Hi,
I have not been able to get much done in the past few weeks as I have been on holiday and generally taking a break from developing ANS for a week or two. I am now ready to contiune at full pace!
A few changes since last update are:
- Added Amazon Auto Suggest for search box
- Improved search functionality
- Added lots more options to the admin pages
- Lots more bug fixes
In addition to updating the script I have been “checking out the competition” by looking at the features already available to make sure I have covered most stuff in this product. I have also been digging around some “featured requests” and “wishlist” posts to see what customers really want. I was quite surprised to see our the ANS feature list covered most of the requests, and those that weren’t covered have been added to our “TODO” list for future releases.
The main areas of focus for the next fortnight are to complete RSS functionality, improve the template system and then finish the installer.
Once the installer has been finished, I can then do some real testing on various environments etc…
Development is still going at a good pace, below is a summary of some of the updates since our last update:-
- We decided to add loads more ajax rather than just have an ajax shopping cart. Browsing products, offers, reviews and all paging is now fully working with ajax. Additional code was also updated to allow the store to work even if the user does not have javascript support or if it is disabled. If javascript is disabled then query or seo urls will take effect.
- We have updated our DB class to use ADODB. This took quite so time to migrate but we felt it was better to implement it now rather than after general release. The benefit of using ADODB is faster data access, better caching of common queries and also the ability to in the future “maybe” add support for additional database types. At the moment we are using MySQL only but we recognise some users may prefer SQLite or MSSQL.
- Major work has begun on the admin backend and we are trying to sort out some minor techincal difficulties which would effectively give you guys a “kick ass” feature which I am sure you will love, I am very suprised it has not been done by any of our competitors yet.
- Some work has begun on the installer. We had a clever idea which enables users who switch from Associate-O-Matic to simply upload their existing cfg.saved.php config file, our installer will read the configuration from this file and setup your new ANS store automatically with the same categories and settings!! We have not decided to include this in the installer or admin area yet as we are trying to keep the installer quick & simple.
Well, that’s about it for this update, we will be back around the end of September for the next update.
We really need to get started getting the word out about ANS soon as nobody is reading these updates 
(
Ok, I am going to start pushing out fortnightly updates to keep you up to date with the progress of Associates Niche Store.
The past few weeks have seen me spend about 6 hours a day coding, that’s a lot of time when I also have a full-time job.
I will be taking a two day break this weekend to relax and gather thought’s about what’s to develop on the script.
So, here are just a few things which I have added/fixed or changed to the script:
- Added caching of Amazon XML data – This can be turned on or off and cache will last for one hour. I have seen great speed improvements with this, there’s no real reason to switch it off so I may choose to have it enabled by default.
- Enabled http compression – Enabling this is amazing, instant noticable results. Pages load up to 4x quicker than with no compression.
- Added “tracking” – I can’t really expose any more details just yet as we want to keep some features secret before launch!
- Ajax shopping cart fully completed.
- Custom reviews feature added. Also some great tricks added to make Amazon reviews more useful.
- MySQL database query caching functions added.
- Work begun on ANS backend “admin area” – This is about 50% complete, many more configurable options still need to be added. No support for non US stores will be available just yet.
- Fully completed Amazon Product API signed request updates.
What’s left and when will it be released!??!
The dev code is from today feature frozen. I will only be finishing/expanding existing features. Main areas of development left are theming, backend, installer and error handling.
Although as previously stated I said I was about 80% completed before general release, the remaining 20% of development could take me a further 2-3 months. Further updates will hopefully give you a more acurate time.
Back to work, and you will hear from me in another fortnight!
Associates niche store – An Amazon affiliate store script.
18/07/09 – v0.1 has been in development for about 6 months now, we are about 80%
completed with the script and hope to have some more details released very soon.
ASSOCIATES NICHE STORE WILL BE FREE UNTIL WE REACH v1.0!
Here are some basic details of what to expect for v0.1
- basic category browsing
- item sorting
- search engine
- search engine friendly urls
- built-in shopping cart (ajax)
- mysql backend
- admin pages for customization
Plus lots more…