Whiplash is becoming part of my Zen Cart Life!

After an incredibly quiet year Zen Cart changes have dominated my working life for a couple of months now. If it hasn't become obvious to you by now, there have been some major changes by PayPal, Authorize.net, LinkPoint and USPS that has killed off shopping carts around the world. The payment methods were not just a Zen Cart change but changes necessitated by a security problem identified last October on servers. Then USPS changed its API twice last year and for the first time was also obvious. (they make changes usually only once a year).

Additionally, early in 2014, many web hosting companies forced a PHP upgrade to a level that Zen Cart could not support. Some of those companies have backed off and are allowing customers to choose their level of PHP and so putting off the necessity for Zen Cart upgrades. The 1.5.4 version of Zen Cart was finalized and submitted to the PCI Compliance folks in December of 2013. Unfortunately, they really dragged their feet at their paid task of certification and 1.5.3 was released last summer as an interim solution. 

Zen Cart 1.5.4 Released December, 2014

Zen Cart 1.5.4 was approved for PCI Compliance and released by the Zen Cart team in December. So now upgrading begins in ernest. This effects every single Zen Cart site! You must upgrade – whether immediately or when your hosting upgrades their php (thus possibly disabling your site in a number of weird ways). No longer will you have the option of staying on a version prior to 1.5.3 safely. Hacks have not reported in any version prior to 1.5.3 but it starts acting noticeably problematic with 1.3.9h and subtly with 1.5.0 and 1.5.1. You could already have problems and not know it.

I'm busier than a mosquito at a nudist colony (what an image!) right now due to all these changes but I'll be glad to give you more information on upgrade procedures and pricing. Just use the contact form here to contact me.

What's Your Version?

So how can you tell what versions? Log into your admin, go to Tools > Server/Version Info. Your Zen Cart version will be highly visible there. The PHP version is not so visible. Check out the graphic below. If your PHP version is 5.2, that's really not good because your hosting company has done one of two things. Either they haven't upgraded their servers and are very very behind on server maintenance (move your hosting now!) or else they have provided a choice of PHP versions. If they have provided a choice of 5.2, well, that just means they are going to allow you to keep it for a while. Then they will go to 5.4 only because it's safer and you will be forced to upgrade then.

Payment Methods Updating – PayPal, Authorize.net, LinkPoint

Only the new version has the updated payment methods. If you don't upgrade now, you still have to do the updates. I'll be glad to take care of that quickly for you – register and pay here.  If you haven't had this done – you can't sell on your website (really, I promise!).

USPS

There were two changes to the USPS API last year, the first one disabled first class mail and the second one only affects one thing most folks will never notice. The USPS mod is no longer included in the default Zen Cart package. You have to get it from the Zen Cart plugin section, upload the files and reinstall (uninstall first – save your settings separately first and then install). Be warned though, USPS usually releases changes in January so more might be coming soon. If you want your USPS updated now (and I'll follow up for free if there is a need this month), register and pay here for the USPS mod update.