SGIA Approaching - upcoming new features!

Hello World!

Forum is pretty quiet these days, but behind the scenes a lot of things are being prepared.
All will be ready for release, as these are the new COOL features we're going to present at the SGIA.
BTW, if you'd like to step by, it will be in Orlando Florida, October 23-25 2013, booth 302 (front left of the hall).

As usual my goal is to make you "hungry", so here's a quick list of what's in there!

NEW EXTERNAL CLIPART SOURCES
It will be possible to upload cliparts into RTD from 3 new sources: Fotolia, Facebook and Instagram.
For Facebook and Instagram users will be able to log into their own account and browse social images of their own.
For Fotolia they'll be able to browse their entire library. There will be options for you to assign a price for those cliparts, as Fotolia isn't free and so you'll have to pay to use them for real

VIRTUAL SAMPLES BY 3D MODELS RENDERING
Cool, super eye candy, and very useful for some specific kind of products!
Long story short, it will be possible to integrate virtual samples in the designer from live 3d models rendering with RTD designs used as mapping textures.
Sample links to come in the near future!

PARAMETRIC DESIGN
Power to the data! This will open a lot of possibilities.
In simple terms, it's the ability of defining an RTD design via XML definitions, and load it right into the designer itself.
You can imagine this as the possibility of creating scripted templates, by having your own mask to collect the data and do the math. And this means also that you can use the API to tell the mask which library elements are available!
Again, sample links to come in the near future!

BRIDGES AND INTEGRATION
A lot of work had been done on API, bridging and Integration tools.
But the best news is I'm finalizing the full support to OpenCart, which is a free Ecommerce system I really like a lot.
This one will be ready for the show too, and to me will also become the default choice we will suggest to users that still have no final websites.
With this integration we basically have a full Storefront/Ecommerce/Online design solution available!

COMPLEX SKIN FUNCITON
This had already been released (announce here ), however will allow great flexibility and almost total control over the designer's GUI.
So, I'm listing it here as well because it will be new for the SGIA

A MILLION FINETUNINGS THANKS TO ACTIVE COMMUNITY'S SUGGESTIONS!
Yeah, if you're reading, this is for you.
90% of the new cool stuffs we have are there thanks to inputs, suggestions, fights and brainstorming.
Our style is unique, but results demostrate how good it is.
So thank you for every minute you've dedicated us!

This is it, for the time being.
And just to let you know, I'm pretty excited about them all!
3D rendering, parametric, scripted skin... a lot of headaches and a summer lost to code it all... but it's tech's heaven!!!

Very eager and excited by the opencart integration, Alex. I hope to use opencart within, say, Joomla CMS...as there are a few 'bridges' that already have opencart as a component with Joomla.

Alex, just for your info: a couple of the bridges for opencart in Joomla are

In no particular order or preference ...

jCart for OpenCart - http://jcart.soft-php.com/shop/jcart
MijoShop - http://mijosoft.com/joomla-extensions/mijoshop-joomla-shopping-cart
AceShop - http://www.joomace.net/joomla-extensions/aceshop-joomla-shopping-cart
JooCart - http://www.soft-php.com/joomla-shopping-cart-system.html

I imagine, as long as the variables of these integrated versions of opencart are unchanged from those normally used in opencart, RTD will be able to work with these shopping carts. If you have any first thoughts on this, I'd love to hear them so we can prepare and plan accordingly.

ONE PROBLEM THAT OPENCART + RTD INTEGRATION MIGHT SOLVE FOR US
ONE PROBLEM we were having is having MULTIPLE PAYMENT METHODS (e.g., 2 paypal accts) configured in our RTD admin, so that we can BRAND OUR PAYMENT PAGES individually on a per-website basis. So if we had, say,
cheapwidgets.com and premierwidgets.com, a buyer would not know that a single company is offering product at various price points (so we aren't 'competing against ourselves' in a product niche online).

Best regards...

Good to know about that.
For now, I'm finalizing the Opencart integration. It will be a big modified Opencart version, as it will integrate RTD tools right within its admin panel. Huge work!

When done and officially launched (which means right after the show) I will be more than happy to revise other extra options like the bridges you mentioned. I know Joomla, though I never used it directly yet.

I am assuming that we will be able to process our RTD open cart orders using open cart's payment modules, instead of the RTD payment configuration. In this way, we can have two open cart websites (shop.oursite.com and cheap.oursite.com) using separate paypal checkout pages (separate company branding on the paypal checkout pages) based upon the OpenCart paypal configuration in each site.

Other than the ability to pull in the RTD Design Tool products, all the shopping cart features and functions of Open Cart will be retained and managed via the Open Cart admin pages...?

Is that your objective?

Quick answer about my objective is: YES, it is!

Any update on item #4, above, "BRIDGES AND INTEGRATION" regarding a release date? Will continue monitoring the forum for information related to OpenCart.

Best Regards.

The annouce was about things "already ready", so Opencart integration is already done, from a technical point of view.
As each user will have different needs it's not really something to be "released" though.
What I have is the working base that will allow to make the needed changes faster, as we already know the core needed functions work.

If you're interested in Opencart integration by knowing we support this, feel free to open a support ticket any moment to review your specific needs and eventually plan a project.

Alex,

Last question about OpenCar/RTD:

If you have a base integration of RTD into OpenCart, why can't that be shared without a support ticket for customization? Why can't we just install the customized OpenCart on our site and work through setting up our RTD products on our own? What would a support ticket provide in the way of help that we cannot complete on our own?

We have already created a theme for opencart for our site in anticipation of having an RTD integrated version available to us.

Thanks in advance for the explanation.

And if I have to build an integration myself, your help document is as insightful as it might otherwise have been, if the links on that page provided the promised related documents (links don't work on this page -->)

http://support.realtimedesigner.com/wiki/doku.php/rtd_manual_ch_13_magento_case_study

The Magento case study was a test we made, by assigning a 3rd party developer API reference to see how it worked for creating custom bridges.
It worked, but was so long ago that the Magento release referred in that doc is to be considered outdated at this point.
We will be removing that page ASAP.

Opencart: that's a cart I discovered personally pretty recently. I really liked that because of its structure, so I decided to invest my own time in creating some basic tools for that.
During this summer I made a couple integrations based on it, and in both case some changes were required (as said, because everyone's needs are different).
So, you can really see Opencart as an ongoing project, which will develop in time. At this stage, I would have no time at all to provide and write some good doc on what I did.
So, the reason for a ticket is not really for a "customized" version. It's just because at this stage I'd like to keep control on who's getting that code, as it will more likely change again from now over.

That said, you can send a ticket and, if you want, I will simply give you the raw files I have so that your developers can play around with it. Project for future is to release it under the sun for everyone in any case.
The ticket will turn into paid support ticket only in case you'll need extra help from us to implement or change it.

Thanks. I experienced a very quick response from support ticket, with the OpenCart/vqMod integration of RTD as a software bundle. Thank you for amazing responsiveness.

RTD/OPENCART - SMALL ISSUE I'M INVESTIGATING

First, let me say, "not difficult to follow the steps you've outlined in the quick instruction document. Very helpful and concise documentation notes."

Having it installed and configured on both the RTD side, and on the OpenCart (1.5.6) website side of things, there appears that there may be a small issue with the vgMod (or else I've made an error somewhere in setting things up correctly).

ISSUE: The New RTD-Related Fields (e.g., "rtd_product_id, rtd_designerlink", etc.) that I have added to the OpenCart DB tables are not being added to the required OpenCart php Arrays.

Evidenced in the Frontend: Error reporting "Undefined index..." which one can experience here -> http://shop.4signs.com
Evidenced in the Backend: Error reporting "
Notice: Error: Unknown column 'rtd_product_id' in 'field list'
Error No: 1054
SELECT DISTINCT rtd_product_id FROM oc_product WHERE rtd_product_id>0 in /home/content/46/11822646/html/shop/system/database/mysql.php on line 50"
---------------------------------------------------------------

Details: OC 1.5.6, PHP 5.3+, vqMod (current release).
site: shop.4signs.com

I will post follow-ups here of our progress, if interested.

As I said the raw files comes without forum support so far (I've already modified that version twice today!).
However, it seems something on your end.
The error is Unknown column 'rtd_product_id' in 'field list', which says those fields are not in the database.
Have you double chekced they really are?
Queries are of this kind:

ALTER TABLE `order_product` ADD `rtd_ord_num` INT( 11 ) NOT NULL DEFAULT '0';
ALTER TABLE `product` ADD `rtd_designerlink` VARCHAR( 1000 ) NOT NULL , ADD `rtd_templateslink` VARCHAR( 1000 ) NOT NULL , ADD `rtd_product_id` INT( 11 ) NOT NULL DEFAULT '0';

I anticipated you might ask about the database tables, and should have addressed that with more certainty in the first post. Below are screen shots showing the details of the added extra fields to the OC database as we have them in phpMyAdmin for the site in question.

Hehehehe... and that's WRONG!
In your sshot you have "rtd_ord_num" added to the "_product" table, and the 3 rtd_* ones into the "_order_product" one.
But as you can see from my statement above, you should had done the opposite. Looks like you mixed the tables and fields

Alex

Okay Alex, I am glad to hear that it should be a simple fix.

Quote
OpenCart MySQL: add to "oc_product": rtd_ord_num int(11) default 0 add to "oc_order_product": rtd_designerlink varchar(1000) default '' rtd_templateslink varchar(1000) default '' rtd_product_id int(11) default 0
The instructions state (quote from "quick_instructions.txt"): to do it as I did it.

You will want to revise your instructions, to reverse the table:fields relationship.

I appreciate your hard work and help, Alex. Thanks for the response and I will post here how well things work once I get the fields assigned to the correct tables as you've indicated.

Best!

Oh yeah... well, I told you that's unofficial
In the meanwhile, my version is growing too.
Added functions to generate product/general templates listing and to import RTD registered users as OC users.
Now working on syncing them.

That all sounds really exciting to us. Cannot wait to see where you take this.