Category Archives: Wordpress

2024 Updates

Well, it’s been way too long since we’ve done a blog update, but for good reason.  Mainly, because things have been running pretty smoothly and we’ve stayed busy!  In fact, we have done tons of updates in the past year that you may not be aware of yet…

Here’s just a few highlights:

3D Models with HD Resolution

We have done a number of implementations with 3D previews both in-customizer and in-website, as well as in our Render and Configur8 apps as well.  Typically we use a variety of traditional UX flows for the design or configuration options, and then visualize that in a 3D preview so that designing is still easy to do, but with the added bonus view in 3D so that it can be spun around in all directions, zoomed in and out, and inspected all in HD resolution.

Shopify Integrations

We often get asked about Shopify support.  We now have a couple different ways of integrating and some completed working Shopify integrations that use our customizer for a full customization experience.  For this we do not offer an “App” in Shopify since that comes with a lot of strings attached.  Instead, for now at least, we have a VERY lightweight easy copy-paste integration that drops into the theme code and wa-la, you can enable any product for customization with our full design tools, and Render for print.  This can be up and running in just a day or two.

Magento Integrations

We’re doing Magento integrations again but it’s only recommended for corporate clients.  We can integrate with the current version of Magento very quickly and easily to add Customization or Configuration to products on the front end in ways that can carry through to ERP, OMS, etc.

Rendering Capabilities

We’ve made a number of special rendering capabilities for multi-sided layouts, PDF output, common page size wraps, editing and rotation options, and a whole bunch of other stuff to make print files come out the right way every time for specialized cases.

WordPress/WooCommerce Plugin Updates

Our WordPress/WooCommerce plugins continue to be our most robust solutions.  This includes so much more than just customization and configuration, but also content management for saved designs, design collections, and built in growth strategies that you can really take advantage of to expand a site for growth.

And Much More

And, beyond this we’ve done a lot more, too.  Contact us if you have any questions about your own ideas or needs for customization of your ecommerce products.

New Standalone Sales Tax Reporting Plugin (free)

We’ve released a new free plugin to the WP Plugin Marketplace for anyone who might need it as we have.  It allows for an easy report with your site’s Sales by State and Sales Tax collected for any date range. This is critical info to reporting your sales tax quarterly in the United States.

The plugin is 100% free to use.

See our plugin page for more info.

WooCommerce Sales Tax Plugin (free)

Major Updates for Customizer 4.1.0 and WP Plugin 3.17.4

Spring Cleaning is in Full Effect!

Yesterday we shipped some major updates with bug fixes for various issues that have been reported in the Customizer as version 4.1.0, and also in the WordPress plugin 3.17.4.  The bugfixes, features, and/or updates include:

  • Text bug fix for duplicating text objects
  • SSL fixes for some non-SSL URL assets
  • Template Masking updates
  • Preloader updates (faster / more stable startup)
  • New Feature: Multi-Side Preview Mode (switch sides while in preview mode)
  • Multi-Side Product bug fix
  • New Feature: before-after animation for preview mode transition
  • Auto Drop Shadow bug fix
  • Duplicate Image bug fix
  • Background gradient vs Background Image rotations fix
  • Email skip fix for logged in users
  • Re-Selection of existing objects from menu bug fix
  • Auto-saving update (new delay time)
  • Various small performance updates
  • Author page “my designs” error fix
  • Private designs images in public author carts bug fix
  • Various CSS Style fixes and updates
  • Various small details updated

This is a cumulative update for the Customizer 4.1.0+ that is automatically remotely updated on our platform for all deployments – nothing for you to update there.

However, the MyStyle Custom Product Designer 3.17.4 WP Plugin itself will require an update from your WP Admin > Plugins page to apply that update.

As with any major update, please test your Customizer after updating and report any issues that you find in the support channel for your license and we’ll investigate right away.

We are continuing to push minor updates this week as any reports are made.

In the mean time, enjoy the new speed and updates!

New Feature: Build Your Own Custom Product Templates in WordPress!

We’re happy to announce a highly-requested feature:  Build Your Own Custom Product Templates right in the WordPress/WooCommerce Admin!

Premium MyStyle Product Templates Optional for DIY Webmasters!

With Premium Templates we set up each template by hand for each client remotely, and provide template IDs for use in their website(s).  This is still a service that is available, but is no longer required for most one-sided templates if you want to develop them yourself!

New DIY Custom Templates

Our new custom template options can be found the WooCommerce Product Data section of any product, in the MyStyle > Advanced tab.

See the screenshot below, where the example is setting up a Rectangular 18×14 inch product template:

mystyle-customizer-define-your-own-custom-template-print-specs-size

With these two checkboxes, a width and a height, you’re good to go with a basic rectangular template!  It will size down automatically to fit the web browser while designing, and it will render your print files at the full size when generating a print file.

Add Image Layers and More

There are even more beta features beneath these basic settings that are still being tested, but you can try those out to add image layers to your templates, like a background or foreground.

We’ll cover those features more in another post.

Enjoy!

WordPress 5.5 Bugfix for Community Design Gallery: MyStyle Custom Product Designer v3.13.9

If you are on the (now) current version of WordPress (5.5+) you will need to update your main MyStyle Custom Product Designer plugin as well for compatibility.

The bug that was reported is that the design gallery examples in the Community Design Gallery do not click through to the design profiles as normal.

WordPress 5.5 Rewrite Rules Update

This is caused by an issue many sites have encountered from the recent WordPress 5.5 updates that have caused some rewrite rules to act differently than normal.

MyStyle Update Bug Fix 

Today we released the update that fixes this issue and will restore the normal community design gallery functionality for all public saved designs.

Other Recent Updates to Community Design Gallery

Additionally, you may notice the new features we recently added to the Community Design Gallery, Authors!  Authors can now find their saved designs in their normal WooCommerce My Account menu!  More on that in our next post!

Download our main WP plugin here:

MyStyle Custom Product Designer

CSS Tip: Show Your WooCommerce Product Thumbnails In The Cart on Desktop and Mobile

For some reason WooCommerce has decided the default styles for the cart thumbnails should be very tiny or completely gone all together.  This leaves you with just text in the cart, which isn’t always what you want. To show the images, you can add some CSS to your WP settings or theme CSS file to always show the product images in cart.

example image source: 
https://MPFusa.org/custom-face-masks/

While I’m sure (re: hope) they have great data to back up the removal of images in the cart, some products need to be seen the full way through for a customer to feel good about what they have in their cart being the right stuff. If you agree, then this code snippet is for you. (copy/paste)

CSS Code:

/** MyStyle: Show thumbnail in cart larger than default 32px **/
.woocommerce-cart table.cart img {
width: auto;
min-width: 32px;

max-width: 100px;
}
@media(max-width:768px) {
/** Show thumbnail row in cart on mobile **/
.woocommerce-page table.cart .product-thumbnail {
display: inline-block !important;
}
/** hide colon above thumbnail for mobile **/
.woocommerce-page table.cart .product-thumbnail:before {
display: none;
}
}

How to Apply This Code

  1. Log into your WP Admin
  2. Go to the Theme Customizer > Added CSS (or similar place where your theme or system lets you put some custom CSS)
  3. Paste the code above & Publish
  4. Clear/Purge your site cache, if you have one

Conversion 101:
Custom Products Should Always Have a Thumbnail in the Cart

This is especially true with custom products, where you may have a few custom designs in your cart with the same product title, and the only recognizable difference is what each design looks like. For this reason, almost every MyStyle enabled site should override the default WooCommerce or theme CSS to show the thumbnail of the user’s creations in the shopping cart. You can do this very easily with a quick CSS tweak.

WordPress Plugin v3.9.0+ Mobile Viewport Improvements and DIVI Tweaks

Plugin Update:

We’ve corrected some issues view and mobile usability in the MyStyle Custom Product Designer plugin for WordPress/WooCommerce. This was an issue that some devices have had with the app not fitting the page well, sticking off the page to the right on small screens. We’ve also added a few more tweaks and tunes to make usability a little more natural for mobile. If you update to the most recent version of our core plugin (any version 3.9.0 or above), you will get the new updates that fix these issues for smart, responsive page auto-adjustments.

Viewport Zooming for Mobile Devices: Better Than Just “Responsive”

Responsive was always supported with the app, and the viewport zooming too to some extent, but it was limited and had some problems with some screen sizes.  In many cases, the theme often can leave the page unfitted for the app.   The viewport now automatically adjusts much better so that the design app can fit in portrait mode to the screen without any pinching or zooming.  Essentially, we’re doing the perfect pinch-zoom for the user, so that they don’t have to, and locking it in there.  We update this on page resize events so that if the user turns the phone or tablet sideways, it re-calibrates the zoom, in addition to switching modes from Portrait (buttons on bottom) vs Landscape (buttons on top/left).  This should help most sites automatically leave enough room for dragging on the handlebars on the sides as well.

Disabling Viewport Rewriting for the Customize Page

You can disable the viewport zooming in the MyStyle settings, if your theme or your custom code already takes care of this.  Just be sure to allow a minimum app width of 550px to allow for the application plus draggable side handle space.

Full Screen Button Moved Up to Top

Full screen, the app really works best. The full screen button, however, was beneath the app where it might go unnoticed. So, we’ve moved the button to the top of the page to make it quicker to see right away before getting down into the app on page by scrolling. This should encourage a lot more users to go full screen, where scrolling is eliminated entirely.

Scroll Handlebars

We’ve added some subtle handlebars to the left and right of the app for users to be able to scroll easier if they’re on a smaller size screen, since the main design area touch-and-drag will move the design elements rather than the page.

Adjustments for DIVI

DIVI is a popular theme for wordpress that uses an 80% page width.  We’ve overridden this now to allow the app to use more of page size by reducing their default margins and page size just on the Customizer page itself.

 

Major Mobile Device Responsive Improvements

Last week we rolled out some major improvements to the MyStyle Custom Product Designer WordPress Pluin in ways that help the app the page of more WordPress themes without needing to edit or override your theme.

WP Theme Margins and Paddings and Viewports 

Previously, many themes margins and paddings and own approaches to handling the page responsively for all device sizes was having some issues with our iframe.  This meant that on some phones, especially smaller and older ones, the page would not “collapse” down elegantly to allow for the app to fit, and would not adjust viewport correctly to accommodate a PWA like the MyStyle HTML5 Customizer.

Major Responsive Updates in 3.2.X+

We’re happy to say that now, if you update your plugin to version 3.2.0 or higher, you will get a new option in your settings that should be ON by default, to override your theme’s viewport tag, and fit the page to the device better to accommodate the customizer app’s iframe on page. This allows the page to fit to the app more naturally in both portrait (upright) and landscape (sideways) hand-held orientations.  As always, just press “update” in your plugin list for the MyStyle plugin and it will self-update.  Then, visit your settings to ensure the setting for overriding viewport is enabled, which it should be by default.

Improved Portrait Mode

In portrait mode, you’ll notice the app buttons dock to the bottom of the window, much like popular apps do, such as Instagram, making it very familiar to the user and also much more in-reach of the thumb.

UI Zoom Fix for Retina Displays and HD Displays

This now works especially well for some devices when using Full Screen Mode, as we’ve corrected a zoom-level issue for both regular and retina displays that will compensate accordingly to make finger sized buttons where before tiny buttons would sometimes show on high-resolution devices.

Full Screen Mode

There is also a full screen mode button now on the page beneath the app window, that will snap the app to the top, left, right, and bottom edges of the screen automatically, for an even better experience. In this mode, the full-screen can be canceled by pressing the “x” that appears in the top right corner, as with most software.

Just WORKS Out of the Box!  Yes, That Means No More CSS Hackery.

This should help many WordPress / WooCommerce plugin users to integrate with their theme without having to do any custom CSS coding or adjustments, and make it much easier for a user to use the app on handheld devices without the theme causing it to go off-page, or not fit the screen well in general. All-in-all this should have a positive effect on sales ratios for any site that has a majority of users on mobile devices, which has by 2018, really become the norm.

If your particular theme still has any responsive issues, please let us know ASAP so we can push an update to accommodate your theme’s non-standard layouts or viewport scripts.

Happy Customizing!

WP/WC Plugin Update v3.1.2 – MyStyle Plugin Activation Bug Fixed for WordPress 4.9.x

Yesterday we shipped 3.1.2 with an update to fix new WordPress update errors with MyStyle plugin’s initial activation.

WordPress “Sandbox Security” Checks Caused New Bugs

WordPress shipped an update recently that includes a new “Sandbox for Security” feature that essentially runs plugin code, which can include front-end code, in the admin in a new way of pre-checking for errors. But, in fact it causes some errors, too, since front-end run time code can sometimes rely on non-admin page variables, and won’t be able to find them in the admin. This probably effects a lot of plugins who will have to do the same sort of patches we’ve just done.

Fixes Are Live

In any case, we’ve patched up the issues with this new WordPress change and everything should work fine now. Strangely this only seemed to affect some systems and not others, but for whatever reason activating the plugin would cause an error in this pre-check that would gallivant thru the admin notifications like an actual Fatal Error would occur if enabled, when really there was no error once activated at all. In any case, we’ve adapted to the new checks and fixed this issue in our latest release of the MyStyle Custom Product Designer plugin for WordPress / WooCommerce.

Here’s the official release notes:

v3.1.2 of the main WP plugin

* Bug Fix: Fixed a bug with our design profile shortcode and WP 4.9’s new Sandbox for Safety feature.
* Updated the readme.txt to reflect that the plugin is compatible with up to WordPress 4.9.2.

Customizer Update 3.5.11

Wow, the holidays is really living up to it’s reputation this year with huge spikes in conversion across all personalization enabled sites!

With this comes a couple more bug fixes.  Here’s a recap of the last couple updates to the WordPress plugin.  For this update,  you can just press “update” on the plugin in your wordpress admin and auto-update.

MyStyle Custom Product Designer (Main WP Plugin) Changelog

3.1.1

  • Security bug: Fixed a security bug where private designs were being listed on the design gallery/index.

3.1.0

  • Now gracefully handling no WooCommerce situations.
  • You can now set an alternate design complete url.
  • Updated the readme.txt to reflect that the plugin is tested with up to WP 4.8.3.
  • Updated the ‘WC tested up to’ field to 3.2.3.

MyStyle Now Fully SSL (https)

You may have noticed the green lock in our address bar signifying a secure URL, because we’ve gone fully secure with our whole website as well as all of our HTML5 and Render apps!

Fully SSL Support for All Customizers and Now All Website Services

MyStyle HTML5 Customizer in all of our flavors of WordPress WooCommerce plugins, OpenCart and Magento plugins, etc all support full HTTPS connections (SSL websites). This is a standard some of our development teammates such as IBM have urged us to move forward with and we are happy to say we’ve completed that transition. You can now use our HTML5 customizer on any fully SSL (https://) website, rather than https://, and this has been available in testing for months, but now we’ve also followed suit with our website and our website based services, too. With this change we’re now forwarding all https:// traffic to the https:// URL instead, with the exception of some special case URLs for legacy Renderer users.

Google and IBM Strongly Recommend It.

This standard was also suggested by Google as the new standard for all websites to move to using for their entire websites, not just the traditional usage we’ve typically used where we only use SSL for checkout and register/login (where passwords or sensitive data is used). As far as standards go, partners like Google and IBM are definitely two we like to trust and generally heed their advice!

Test Your Sites and Workflows

Please test your sites and log a ticket for any issues you may encounter on your own sites while switching to https:// with regard to our HTML5 Customizer and Print Image Renderer, and we’ll be happy to help you with the transition. For most sites, it should be as easy as changing your site to SSL and our updated plugins will automatically follow suit if the outer site is SSL.

SSL Is Recommended, but Not Required

If you’re not using an SSL website yourself, that’s ok, too. Your site can use regular https:// and our apps will adopt that protocol and use our own secure calls in the background.

Thanks

Thanks to everyone who has helped us Q/A during the transition and all of our clients who made the jump to SSL right away.

WordPress 4.8 and WooCommerce 3.1 Compatibility Verified with Successful Unit Testing – MyStyle Custom Product Designer Minor Update 2.1.1

We’ve just released a minor update for the plugin that verifies unit tests have passed on the most current WordPress and WooCommerce versions as listed below.  There is also a fix for an admin debug tool for repairing the design pages for an old legacy bug that rarely occurs.

Update Overview

This update is not critical or required if your system is already stable, but is safe to use with all versions of WordPress and WooCommerce.

  • Fixed an issue with the Design Profile Page Fix tool.
  • Unit tested current wordpress version and ran primary UX cases with no errors (WordPress 4.8)
  • Unit tested current WooCommerce version and ran primary UX cases with no errors (WooCommerce 3.1)
  • Updated readme.txt to reflect that the plugin has been tested with up to WP 4.8.0
  • Updated readme.txt to reflect that the plugin has been tested with up to WooCommerce 3.1.1

Update v 2.1.0 for MyStyle Custom Product Designer for WordPress WooCommerce

We’ve recently released version 2.1.0 of the MyStyle Custom Product Designer plugin for WordPress / WooCommerce. This is a non-critical update that addresses the following features or points:

Feature Updates

  • The main product link for customized cart items now goes to the regular product page (it was previously going to the design profile page).
  • Added a system for theming the output of the plugin.
  • Added a theme-able template file for the output of the cart item thumbnail for customized products.

Update Easily in Seconds from your WP Admin

Update by pressing “update” on the main MyStyle Custom Product Desginer plugin in your WordPress plugins list.

Support for Dynamic Pricing Plugin – MyStyle WP Plugin v2.0.2

We recently released version 2.0.2 of the MyStyle Custom Product Designer plugin for WordPress / WooCommerce. This update addresses compatibility issues with the WooCommerce Dynamic Pricing plugin by Lucas Stark and saved designs being re-added to cart later with custom options and custom pricing on the product.

Dynamic Pricing and Saved MyStyle Designs Adding to Cart from Saved Design-Profile Page

v2.0.2 of the main MyStyle WP plugin fixes a bug with setting the quantity when buying products from the design profile page.

This should fix the issue for anyone using this plugin that is seeing issues with special pricing rules, attributes, and adding to cart.

Also, adding to cart from the design profile page redirects to the cart and shows a “product added to cart” message.

How to Update

To update just press “update” on your MyStyle plugin in your wordpress plugin list.

 

Third Party Plugin Updates Warning:  We do not recommend updating all plugins.  Updating the MyStyle plugin alone should be enough to remedy this issue, and updating all other plugins may lead to unwanted conflicts with other third party plugins.  Always update plugins with caution and only after making a backup.

Major Release (2.0.0) for WooCommerce 3.X / PHP 7.X – All MyStyle WordPress Plugins and Add-Ons

UPDATE 5/31/2017: We have released 2.0.1 which patches some issues being caused by the plugin/add-on load order which we have no control over. In my dev environment, the design manager was loading second and then it worked. In v2.0.1 (of all of our add-ons) I updated the code so that it will work regardless of the plugin load order.

Original Post Below:


Today we released a highly anticipated update for the MyStyle Custom Product Designer plugin and all its related MyStyle add-ons that make them compatible with numerous 3rd party technology updates including:

  • WooCommerce 2.X
  • WooCommerce 3.X
  • WordPress 4.7.X (tested up to 4.7.5 5/30/2017)
  • PHP 5.X
  • PHP 6.X
  • PHP 7.X

Major Version 2.0 Across All Plugins

To keep things in sync we’ve updated to major revision number 2.0.0 for our main WordPress plugin (MyStyle Custom Product Designer).  This is a distinct change to many of the hooks and programming methods that were previously used in WooCommerce 2.X.

This includes:

  • MyStyle Custom Product Designer
  • Design Manager add-on
  • Email Manager add-on
  • Order Queue add-on

This means any MyStyle plugin with version 2.0 or higher will be compatible with the current WooCommerce version (3.0.7) or older, and will most likely stay compatible with WooCommerce’s upcoming minor revisions and updates since their 3.X changes were also a major update that cleaned and refactored significant internal core programming and should last them years with their new structure.

Dev Notes

Here’s a few words on things to note from our senior WP developer:

v2.0.0 of the plugins supports WooCommerce 3.0.x and PHP 7.0.x. They are backwards compatible and still support WooCommerce 2.x.x and PHP 5.3-6.

Since the main plugin is backwards compatible with the old versions of the add-ons, older versions of php and WooCommerce 2.x, everyone should be able to upgrade all of our MyStyle add-on plugins without issues.

It should be noted however, that the change-variations-in-cart plugin and product add-ons plugin aren’t yet compatible with WC 3.x or PHP 7. So sites using these plugins should stay on WC 2.x and PHP 5.x for now.

It should also be noted that many other plugins from other companies don’t yet support WC 3.x and PHP 7, so updating even when not running the above two plugins should be done with care.

 

SSL Support

The HTML5 app now supports SSL out of the box in BETA form. If you are in need of an https:// (SSL) solution for your website, use the checkbox to force HTML5 only to test out SSL support!

Update Your Site if Using WooCommerce 3.X

Be sure to update your site plugins accordingly if you’re using WooCommerce 3.X or higher.

WP Plugin MyStyle Custom Product Designer 1.7 Major DB and Session Handling Fix

We recently released MyStyle Custom Product Designer plugin version 1.7 for wordpress / woo commerce. You can update right in your WP Admin by clicking update on the plugin.

Bot Sessions Saving in DB

As usual, bots are ruining nice things on the internet.  Because of the large amount of bot traffic (including both legit bots like search engine bots, monitoring bots, etc and also spambots and hackerbots and such) session data to track user designs may have increased the database table sizes significantly, depending on how your site is set up to block bots or not.  In some cases, the tables were very very large having stored hundreds of thousands of bot sessions.  This was discovered in versions less than 1.7 in May 2017 and quickly fixed.  With version 1.7 design sessions will only be stored upon design completion, and the database will be automatically purged of old bot session data.  If the table sizes grow large enough, it could cause poor performance on the website (slowing down website response time).

Fixed in 1.7 with Auto-Clean-Up

MyStyle Custom Product Designer v1.7 and higher will automatically clean up old session data in the DB, purging it entirely to shrink the table size.  New sessions will not be stored for bots, keeping things small and clean.

1.7+  Update Recommended

If you are using the MyStyle Custom Product Designer for WordPress / WooCommerce and have a version less than 1.7, we highly recommend updating to 1.7 to auto-clean your session data from the DB and prevent bots from slowing down your database.

 

 

New Update Version 1.6.1 MyStyle Custom Product Designer Fixes Version 1.6.0 Handoff Bug

Please be aware that we recently put out an update v 1.6.1 of the MyStyle Custom Product Designer plugin for WordPress / WooCommerce. This release fixes a critical error in the mystyle handoff (present in version 1.6.0 only) flow that would prevent a design from being saved to the website or cart, but it would send the saved email to the author anyway. With version 1.6.1 this error is fixed.

This release was put out the same day that the bug in version 1.6.0 was reported. Thanks to Eugene for finding and posting the bug in the forum first immediately after the first release so that we could fix it and put out the next update quickly.

Who This Effects

If you have < 1.6.0 or you have 1.6.1 or higher, this will not effect you. You can safely continue to use the version you have, or download the WordPress marketplace version (1.6.1 or higher) and either way you should be stable.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused anyone who updated between the two releases, but the fix was out really fast so it did not have time to show up on most sites.

Side Note: WordPress 4.7.1 fixes 61 WordPress Bugs

Let this be a lesson for ANY plugin, not just MyStyle, to always wait a day or two after a new release for any initial bug reports to come in and be fixed to avoid being the first one to discover an issue! Nobody likes to admit that bugs occasionally get shipped, but even in the most professional release processes in the most professional companies, the occasional bug slips thru the cracks, and the NEXT update is usually the fix for any round 1 issues. This is also true with WordPress itself. Just look at version 4.7.1 out now, it fixes 61 bugs that were present in their more major release of 4.7.0, and that’s the leading most widely tested platform in the world. We waited on 4.7.0 and jumped on 4.7.1, and we’re glad we did :)