The new feature to offer email as a login needs special consideration.
 
In my testing it causes a few problems as far as the customer can see and some for admins..
 
1) existing customers username remains the same. Do we ask everybody to change their username to their email or do we manually change it for them?
2) Login template block remains the same (no mention of using email as a username). The registration template (if you use the latest version of the template) does show in brackets Username (email)* but the login blocks don't.
3) If you decide to change to email login, the email field is then required to be entered twice by the customer at registration but does not have a verify script to match them.....
 
Essentially I'd like the username field (if being used as login) to be the same field as a registration entry and be the users email, it is treated seperately as i can see which leaves too much room for error and confusion. For example, I removed the email field required for registration (as it's already used as a username) but then when you go to place an order, this username(email) is not used in the cart poersonal details "email address", so they have to enter it again there. Also, the username (if email) does not list as the users email address in the admin either.......
 
Anybody else tried this and know what I mean?

oops, wrong forum category- sorry

Are there any settings for this in the admin panel, or is it just that the filter no longer rejects names with @?
 
Your points are valid, and Viart need to be a bit more consistant in how they implement features.
 
DickS

Dick, I don't mind waiting another 6 months for upgrades as long as when I upgrade it works properly. So far with this release almost every new feature is inadequate and then other things get broken.
I'm done with being one of the first to test updates- no more (which is what I said last time)

Regarding the admin handling of username. Now you just choose to have one or the other (alpha numeric or email). And that's where the feature ends, no consideration for existing customers or tagging the email (username) as the actual email of the customer. Viart have got to think more like a new customer and stop being sloppy. The support guys/girls are great still eg Anjula so i don't want to make them feel bad though.

I had to lengthen the field size in templates/user/block_checkout_login.html
as it was too short for some email addresses
The max char for the field is 20. I changed it to 32
 
I haven't looked more closely at the feature to see the other problems

Don't forget block_login and block_login advanced too.
 
I changed them all to 50 characters as some people have long email addresses. When i did a test, i created a login email that was around 40 and it succeeded with the registration. However, i then logged out and tried to login with the block login- even though i could type up to 50 characters it would not login for me. So I checked the user account login details and it only showed 31 characters, if i took those 31 characters to login it worked. So, there are issues and I hate chasing my tail because of poorly implemented new features.

So how many poeople have tried this feature?
 
anjula has emailed me to recommend doing SQL query.
 
update va_users set login=email

And what will this query do?

This so frustrates me.
 
<< on2dvd : anjula has emailed me to recommend doing SQL query >>
... that's great, but what about everyone else?
 
Besides, I am not a technical person - solutions to key issues should be understandable and available to all?
 
Yes, I agree that Anjula is really very helpful - as is everyone else - it's just that we are all having individual bits of help on things that should be readily available, and understandable, to others.
 
For what it is worth I have added a comment that has some relevance to this here:
http://www.viart.com/email_reminder_service.html

Five5> This query will make the old usernames turn into their email address, which will standardize the login for all users if you choose to migrate.
 
Chris> Tell me about it. You can't just say go and turn on this feature and then all is well, there is no documentation on many things and many new features are a road to many support tickets.
 
Today I wondered how filters worked but had to go in head firts and see "what happened". What the filter options are and how to use them, I have no clue.

Hi Guys,
 
I like the fact that a given piece of software evolves and new and useful features are added and they seem to be what people are after. But a release without documentation is very frustrating, time expensive and potentially putting users (their income and reputation to run an online store) at risk.
 
I am not saying the new release has to be accompanied with documentation integrated into the existing documentation set (user manual) but at least good quality release notes explaining at minimum how to use and migrate to the new functionality. Then a bonus would be a forum category relating to Q&A on the new release.
 
This may have happened and I have missed it, if so I apologise. If this doco is there I missed it though.
 
Cheers,
Five5 (still in installation and setting up the software mode).

Opinions please.
 
For me it makes sense to ask users to use their email address as login. One less thing for them to remember, and with a good password reminder feature (emailing them their password to their email address) it does not matter much if people continually forget their password. God knows we have to remember enough logins and passwords these days.
 
But I know some of our shop customers are web users without email addresses. Do you think 'forcing' people to use an email address to register/login would alienate some shoppers? Keeping in mind I would implement registration as optional anyway for our stores.
 
Thoughts anyone?

I agree with five5...documentation documentation documentation......
I'm also in the second month of setting up the store :(
I chose to purchase a cart program to save me the time
implementing all the modules required, but finding it is taking longer than expected. the manual is great for BASIC
information, but finding alot of out of date info....
 
I'd love to see a section for error's.... spending countless hours trying to determine whether it was caused from the server side or the platform side... there must be a log of all support tickets.... this would save everybody
countless hours..and waiting time..."still waiting a reply from a support ticket 2 days ago" ????
 
Or atleast add a forum section where users may post a solution to an error they had encountered, so others can search before requesting support...
 
just my 2 cents
randy

on2dvd, the reason why you can only get 31 chars is that the field length in the database is only 32.
That is why I set the field length to 32 and not 50
 
Logic tells me that we then need to change the field size in the database to something like 50 to cater for long email address logins but I'm not technical so I'm not going there for now.
 
Thanks for the tip on changing field length on the other 2 files

cheers randy.
 
Keeping the formal doco up to date is a pain and can delay a release. Ideally if formal doco is there it great, if not, something interim is required.
 
Back to field size. 31 chars seems way too small. My email address is only small (compared to many I get from customers) and its 24. I would hate to have customers frustrated registering because of something silly like field length.
 
I am new here and not familiar with the culture, but I assume ViArt have a bit of a look at current topics and chime in when appropriate. If so, would you guys mind commenting if increasing the field size in the database would have any ill-effects. If so or otherwise, is there a change coming by any chance.

It's a given that we all agree there should be better documentation. I'm sure Viart is aware of this and dedicate resources to it when they can. Unfortunately, this is a business and they obviously don't have unlimited resources so corners are cut- it happens everywhere!!! With a good amount of employee participation and help from user forums these things can be less dramatic.
 
However, the thing that I can not accept is the lack of foresight in the V3.5 new features. I've been through the main features and a couple are flawed to the point they are almost pointless like this email login feature and the matrix feature. Sure, they might get fixed but never should they have been released like this, it costs me time which i would rather spend with my wife and kids.

RE Five5.
 
No I don't see it as a problem, if you don't have an email address (customers) then really they shouldn't be expecting to buy anything online.

I agree. I would never allow a customer to buy something without an email address for me to email confirmation to. Also, I don't allow shoppers to purchase without becoming a member. But my site requires membership, whether for a fee (added options - possibility to download) or (no fee - just communicate in the forum).

The manual however is very lacking and they should get that caught up prior to releasing any more releases. I still would like something of an overview of template and .css stylesheet modifications. I have made many changes, but would like to know exactly how it all works so that I can make more.
 
I'd even like a more modern admin side. Maybe like an Outlook type look and feel to it, but that's just my preference.
 
I think certain things need to be changed.

About the login field size - I contacted online support and was advised that I could change the login field in va_users to VARCHAR(128)
I have changed the field size to VARCHAR(64). 128 seemed abit of an overkill to me.
All seems to be working OK (I hope)
 
I also noticed that existing usernames can login without using their email address which has led me to understand the developers thinking.
If we go changing the existing usernames to email addresses, the existing users are not going to know what their login is. They may have many email addresses and forgot which one they used on our site.
 
Though Viart documentation is scant, I am very happy with Viart and Viart support. I also keep remembering that I paid only $150, to me, I got my money's worth. $150 doesn't buy much development time.

How and where do you change this setting?
 
Yes, I noticed that when you update to use emails the old usernames can be used to login- but uniformity is important and think it needs to be one or the other- so i ran the SQL. To advise existing customers i simply changed the static message to "login email" instead of "username". I also changed the error message to explain what has happened if an old customer used the username, telling them to try the email address.

Thanks everyone for their opinions of mandatory use of email addresses for login.
 
Thanks jty for talking to Support for us. I will change the field length as well. You would think 64 chars is enough.

Natalia on Online Support advised that we can run the following script using myPhpAdmin or Viart will do it for us for $15:
 
ALTER TABLE va_users MODIFY login VARCHAR(128);
 
I went into the database and had a look around and decided that VARCHAR(64) was more appropriate. God Bless anyone who has an email address that is 128 chars long
 
WARNING: if you don't know enough, don't try it on a live site. I am not a techie and I am on a demo site so I can break it all I want without losing anything important
If in doubt, please contact support.
 
Remember also to change the html files that set maxlength for login to 20. I set those to 64 to match my database setting

These are the html files I changed:
 
templates/user/block_checkout_login.html
templates/user/block_login
templates/user/block_login advanced
 
I set maxlength="64" for the login input box
or set it to 128 if you follow support's 128 char idea

"Natalia on Online Support advised that we can run the following script using myPhpAdmin or Viart will do it for us for $15"
 
It must be our fault then