[DBTech] DragonByte eCommerce 3.4.0

Update highlights

This is a re-release of v1.3.4 (which has also been patched) to fix an issue that could lead to data loss.

Given following scenario:

• Another user's order is pending
• The current viewing user is the owner of a product in the other user's cart (and thus can't purchase it)
• The current viewing user visits the order log in the Admin control panel

In the above scenario, any order items whose products are owned by the current viewing user would be silently removed from the other user's cart.

The reason this occurred is that every time the order total is calculated for pending orders, the order items are validated to ensure that the user has the permission to buy the item in question.
This permission check did not ensure it was taking the buyer's permissions into account, so permissions were checked incorrectly.

The problem only revealed itself because of the Order log in the AdminCP, which is currently the only way it is possible to view another user's current pending order.

To clarify: The existing v1.3.4 release has also been patched, so if your eCommerce license has expired since the release of v1.3.4, you can re-download that version to obtain the fix.


Complete Change Log

Fix: Fix a race condition where viewing another user's pending order could remove their items from cart

Update highlights

This update features some important changes in relation to VAT and PayPal.

If you sell your products via PayPal, and use accounting software like QuickBooks to manage your bookkeeping, it would previously have been difficult to utilise the VAT features in eCommerce while maintaining records in your accounting software. Transactions would either fail to import or be imported with incomplete data.

This happened because eCommerce would specifically tell PayPal how much sales tax to add separately to each transaction, bypassing any sales tax rates you set up in your interface.

There is now a new setting for controlling whether the order cost sent to PayPal is inclusive of tax. If this setting is turned off, PayPal will use the sales tax rates as defined in your PayPal account settings to apply sales tax.

If a valid VAT ID was added to the order, eCommerce will tell PayPal to not add any tax to the order, unless the person placing the order is from the same country as your business.
If both the seller and the customer is located in the same country, VAT should always be added and each party will be able to reclaim the VAT from the tax authority.

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The next version (v1.4.0) will have even more updates with regards to VAT. The tentative feature list:

• Sales tax ID will be stored in the address book, rather than the order. This means recurring customers won't have to keep re-entering their VAT ID every time they place an order.
  
  
• If VAT is enabled in the tax settings, addresses with VAT IDs will be placed under moderation and appear in the "Approval Queue" in XenForo. You can then look up the VAT ID and see whether the user entered their correct business address.
  
  
• A new user group permission will be added to allow chosen user groups to bypass the address moderation requirement, if you do not wish / need to use the address moderation feature.
  
  
• If an address is under moderation, a notice will appear on the checkout screen letting them know they will still be charged VAT until the address is approved.
  
  
• Addresses with approved VAT IDs will not be editable and customers will not be able to delete them from their address books. This is to prevent older order records from being rendered incomplete.
  
  
• Addresses will become searchable / editable in the AdminCP.

The goal of this update is to ensure that your business is compliant with all tax authorities and their varying record keeping requirements.

I'm aiming to make the update as frictionless as possible for your existing customers. All past sales tax IDs will be imported into the corresponding address entries. The existing form field for entering a VAT ID during checkout will simply be changed to apply to the currently selected billing address, rather than the order itself.

As always, it's not possible to provide an ETA for this update.


Complete Change Log

Feature: Add new setting for controlling whether tax amount is included in the amount sent to the payment processor
Change: Update sales tax calculation to only exclude sales tax if VAT is enabled and the user is from a different VAT country
Fix: Fix product description not saving
Fix: Fixed an issue where add-on products would generate an alert if the user is watching the category

Update highlights

This update resolves an issue where the "Extend licenses" feature would get stuck in an endless loop if more than 1,000 licenses matched the criteria.


Complete Change Log

Change: Back-end improvements to utilise new XF 2.1 method of deleting content
Fix: Fixed an issue where the "Extend licenses" functionality could get stuck in an endless loop

Update highlights

This update primarily focuses on making changes to the Structured Data for product information pages, to improve compatibility with rich search results on Google. Multiple optional fields are now added, and the correct product icon URLs are now used for product images.

There were also a few important changes and fixes that necessitated a speedier release. Previously, store credit applied to an order would cause two things to occur; the store credit was not taken into consideration when submitting the final cost to PayPal, and the sales tax amount submitted to PayPal would be incorrect in the event that store credit was used in the order.

Both of these issues have now been resolved, so the correct order total is used.


Complete Change Log

Change: Update the way PayPal tax amount is added
Change: Structured Data changes for Product information pages
Fix: Fix missing order cancel route in the front-end
Fix: Fixed an issue in which store credit is not taken into consideration when submitting an order to PayPal

Update highlights

This update features an improvement to the license expiry reminder system; previously, renewing a license or changing its expiry date manually would not reset the "expiring soon" and "has expired" reminders. Which it now does.

A new feature has been added to the pricing tier (digital) / product variation (physical) system, where you can add a short description that will be displayed on the pricing choice screen as a little hover icon.

Speaking of pricing tiers / product variations, the UI for managing them has been completely reworked. It was always sub-optimal, especially on mobile devices, but with the addition of the above description feature it became urgent to rework this.
Now, each tier / variation uses the standard form element styling, with a new header to divide them.

You can see an example of the new look here:


Lastly, an issue was identified where attempting to change a product's prefix via Inline Moderation would fail to work. It was quite important to fix, especially in the event that you might want to edit Prefixes for Multiple products at some point...


Complete Change Log

Feature: Changing a license's expiry date (manually or via renewal) will now also reset its reminder states
Feature: Add "description" to a pricing tier, which will be shown in the pricing list as a hover icon
Change: Reworked UI for product pricing tiers / product variations
Fix: Fix updating prefixes via inline moderation

Update highlights

After a lengthy beta / RC period, this version has now gone Gold!

This update adds a new feature: Ability to set a custom product icon size! The XenForo Options have been updated to add this new setting, which will also resize your product icons in the product display. You will need to re-upload your product icons to avoid them looking stretched if you want to use a bigger icon, though.

An issue was discovered where moderator action alerts would not display to non-moderator users due to the way these alerts were stored. The short version of the technical explanation; the alerts were associated with the content, rather than the user receiving the alert, thus if the user could no longer view the content (such as a soft deleted product), the alert would not show.

Where possible, I've updated the existing stored alerts, and where this is not possible I have simply removed any such alerts from the system.

Lastly, it is now possible to save an empty tagline or description when editing a product.


Complete Change Log

Feature: The product icon size is now controllable in the XenForo Options
Change: Change the way Moderator Action alerts are stored
Fix: Fixed an issue where it was not possible to save an empty tagline or description when editing a product

Update highlights

This update adds a new feature: Filterable product fields! If you have configured any product fields, there will now be a new option in its interface for whether this field will show up in the "Filter" drop-down on the product list.

It's recommended that you do not enable this feature for text input fields, as the field data must match exactly. It currently does not do a partial search when deciding whether any products match the filter.

Also, a couple reported bugs have been resolved.


Complete Change Log

Feature: Product Fields can now be filtered on the product list, if the field is set to filterable
Fix: Fixed an issue where buying only addon products could produce a server error
Fix: Fixed product licenses page resulting in a 404 error

Update highlights

This update fixes an issue where adding an attachment to a download with multiple "Download Versions" would display this download incorrectly in the drop-downs when using the Simplified download interface.


Complete Change Log

Fix: Fixed an issue where adding an attachment to only one download version would show up incorrectly in the Simplified Download interface

Update highlights

This update adds even more features aimed at increasing sales and user friendliness.

Highlighted Pricing Tier: Want to gravitate customers towards a certain pricing tier? You can highlight one pricing tier per product, emphasising it in the purchase overlay and adds a "Most value!" label.

Improved add-on purchase flow: Prior to this update, if someone purchased a product and one of its add-on products at the same time, they would have to manually associate them in the license list. Now, the system will remember the "parent order item" and assign the license accordingly once payment has completed.

Improved post-purchase redirect: After purchase, if the order contains no physical products, the user will be directed to their license list rather than their order list.

A few bugs in the upgrade from XF 2.0 have also been resolved.


Complete Change Log

Feature: Purchasing add-on licenses at the same time as the parent license will now auto-assign them
Feature: Added option to "highlight" certain pricing tiers, emphasising them and adding a "Most value!" label
Change: Change return URL when an order contains only digital products
Fix: Added missing moderator log phrase
Fix: Fixed phantom reaction bar in downloads if the product had reactions
Fix: Fixed upgrade steps not converting reaction_users to JSON
Fix: Fixed incorrect column definition for reactions for fresh installs

Update highlights

Pretty juicy update for you this time, aimed at increasing recurring revenue. It has two main features:

License Expiry Reminders: Customers who purchase digital products can get an email reminder when their license is about to expire. They will also receive an alert on the forum when their license is about to expire, and another alert when their license has expired.

Easy License Renewals: If users have any expired licenses, they will see a "Renew Licenses" button on top of their license list. Clicking that button opens an overlay where they can easily renew their expiring or expired licenses.

As with all other emails, these emails integrates with the "Email Stop" system in XF2, so users can opt out without needing to log in. The alerts can be opted out of through the normal alert preferences in XenForo.

Furthermore, the checkout process has been improved by allowing users to change their update duration for products they are purchasing. No more need to delete the product from cart and re-adding it!


Complete Change Log

Feature: Now optionally sends an email to users when their licenses are about to expire
Feature: License expiry reminder alert on-site
Feature: Separate alert when a license has fully expired
Feature: "Renew Licenses" button in the license list (also linked in the email), lists all soon-to-be-expired or already expired licenses
Feature: Ability to change license length for a product on the Checkout screen
Change: Updated the cart item list to be more mobile friendly