Make sure your customers receive their holiday gifts in time for Christmas Day with this handy reference of shipping cut-off dates for UPS, FedEx, and USPS (and their respective shipping methods). [More]

The USPS changed their tracking number URL and no longer supports the URL that is used in BV Commerce. What that means is that the tracking number link that is sent in shipping notification emails and shown on the order details pages will take the customer to a broken page. Not good! We've created a hotfix for BVC 2013 that you can apply to your site today. Installation InstructionsGo to the Downloads section of your store account and download "BV Commerce 2013 - hotfix #1". Unzip the file to ... [More]

Does BV Commerce support ________ payment gateway? We hear this question all of the time. While BV Commerce does support a lot of credit card payment gateways out-of-the-box it doesn't support every one. Fortunately we provide an easy-to-use plugin architecture for developers to create new payment gateway integrations. In this article we'll walk through the plugin architecture and how to leverage it for your integration. Payment Gateway Class Create a new class in the /App_Code folder of your we... [More]

Today is the last day that Google Checkout is supported (see Google's announcement). If you are using Google Checkout with your BV Commerce store be sure to disable it today to avoid any issues. Here are the steps to disable Google Checkout in BV Commerce 5 and 2013: To disable Google CheckoutLog in to the admin of your site Click the Options tab Click "Payment" in the left-column menu Un-check Google Checkout and click the Save buttonIf you need help disabling Google Checkout or setting up ... [More]

Content Columns are nothing new to BV Commerce; they've been part of the platform since the 5.0 release. You've probably used them to edit the homepage, the left columns of the product and category pages, and even the admin dashboard. A Content Column is simply an admin-editable region of a page where you can add any number of Content Blocks. BV Commerce includes many different kinds of Content Blocks such as Category Menu, Product Grid, Mailing List Signup, and Html. Take a look at the screensh... [More]

During beta testing we upgraded a production site to 2013 beta 2. This site, however, was running on IIS 6. Until this upgrade we had not tested IIS 6, though for 2013 we specifically chosen to support ASP.NET 4.0, rather than 4.5, so it would still be compatible. Surprisingly it worked perfectly with no Web.config or IIS changes (other than changing the app pool to .NET 4). However, we did notice one issue. On the first request to the site homepage (new session), the URL shown in the browser ha... [More]

We've gone to great lengths to ensure a simple upgrade process to BV Commerce 2013. Read on for the upgrade instructions for BV Commerce 5.X and 2004. Upgrading from BV Commerce 5.X The process of upgrading to BV Commerce 2013 is similar to previous BV Commerce 5.X upgrades. Let's start with the system requirements, as this is the biggest area of change compared to prior versions. System RequirementsWindows Server 2003 or above (i.e. IIS 6 or above) .NET Framework 4.0 with Full Trust SQL ... [More]

BV.NEXT, pronounced "BV dot next", is our reboot of the old maintenance plan. I never liked the term "maintenance plan" because it sounded like you were paying for routine work on your store, like changing the oil in your car. BV.NEXT puts the focus back on software enhancement and new features, entitling you to all software updates, including full-version upgrades, released during the term of your plan. You'll also get real support with a guaranteed 24-hour response time during the wo... [More]

The process of creating a fresh installation of BV Commerce 2013 is nearly identical to 5.X, though there is no Windows installer app like there was on the earlier versions of 5. Let's start with the system requirements, as this is the biggest area of change compared to prior versions. System RequirementsWindows Server 2003 or above (i.e. IIS 6 or above) .NET Framework 4.0 with Full Trust SQL Server 2005 or above with Full Text Search installedSQL Server Full Text Search The Full Text Search... [More]

Take a test-drive of BV Commerce 2013! We’ve setup a Bike Shop demo store so you can play around in the admin and make whatever changes you wish. To log in, simply click the "Login" link in the upper-right corner and the username and password will automatically be filled in for you. Notice the green admin panel/bar now located at the bottom of the page; click the "Go To Admin" link on the right to try the new admin. The demo store is automatically reverted to a fresh copy hourly, on the ho... [More]