My Shadow Self

I’ve had a recent issue with an install of OpenCart 1.5.xx where the checkout simply would not work over HTTPS (secure server).

I had the correct setting in my admin panel (Use SSL: yes), I had my (overly) expensive SSL certificate installed on my server but checkout still went to a HTTP url and forcing HTTPS by changing the url caused all AJAX to fail. This meant no cart…

Days went by with lost customers and hair until I decided to check out the coding (pun intended – but you’re not here to be entertained).

…and there it was…

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OpenCart is awesome – truly it is.

It allows small businesses to sell online and it allows us web developers to enable small businesses to sell online in exchange for money.

I, nay, WE are very grateful for the work done by the developers for free to make it such a great product, for free, that we can collaborate on and make even greater…

But it has some pretty major SEO flaws – flaws the lead developers claim to be features, not bugs, and they claim it doesn’t matter anyway so I wouldn’t expect them to be fixed any time soon.

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UPDATE: I have found a slight bug in the below code causing duplicate URLs. I am working on fixing it asap

UPDATE: Turns out it’s not my bug, but a “feature” of OpenCart – I will be posting my fix for this “feature” and an angry blog post later

It’s been a while, granted, but I’ve been busy so you’ve had to wait. You impatient lot you.

I have been overwhelmed at the response my Auto relate mods for OpenCart 1.4.x got – one common consensus was that 1.4.x was dead and I’d wasted my time! No bother, I knew I’d be working on OC 1.5.x soon enough and I could redo the code to suit the new coding techniques employed in the new version of OpenCart.

And that is what I have done. But not just that, I’ve altered the concept to make it much more…well, more.

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There is an update to this extension for OpenCart 1.5.x here

My previous posts about relating products by Manufacturer in Opencart and adding a random fallback have proved very popular indeed. I’m quite overwhelmed with the response in comments and by email.

Anyway, as with any great mod, there is someone who is never satisfied. It seems that having automatic fallbacks to Manufacturer and then randomisation simply wasn’t good enough for the likes of Miguel! Oh no!

Miguel asked if I could extend this mod so it would relate by Manufacturer, THEN by Category and THEN by randomisation – and you know what, that’s a bloody good idea matey!

So that’s the code that I share with you today.

Its a simple copy and paste job to get this into your own site, but as always back everything up first.

Oh, and this is for OpenCart 1.4.9.x and WILL NOT WORK on 1.5. I will, intime, release some 1.5 mods but for now, I’m working on a 1.4.9.x install.

Right then, to the code:

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It took me ages to figure this problem out, but it was a very simple fix really.

I was trying to install News Module in OpenCart 1.4.9.5, but it wouldn’t enable at all, nor would it save anything I added.

Easy fix, I opened up the Admin/view/template/module/news.tpl and found:

<?php echo $action;?>

and changed it to:

<?php echo $action;?>&amp;token=<?php echo $_GET['token'];?>

Quick sharp simple Heath Robinson fix, but it worked so I’m happy enough.

If you’re having a simlar problem with another OpenCart module, this might well be the answer.

fin

There is an update to this extension for OpenCart 1.5.x here

Further to my post yesterday about automatically relating products by manufacturer if no related products have been defined in OpenCart Admin, here’s a way to add a further fallback to random products. This means regardless of whether you’ve been lazy or not, there will always be something for the Up-sell in related products.

If you’ve already made my previous mod, you’ll need to replace everything you’ve already done with this mod. Not that there’s a great deal of difference, just that duplicating will cause errors.

If you haven’t made the previous mod, simply do as instructed below.

Let us begin…

UPDATE: You can now have this MOD fallback to related by category THEN fallback to random products with this code here!

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