Ideas for 4.5 or beyond

 

 

A few changes I'd like to encourage EI to consider.  I think that some of these would take minutes to implement and almost no testing if you would consider them for 4.5.

 

CP home page:

===========

I note that you removed the monthly sales breakdown (by month, for the current year.)  I think some customers are going to find that a disappointing absence, and I predict being asked to perform custom alterations to restore that.  May we have it back please?

 

In the same report area of the CP home page, a client recently asked that we list Average Sales per month.  May we have that included along with the above please, at least on a switch-selectable basis?

 

Again on the CP home page, a client had us alter it so that dependent upon what permissions a user has, they see part of the home page instead of nothing.  If they are entitled to orders, they see order-related data.  If they are allowed the customer menu, they see such data.  Similarly product data.

 

Site administration tasks I would like to see introduced:
=======================================
- Optionally delete the physical images when a product is deleted

- Clearing cplog files, shipping label purge, cleanup of the xml/exports folder, cleanup of CSV exports, imports, etc. 

 

Generate Storefront Category Navigation:

=============================
Every store we build, providing we remember to do so, we have to alter genCatNavigation.asp with comments about what class and ID names are to be assigned for the proper styling assignments.   Please give us a way to either remember (permanently) the latest settings or to somehow store notes about what our users must specifiy for their custom navigation color/layout to be maintained.

 

Product and Category Admin:
====================

Don't recall the last site we built that did not involve adding one or more fields to the product table or category table.  What we do with those fields varies widely.  They tend to be checkbox on/off fields, or extra text input fields. 

If all you did was to add a few fields, as discussed previously, where these fields would not go anywhere - just make them available for use if we need them - I cannot begin to tell you how much work (and merchant $) that would save.  you don't have to support them elsewhere in the code, just provide some extra fields we can choose to use if and when needed.

 

Pages admin:

==========

Pleaes provide a setting to turn off ALL instances of the "back" button on the content pages.  Frequently we never want to use that button at all and end up editing viewContent.asp to hide/remove that button reference.

 

Newsletter Wizard:

=============

I would banish this and remove the feature altogether. It can be the source of immense grief at the hosting end of these sites.

 

Online Help - Error Finder:

==================

Please add IP number to the main display so that it can become evident when the same IP is the source of multiple error messages.  Those errors may indeed be the result of custom programming, but having the IP present on the main page would be a huge assist.

 

(Thank you for placing a warning on the purge log feature!)