Kryptronic Software Support Forum

Anything you can do to improve Apache performance is nice.  I would recommend enabling keepalive for sure.

I'd wait and take a look at what we did with V9 before you go down the CDN route.  It's probably not needed going forward.

We are pretty firm on a release date sometime in July or very early August.  We've got a number of vacations we're working around throughout June and July.  The software will either drop during the third week in July (19-25), or in August, likely on the 3rd, if it pushes that far.  It's a balancing act of getting the software out quickly for our clients like yourself, while at the same time making sure we have the staff available to support a full release.

The software at this point is 90% done, with some backend ordering functions to add into it.  We still need to fully test the amazon and ebay modules on some production sites on which V9 is currently running.  The software has been in production on a few sites for about a month now, and in total has seen appropriately 4 million pageviews at this point among them.  Here are two of the sites.  Each using skins designed by Gladhill at StylinStrings Media:

http://angelwholesale.co.uk/ (Upgraded from V8)
http://www.butterflyreleasecompany.com/ (Upgraded from V7)

Also, check out the DEV site below, but be aware that we're working on it, so at any time it might not look right, because it's a work in progress.  Note this is the only site that runs a sidebar/sidemenu in desktop/wide view.

https://kryptronic.com/DEV/public/ (NEW, compare to V8 demo at https://kryptronic.com/demo)

Luckily, only one issue related to the completely redesigned frontend was reported with all those views. We expected a few more, actually, due to the nature of the CSS3, flexbox and the responsive grid system in general.  So, we got lucky in that regard.  FYI, the issue reported was on a government-issued Android device (read: Obama Phone) acquired in early 2013 which was running a buggy version of the Android native Internet app version 4.2.  With a little grid re-work, and reorganizing the flexbox CSS, that was fixed and we have had zero issue reports since.

Remember, Google did an algorithm change at the same time they did their mobile update, so that change could have impacted your site.  Regarding SEO in version 9, we did a lot.

All of the core V8 functions are there, but now in V9, the content is optimized for SEO.

For example, now that we're using flexbox, we've shuffled the content to the top of the source so it's the first thing the spiders see.  Another thing done was to eliminate the use of <p> tags and expand the use of <h2> tags throughout the system.  Eliminating <p> tags in generated content (like the template and widgets) has resulted in the spiders picking up and using the actual user entered content (HTML content, product descriptions, etc).  A lot of advancements have been made.

V9 has been fully tested against Google Page Speed Insights and all recommendations were followed and implemented (except one, we can't delay JS and CSS loading without getting a FOUC).  Google Page Speed Insights reports 95% at desktop mode and 92% at mobile mode on our latest tests.  That's up from 40-60% on average for most V8 sites (V8 was built before Google Page Speed Insights came into the picture).  All CSS and JS is linked to in minified format, and delivered with unminified source.  Image use was reduced by integrating all icons into sprites.

Nearly all of the JavaScript used by the system was replaced with customized, responsive-enabled JS.  We dropped hundreds of kilobytes from the JS library, and now third party scripts are limited to just:

jQuery V2 with easing, json and ui plugins (loaded on every page)
jQuery easyzoom (loaded on product pages when zoom is enabled)
jQuery fancybox (loaded on product pages when popups are enabled)
jQuery jqplot (used in the management interface when report graphs are loaded)
jQuery trumbowyg (used in the management interface when the WYSIWYG editor is loaded)

Those are loaded, plus the common and frontend or backend scripts that are written by Kryptronic and leverage jQuery.  All in all we dropped over 30% of the page weight, and with the new display system, actually shaved 70% off all average page load times.  Rendering is much quicker as well, considering that there are no tables used to grid-out displays.

We've seen traffic and conversions increase on the test sites I've linked to above.  Average sales are up, average length of time on site, incoming traffic from organic sources, etc, etc, etc.  One was a V8 upgrade, the other a V7.  The admins are loving the responsive management interface as well.  They can manage the whole site from a bus stop if they want.  I forgot to mention EVERYTHING was redesigned and went responsive.  That includes admin.

I've ranted enough.  Can you tell I'm excited about this one?

(1) If you're running banners, you should make them in three sizes now.  You can start on that.  Wide at 1100px wide, mid at 900px wide, and thin at 600px wide.  The banners are responsive, so make use of that.

(2) Your product images will need shuffling.  We're only using two sizes in V9 - small and large.  Actually they're large and extra large.  Make sure your small images are at least 500px wide and your large images are around 900px wide (if you plan on using zooming maybe a bit bigger).  Also, square images look very good, but regardless V9 will look best if all images are the same height.

(3) Category images need to go a bit bigger too.  500px wide like the small product images work.

Assuming you're using complex HTML in your HTML pages and product/category descriptions, you might want to clean that up a bit...

(4) Get rid of any images that have any type of width assigned, and instead use 'style="max-width: 100%;"' or even better 'class="kimgstrech"' to stretch the image, or 'class="kimgnice"' to make the image's max width it's actual max width.  Or 'class="kimgnicecenter"' to center it and make it play nice.

(5) You can also drop any kryptronic-specific class tags - either they've all been renamed or dropped.  All content is wrapped in a class named 'kwrap' and all tags should be standard within that wrapper (ie. use <p> not <p class="someclass">).  The only thing you might want to use a class on would be a table, if you really really need one.  Make the table class="ktable" and that will make it responsive and you'll be good to go.  Basically clean it up and you're good to go there.

You might want to look at the file below.  This is the core CSS file for V9 and will give you a bunch of info on all the classes, grid, widgets, etc.  This is the unminified version on the DEV site:

https://kryptronic.com/DEV/public/media … ss/all.css

Everything else will either be cleaned up using the importer, or goes away when you install V9.  By goes away, I mean things like mobile-formatted descriptions, etc.  They're obsolete now.  You might even want to start thinking on how your skin will look.  This is a radical change and in order to make the most of it, you'll want a responsive skin.  The stock one with an admin-based logo change is probably sufficient for a lot of people, but a unique design is optimal.  If you'd like us to get you in touch with Gladhill, open a ticket and we can get a job going for you on a skin.

Looking forward to the next release Nick please say the ability to export all tables in admin simultaneously using check boxes is a new feature and that's me happy.

This new version looks very slick. Can't wait to use it

I understand.  We're releasing this software somewhere in the timeframes mentioned above.  I doubt we'll have time to create a module that does what you're looking for in the interim.

I do know that MySQL has functionality which lets you dump tables to CSV files via the command line.  Your requirement could be fairly simply accomplished by writing a shell script that uses that functionality, and executing it on a cron schedule.

(1) Can be handled with the current system using SQL to update the products en-mass if you like.

(2) Digital downloads are supported in the current version, including PDF downloads.

1. Interesting concept: Option volume-based pricing type.  I'll think on that.

2. You would have to checkout to get a download purchase.  If you simply want a PDF download field, that's easy to do.  Maybe we'll add one, but I'm sure there's a post out here on how to do it.

Is V9 going to have user reviews option?  If so, will the reviews be microdata encapsulated?

Just to kind of remind us this is coming...

When are we going to get a look-see at the backend?

Nick, this is looking really good so far! Is there any chance shipping options can be combined to include both realtime quotes and product based flat rate shipping on the product level in the same cheapest to most expensive order?