Minivend 4 released

(Minivend is a leading open-source Web store. -- lt ed.)

****** message to minivend-announce from Mike Heins ******

Announcing Release of Minivend 4.

(

Note to the user list: I have been using Minivend 4 in production now for two months. It has taken tens of thousands of orders. I think it is time to bite the bullet and release. 8-)

Minivend 4 is an extensive rewrite of the Minivend software. Though many things will be compatible with MiniVend 3, some will not.

Major new features are almost too many to mention, so I won't in this forum. Read the WHATSNEW and documentation for the most complete description.

In particular MiniMate (thanks to Stefan Hornburg) and the demos have been extensively reworked. Some highlights:

• Added "basic" demo with bare-bones set of MV features, no __VARIABLE__ defines, etc.
• Added multi-level order pages, selectable at makecat time.
• Added demonstration of downloadable products.
• Built-in support for all sorts of payment schemes. A "signio" and an "authorizenet" routine will be provided eventually; integration with other payment systems should be a relative snap.
• HTML fixed (somewhat).
• MySQL and PostGres should install out of the box. PostGres still has some userdb problems due to arcane SQL syntax that I don't understand.

MiniMate is now strongly recommended -- it is greatly improved. Highlights:

• Security/login is handled within userdb and should be transparent. You can supplement it with HTTP auth if you want, but for most purposes it should be sufficient.
• Individual user profiles can be created so that certain users can only edit certain tables (and rows and columns). You can also limit the set of features they see.
• Meta-information, a little-known feature of MiniMate, has been supported with a display editor. This allows you to custom-tailor the display of certain fields in the edit screens.
• Some menus have been cleaned up and simplified.

I believe this software is a great improvement over MiniVend 3 -- only time will tell if you agree.

Best,
Mike

Related Stories:

• Minivend 4.0 alpha release(Nov 25, 1999)
• Linux.com: Planning on Ecommerce? Try MiniVend On For Size(Aug 24, 1999)
• Newsbytes: New Linux E-Commerce Server(Aug 01, 1999)
• InfoWorld: Red Hat unwraps Linux-based e-commerce server(Jul 27, 1999)