We have just tested an update to our shop software in the test-system.
For updating the live shop it will be offline for a few minutes.
We don’t expect there to be any issues.
GPSR – upgraded packaging
In preparation of the upcoming GPSR regulation in December,
we have changed the our product packaging printing software.
changes made
For imported products the packaging will now also show the full address and email of the manufacturer (in addition to our own company address).
For EU products the barcode label will now also show the full address of the manufacturer,
in case the manufacturer doesn’t already include it in their packaging and for products we have in stock with existing packaging.
Next steps
There will be further modifications needed. Particularly to the online shop software.
We have researched what needs to be done and will start writing a custom extension after returning H-Con.
…first we need a vacation from Eurofurence. 😉
Huge PayPal issue fixed
We seem to have issues accepting #Paypal payments since the old API certificate expired on the 1st of August.
We did update the certificate file but the shop software just silently never saved the update.
Sadly we did not get any errors from the shop software and the ToS of all payment providers prohibit us from clicking the button ourself to test things.
(For fraud prevention.)
A customer just informed us and within an hour we found a workaround for this bug.
Sorry for the inconvenience.
DHL removed Energy-Surcharge for August
The 1.25% DHL „Energy-Surcharge“, that started in 2023 and set to the current value of 1.25% in November, has been set to zero at least for the next two month. We have adjusted our shipping fees to reflect that and continue to monitor the surcharge every month.
Note that independent of this, for the Month of November and December ,the „Peak Surcharge“ of +0,19€ will be in effect again. It was introduced at the same time.
Fixed a bug
Sorry for everyone who had the checkout page never finish loading.
We had this issue before but couldn’t find out what caused it.
TL:DR
It’s fixed and we have done serveral changes to make sure to find out very quickly,
if is or something similar ever happens again.
Long version
Due to now having a backup every time we do any change in the shop,
we think this happened every time we create a testshop to try out an update before applying it to the live shop.
Not only did we fix the result.
we added some tests to make sure we after every change we are informed if the issue was created
and we have an hourly check that send us an email whenever any critical log messages are created in the current day.
Fixed a strange bug
That was strange.
We noticed a number of products from all kinds of manufacturers had the wrong Attribute Group.
This ment they were missing attribute values that we are very sure they had in the past.
In fact they MUST have had these attributes when the labels of their storage boxes where printed. So probably at least before the last Eurofurence, when we changed some ordering around.
Attributes line a „storage box number“ of where to find them, A“country of manufacture“.
A „manufacturer sale price“.
Instructions how to reorder them (to not accidentally order the wrong colour,…).
…
It also ment these products would not show up to be restocked.
Because the Attribute Group they did suddenly have was reserved for invisible products that are options to select when ordering your own toy custom made.
The statistics we use completely ignores these.
We changed these to the right values and found out all the missing information from their labels on storage and our history of past orders with their respective manufacturer.
More sort options
We updates the shop software to offer more option on how to sort the list of products.
So you have an easier time to find what you are looking for.
At the moment only „New Arrivals“ is added but after a while „Best Selling“ and „Most Viewed“ will also be offered.
These take a while to gather enough data.
Improved navigation, filtering and translations
We noticed that visiting the large categories in the shop with a mobile browser can be overwhelming.
So we added headers to the „species/canines“ category to aid in narrowing down the selection if you choose to. In mobile browsers these will be shown below each other instead of a horizontal row.
We have specifically chosen example products that highlight the large variety of different products that can be found.
We also added a number of additional yes/no product attributes to be used in filtering and advanced search.
Another thing we did was to update the general German translation of the shop as many words updated or added in recent updated where missing a translation yet.
Some German and English wording surrounding the use of filters and sorting have been modified to be easier to understand.
fixing 404
In the HTTP log we noticed a number of „404 not found“ errors and fixed them.
Technical background
Turns out that if you visit a link (you don’t have a session yet) to an english category
and the shop automatically switches you to German (because your web browser says that you prefer German to English),
it will look for the English category name on the German server.
We added a number of redirects to fix this for all cases we could find.
there can still be some left over and we will keep our eyes open.
Fixed a strange bug that existed for many, many years
The shop software is really complex.
We don’t write it outself.
It does contain some bugs and that will always be the case to some extend.
The issue
Given that products with their many properties to support filtering, searching, categories, multiple languages, … are complex, we often copy an existing product to create a new one.
Many years ago we noticed an issue with URL redirects of copied products conflicting with the product that was originally copied. Even as both are supposed to have different URLs.
The cause
That visible issue exists for many people and can have dozens of possible reasons.
So finally, after all these years, we stumbled across the reason it existed for us.
Every product has a url_key. That is unique and gets changed automatically by appending „-1“ when copying a product.
It turns out, that a second, invisible property „url_path“ existed. It was not shown or mentioned anywhere at all.
For a limited time in the past, there was a bug.
When copying a product, this invisible property was not changed.
The resulting duplicates created the error messages.
So finally we knew what to look for and could find all affected products with a complex database query. To not risk breaking anything, we fixed every broken product manually in the database instead of deleting the entire table and have it be reindexed automatically.