In terms of new features, I’ve added public key encryption for storage of CC details. With the recent news about WordPress blogs hacked on a shared host (http://blogcastfm.com/announcements/warning-massive-number-of-godaddy-wordpress-blogs-hacked-this-weekend/), and various comments about many people on shared web hosts who don’t secure their WP config files properly, it seems prudent to provide the facility for more security for users of the manual CC payment feature. YAK settings are now split into 4 separate screens (General, Shipping, Sales Tax, Advanced) — on the Advanced tab you’ll find a button for generating a public/private key. The public key can be used for encrypting CC numbers, and the private key for decrypting. I’ll be adding some more detail to the FAQ at some point soon.

I’ve also added the facility to require a login for certain products, added more values to the third-party-integration event, and also incrementing item quantity (rather than displaying an error message) when the customer clicks on the buy button for an item which is already in the cart (configurable, of course). The biggest feature addition is the first version of sales tax calculations. This works in a vaguely similar way to shipping (except without the zones), but also provides for federal and state based taxes for the US. If your country has a similar requirement (state versus federal taxes), let me know, and hopefully I can fit that into a subsequent release.

• fix an incompatibility problem with Contact Form 7.
• fix a problem with Google Analytics tag ()

This release fixes a major problem in WordPress MU, and also a minor issue with the sidebar widget. Which reminds me, I really must update the Handbook to include details on using the Widget. If you’ve purchased the handbook in the past, expect a copy in the (e)mail in the next day or 3…

Release 1.7.1 managed to introduce a couple of bugs — my automated tests didn’t quite provide the safety net I was hoping for, in this case. Hence, versions 1.7.2 and 1.7.3 include the following fixes:

* fix a problem with PayPal IPN
* fix a problem with Accounts Receivable payment
* fix a problem with (manual) Credit Card payment
* reduce memory usage
* add instant update of pricing promotions in the first page of the cart (after hitting update)

Note: I’ve had one report of weird issues when upgrading. It doesn’t seem to break anything, but please let me know if you do have problems, because I’m yet to identify exactly what the cause might be.

• Fixing a problem with Authorize.net url
• Add checkbox for Authorize.net test mode
• Separate PayPal Pro return url (from Standard)
• Refactor payment types into separate classes to allow for easier extensibility
• Minor change to ipaddress sent to PayPal (only affects internal testing)
• Add ‘demo’ payment gateway
• Fix promo date saving problem
• Fix promo price calculation (causing problems in PayPal)
• Automatically create the Checkout page on activation
• Automatically create the “products” and “default” categories on activation
• Fix (hopefully) an odd error_log problem in certain environments

Enjoy!

At the moment, I’d say this feature is “beta” quality. The full YAK test suite runs without problem, but I haven’t really spent a huge amount of time checking that there are no issues between multiple blogs. More testing is definitely recommended for anyone who decides to enable this on an MU install…

A few years ago, back when the project was a lot less mature, I had one tentative query along those lines. But I wasn’t in a position back then to do anything about it. I am now, but I wonder is there a market for it? After all, every “man-and-his-dog” has a hosted shopping cart solution — and some are a lot more comprehensive than YAK is, even now.

Gut feeling says, probably no, but perhaps worth asking the question…?

I’m finding I have little time to work on YAK lately, for anything other than for bug fixes. There are a bunch of features I’d like to add, but unfortunately no time to work on them.

If you’re interested in helping out, and/or have features you want to add yourself — get in touch.

• fix table charset/collation so table creation is consistent with WordPress
• add Swedish translation provided by Marco
• add Polish translation provided by Marciej
• fix more PayPal shipping issues
• new facility to add product types from the Products screen and when editing a post
• fix a problem with zero-total orders still being submitted to the payments gateway
• if the customer is logged into WordPress, record the user_id against the order (for future changes)
• add the facility to choose the type of order number: either generated (randomised) or plain sequence (linked to the order record).
• change [yak_quantity] and [yak_price] tags so that they also take params (product type and product id), for example: [yak_quantity large 25]
• fix a problem with single-quotes (‘) in addresses

I’ve also added a bunch of Selenium tests to automate the testing process, and hopefully eliminate any bugs that creep in when relying on manual tests.

I think the reviewer probably has a valid point in regard to user-friendliness, but otherwise hasn’t appeared to put a huge amount of thought into his review. In fact, it was negative enough that I feel the need to post a rebuttal both here and in a comment on his post. I don’t mind constructive criticism (as I said, I tend to agree on the user-friendliness front), but I’m less than impressed with criticism that’s based on a fundamental lack of research.

Here’s my comment (hopefully it doesn’t come across as too defensive…):

A question for you: did you happen to scroll down the YAK project page (here: http://www.briggs.net.nz/log/projects/yak-for-wordpress/)?

In the distant past, I was one of the editors of a (printed) technical journal in the US. Generally if we were reviewing a product, we’d contact the company in advance for review copies (giving them the opportunity to provide additional information if they wanted). In this case, and for any future reviews you decide to write, I believe you’d be better served contacting the developer (or developers) and give them that same opportunity. It is perhaps a better form of journalism not to rubbish a project or product without actually doing a little research in advance…

Since then, I’ve come across a few negative comments about YAK on various forums — interestingly, in none of these cases has the poster actually contacted me. All too similar to the original troll.

The usual process, when there’s been a real issue with YAK, is that someone lets me know, I fix said issue (or otherwise try to resolve), and release a new version. So far, I’ve only been notified about one legitimate hole in the code (quickly fixed), and (at least, as far as I can recall) haven’t left any major flaws outstanding for great lengths of time. So I haven’t been enormously worried about the odd malcontent.

That said, I occasionally google to see what’s being said out there, and came across the following gem (from the aforementioned plugin developer).

If you want to throw up an image with a price in a page or a post then by all means use YAK. But if you want the real deal then [competing-plugin] is built on years of e-Commerce knowledge and has plenty of important features for people wanting to SELL Online – such as the ability to interface with many payment gateways, the ability to interface with shipping companies, and much much more

(Note: I’ve removed the name of the plugin because I’ve thus far tried to avoid actually naming the individual involved).

This was posted sometime after May last year, but I do feel the need to make a couple of comments, even though it’s almost a year old:

1. What’s your definition of important feature? Get a group of users together, and I guarantee they won’t come up with the same list.
2. YAK now supports a number of payment gateways (PayPal standard, PayPal Pro, Authorize.net and basic Google Checkout integration)
3. Okay, it doesn’t directly interface with shipping companies — but the shipping calculation is relatively flexible, and I’m always open to suggestions.
4. YAK as a project has now been actively (if intermittently) developed for 3 years. So I’d say it also fulfills the assertion: “built on years of e-Commerce knowledge”.

UPDATE: here’s another interesting comment (by someone called Mccormicky) which I came across after posting this:

Yak cart is another you might consider if you don’t mind repairing tables in mysql. I did it and I am no expert.
Yak is not that supported either-there isn’t even an onsite tutorial for setting it up and the readme contains nothing about where to put the hooks! I was amazed.

It looks like fairly obvious trolling, given that (at the time it was posted) there was certainly a basic tutorial for YAK setup, and at the time I don’t recall being contacted about any “table repair” problems. Weird.

YAK is now (almost officially) a three year old project. I started the SourceForge project (March 06) about a month or so after I’d started mucking around with the code itself. It started, from a rather simple idea, and over time has turned into a product that, I believe, is reasonably competitive in terms of features. Not perfect, by any stretch of the imagination, but good enough for a part-time project that has only had time to evolve, rather than be properly designed.

YAK looks a bit like an “also-ran” compared to the number of downloads for the alternative cart plugins on WordPress, but when you look at the real figure (currently 11,635) it’s actually almost holding its own. Not quite so sure why it rates so low (I certainly haven’t received an enormous number of complaints, and I’ve attempted to fix most, if not all, of the bugs that have been reported) — could be the lack of free documentation, or something else I haven’t thought of.

Still, to the few thousand or so people (I’m guessing) who have amassed 11,000+ downloads over the last few years, to the (unfortunately smaller ) number who have bought the handbook, and the various contributors who have offered patches, bug fixes, translations, suggestions, etc — thanks for all your support.

• a basic xml feed for products
• remote function for retrieving the content of a product from another YAK store
• Accounts Receivable payment type
• Authorize.net payment type
• PayPal Payments Pro payment type
• fix zip code/state handing in PayPal for US addresses
• add state to address form (automatic switch between state and region depending upon country code)
• add more filtering to the order administration page
• Norwegian translation, provided by Tom Boersma
• updated French translation, provided by Romaric Drigon

Bug fixes include:

• price formatting in confirmation message
• minor problem in reports
• layout issue with out-of-stock message
• minor problem with 2.7 layout
• fix dodgy address handling, explicitly store country codes for PayPal address problem

Download as usual from the WordPress Extend site, here.

At the moment, this release includes: a basic xml feed and the facility to pull product details from those feeds into another YAK installation; an accounts receivable payment type; support for Authorize.net and PayPal Payments Pro; along with a few bug fixes.

Note: this is a beta release, so test well if you want to install on a production site.