management
Hosting | Customizations | Design | Marketing
www.finestshops.com | 1(800)675-0162

P.S. Follow me on Twitter and let’s connect on LinkedIn!

Check out a nice short clip about optimizing a video post for SEO. You’ll know the basic YouTube SEO techniques in 1:30 min.

Click here to see the video

Hope you like it,

Anton Pachkine
FinestShops E-Commerce Management
Hosting | Customizations | Design | Marketing
www.finestshops.com | 1(800)675-0162

P.S. Follow me on Twitter and let’s connect on LinkedIn!