osCommerce Watch

Attitude's Online Fraud Guide

Our guide to preventing fraud which was previously only available as a PDF has been launched as a website:

www.onlinefraudguide.com

This features the full content of the guide. Including ...

• Effects of Online Fraud
• Online Credit Card Fraud
• Online Fraud Risk Assessment
• Identifying Online Fraud
• High-Risk Countries for Online Fraud
• Preventing Online Fraud
• Tips for victims of Online Fraud
• Common Types of Online Fraud
• Online Fraud Resources

Check it out and leave a comment.

Download the latest module here

Two changes are required for merchants using the DPS payment gateway on their osCommerce stores. A new version of the DPS module (which Attitude originally created) is available with the updates here:
http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,2032

To apply the fixes manually find and replace the instance of
https://www.paymentexpress.com/pxpost.asp';
in the module file with:
https://www.paymentexpress.com/pxpost.aspx';

The SSL version also needs to be updated from version 2 to version 3.

Replace:
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_SSLVERSION,2);
with
curl_setopt($ch,CURLOPT_SSLVERSION,3);

Anyone needing the upgrade can contact Attitude.

There are plenty of reasons why a forum and an online store go great together. Integrating a forum with your store allows you to offer support for your products, gives your customers the opportunity to interact, and allows you to talk direct to your customers.

Attitude has developed a low impact integration between popular lightweight forum software PunBB and osCommerce.

A customer can create an account in the store and a forum account is created at the same time. The login and account areas are connected so there is only one login to access the store and the forum.

For information on how you can integrate a forum with your store contact Attitude.

Edition 1 Released

Attitude has kicked off its new osCommerce Watch newsletter. There'll be
updates every month or so, letting you know what's new on Attitude's osCommerce Watch.

If you would like to receive future mailings, go to our subscribers' page or simply enter your email address signup box at the right, below the navigation menu.

Back issues of the newsletter are available at the subscribers' page.

osCommerce 2.2 Milestone 2 051112 Update Released

An update to osCommerce 2.2MS2 has been released to address several issues:

• PHP 5 compatibility updates


• MySQL 5 compatibility updates


• Cross Site Scripting fixes


• HTTP/E-Mail header injection fixes


• Database data input updates


• File Manager file saving fixes


• Split Page Result class fixes

It is recommended for osCommerce 2.2 Milestone 2 store owners to apply the changes to their installations due to the security issues and bug reports that have been fixed. The changes involved are minimal, do not break compatibility with contributions, and further strengthens the security of the shop installation.

Require someone to install this upgrade into your existing store? Attitude offers paid assistance with osCommerce customization.

Attitude osCommerce Templates

"Shop Simple osCommerce Template", is the second of our templates. This features a simpler approach suitable for a small shop. Alot of the features that are not relevant for a small shop have been disabled (e.g. no reviews or notifications).

Check out the main Attitude osCommerce Templates page for a preview of an advanced template coming soon!

Attitude osCommerce Templates

Attitude is releasing a range of basic osCommerce templates as an add-on to our basic installation package. The first is "Blackest Black osCommerce Template".

osCommerce Progress Summary Report: Issue #35: April 17, 2004

Summary of Progress Report

• Success Of The New Support Site


• Summary Report Of The Meeting In Amsterdam


• Service Modules - All Of The Features, None Of The Bloat


• Weight Classes


• Decimal Points and Thousands Separator


• Forum Category Changes


• 2.2 Milestone 3 Progress Report

osCommerce Service Modules

The most interesting piece of news related to progress made in moving towards Milestone 3 is the news on Service Modules. Service modules allow certain functionality (e.g. gzip compression, search engine friendly urls) to be enabled or disabled in a modular fashion.

The main benefits of this change include performance gains (i.e. only necessary database queries and configuration variables included) and the possibility of integrating contributions without touching core files.

Both issues are very important.

In my opinion osCommerce 2.2 MS2 will not handle a high load site unless modified. This should/will not worry the majority of shop owners at all. Having options to remove functionality easily, as well as the improved caching capabilities mentioned in a previous progress report makes MS3 an attractive prospect for a high load site.

At present it is difficult to upgrade a modified osCommerce version. Ideally with the move to a template system and modular format users will be able to modify osCommerce, retaining the ability to upgrade the core files when updates become available.

osCommerce Progress Summary Report: Issue #34: February 26, 2004

Some very interesting stuff in the latest progress report:

Netherlands Meeting Location
Progress Summary Reports
Adding Non-Existing Products To Cart
Workboard: European Legislations Update
Workboard: More Use Of Classes
Authorize.net Payment Module Officially Authorized
Installation Routine Updated
Daily Snapshots Update

The most relevent news for existing users:

1. A bug report and fix for 2.2MS1, 2.2MS2, and 2.2MS3-CVS.
   
   

   It is possible to add non-existing products in the shopping cart which would prevent the customer from removing fake entries from their shopping cart.

   
   See: http://www.oscommerce.com/community/bugs,1617.



2. The addition (in current 2.2MS3-CSV) of a checkbox on the account creation page which satisfies European Privacy Laws.

The continuing development towards Milestone 3 sees the move of database code into a class. This offers improved caching ability - as query results can be cached rather than just blocks of HTML. Anyone who has dealt with a high traffic osCommerce site will have had to look at the efficiency of database calls and probably had to integrate something like this already. This is a great and welcome change to the core code.

CVS Server Migration - osCommerce development server moves from Sourceforge.net to Sunsite.dk.

osCommerce Meeting in the Netherlands - Public meeting on the 28th February 2004 in Amsterdam.

Weekly Summary Issue #33: December 16, 2003

Highlights:

osCommerce 2.2 Milestone 1 SQL Injection Vulnerability
Forum Searching
Development Progress
E-Commerce Regulations

All users of osCommerce 2.2 MS1 should take note of the security notice.

If you are interested in osCommerce development - check out the prior weekly summary ...

Weekly Summary Issue #32: November 10, 2003

This describes some of the goals of Milestone 3 and 4 of osCommerce 2.2. Most exciting for the majority of users is the integration of a template structure in MS3.

Thanks for your feedback.

Contact Attitude for
osCommerce Installation
osCommerce Support, or
osCommerce Customization.

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