Meet CS-Cart & Multi-Vendor 4.10.1 with New Checkout and Product Variations

Hello! We have released CS-Cart and Multi-Vendor 4.10.1. The full list of changes is long, so this article will cover only the major changes, and how to start using them.

Checkout: One-Step and Customizable

The checkout page has been reworked from the ground up. We have prepared a separate article and a video about new checkout. Here are the key changes:

• Customers are no longer forced through multiple steps. They immediately see all the relevant fields and fill them out in any convenient order.
• You can tweak the new checkout page as you see fit. Use the block manager to add and remove profile fields, move parts of the page, hide them, or change their looks.

When you upgrade to 4.10.1, the checkout page won’t change without your permission. To get the new checkout page, go to Add-ons → Manage add-ons, and uninstall the Step-by-Step Checkout [Deprecated] add-on.

Product Variations: More Powerful, and out of Beta

Variations help you manage similar products with slight differences (for example, in color or other properties) and present them to your customers. In version 4.10.1, we have reworked variations from the ground up:

• A brief demonstration has everything that a new CS-Cart user needs to work with the new variations.
• This post at the forum is for those who used the old variations; it covers the important changes in 4.10.1.

Product variations are now out of beta, so you may expect more third-party add-ons to support them. We’ll continue improving variations, but their architecture will remain stable from now on.

After the upgrade to 4.10.1, you’ll be asked to convert existing variations (and option combinations, if you wish) to new variations. The conversion is easy and automatic. We would have done it ourselves during the upgrade, but we needed to let you know what options we’d be converting, and to what features.

Stores and Pickup Points: New Add-on to Replace Store Locator

Previously, CS-Cart had an add-on called Store Locator. Its functionality was limited: it only allowed you to mark the positions of your stores on the map and show them to your customers.

That add-on has been extended greatly and renamed to Stores and pickup points. It now allows you to create a “Pick up from store” shipping method, with manually-defined shipping times and rates. For more information about what the add-on can do, check its description in the documentation.

Other Changes

• Maps and Geolocation add-on introduced: a new add-on to handle all integrations with maps and geolocation services. To learn more about what it does, check its description in the documentation.
• Conversion of abandoned carts to orders added: if you reach out to customers who added something to the cart but then didn’t complete the order, you might find this functionality convenient. Admins can now create an order from an abandoned cart in a couple of clicks.
  
  For that reason, the Abandoned / Live Carts page was moved from Marketing to Orders.

• jQuery upgraded to 3.3.1: previously, CS-Cart used an older version of jQuery, and some security auditors listed it as insecure because of that. Although there was no actual vulnerability in CS-Cart, we have still updated jQuery to make sure that PCI DSS vulnerability scanners don’t give false positives just because of jQuery version number.
• Management of privileges improved: the privileges themselves are the same, but it’s easier to enable and disable them for administrator user groups now.

• Storefronts no longer have separate URLs for HTTP and HTTPS: this is a rather technical change that simplifies the interface and configuration files. For more information, please check the corresponding forum topic.
• Easy way to hide a block on mobile devices added: hiding blocks only on mobile devices, tablets, or desktops was possible before, but now it’s much more convenient. Just go to Design → Layouts, open the settings of any block, and use the buttons there.

• HiDPI Displays Support add-on improved: here’s what changed from the technical standpoint and for administrators. After the upgrade, CS-Cart will ask administrators to run the automatic image restoration—it will ensure that your existing images look as best as they can on all devices.
• Free shipping label added: now, if a product has the “Free shipping” checkbox ticked on the “Shipping properties” tab, then the product will have the “Free shipping” label next to it on the storefront.

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The upgrades to version 4.10.1 are already available. As usual, for the first few days after the release we hand out upgrade packages in limited numbers, but then we lift that restriction. So if you don’t see this upgrade in your Upgrade Center yet, please try again later.