LemonStand Blog

Integrating a payment gateway is fast and easy with LemonStand

4 Comment(s) | published by Halarewich D. on Tuesday, September 08, 2009

As we draw closer to releasing our free, public beta, we have been working on implementing several payment gateways in addition to PayPal. At first we didn't plan to include these in the beta, but it's been a great experience so far and we're finding it hard to stop!

We have already integrated support for PsiGate, and it went very smoothly. We wanted to tell you a little bit more about the process of integrating a payment gateway into LemonStand.

LemonStand turns 4 tasks into 1

LemonStand makes it possible to develop a new payment module in just a few hours, instead of days. Usually, each payment module must be able to solve these 4 tasks:

1. Display the configuration form, for setting up the payment gateway user name and password, and other gateway-specific parameters.
2. Display the payment form on the front-end store
3. Display the payment form in the administration area, enabling LemonStand administrators to process an order manually, if they have the customer card number.
4. Process information entered into the payment form, and send request to the payment gateway. Then process the gateway response and mark the order with “payment processed” status.

Three of these task are automated by LemonStand. When you develop a new payment module, you don't need to do everything from scratch. For example, you don't need to build the module configuration and the administration payment forms by hand. Forms in LemonStand are built automatically using information about the form fields. So, to build the configuration or payment form, you only need to specify which fields you want to add to the form, what labels they should have, and what type of input control should be used (a plain text field, drop-down menu, checkbox and so on). You specify this information using simple PHP code in your module class. You don't even have tot worry about saving the configuration options to the database – LemonStand will save everything for you.

Thus, when you build a new payment module, you don't need to waste time on things which are common for every payment module – building forms, saving or loading configuration data. Instead of that, you can concentrate on the module-specific logic like sending specific data to the payment gateway and parsing the response. LemonStand solves all common tasks for you, leaving you a minimal amount of work to do.

What we're working on now

In preparation for our beta release we are knocking out modules to support as many payment gateways as possible. We have been working with merchant solution providers on setting up sandbox accounts so that we can develop and test as many as possible. At the moment we have received test accounts from FirstData/LinkPoint, Authorize.net, SagePay, 2Checkout and PaymentExpress. We are working on getting test acocunts with VersaPay, Moneris, HSBC, SecureTrading and Elavon. We are not promising to support all of these gatewaya at the time of beta release, but we're doing our best to work with providers that are cooperating with us.

And as we said before, we'll continue to add support for more and more gateways into the future, after the beta and even version 1.0 of LemonStand is released.

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Our plans for a thriving marketplace

3 Comment(s) | published by Halarewich D. on Thursday, September 03, 2009

The success of most online products is because of a strong community. That's you. The amount of success you have using LemonStand to build great eCommerce sites will determine our fate. So we're absolutely focused on devising and then implementing tools to support a strong community. The tools I'm talking about would allow you to profit from the LemonStand user base, directly and indirectly.

We're still ironing out the kinks, but we would like to let you all know what our plans are so you can be excited right along with us!

Marketplace for what?

We have hinted throughout the website and elsewhere that we would be building a marketplace around LemonStand. You might have wondered what this marketplace is exactly and why does it matter. Let me tell you.

Modules

Modules allow you to add functionality to LemonStand to accomplish literally anything. We have intentionally kept LemonStand light and nimble. The "killer feature" is it's design flexibility and API. This is what is different from anyone else out there.

By adding an existing module already available, commissioning the development of one or building one yourself, you can bend LemonStand to your will. And it's quite easy to do so. Modules can be to add an extra feature, extend existing features, or add support for third-party services such as payment gateways or shipping services.

Design flexibility and easily extendable. This is a recipe for unique eCommerce websites. Websites your customers will love.

Themes

Ah, themes. Everyone loves them. LemonStand has themes, but they are a little more powerful than most other shopping carts or even CMS'. Maybe you noticed in the CMS section of the online demo the import/export feature. This humble little feature will allow you to build out sites in the comfort of your personal copy of LemonStand, then export them so others can import them.

This means you can implement a custom design, set up your partials, templates, pages and content blocks how you like. Export the entire thing and share with others. It's also very useful for building your site on a development environment, then moving it to the live environment.

Themes on steroids. Or maybe spiked lemonade, we're not sure.

Buy, sell and share

Our plan is to create a seamless online community integrated into this very website where you can buy, sell or share modules for free. We'll provide opportunities to market your creations and much more.

It won't just be a directory. We are developing an innovative marketplace for you to profit from LemonStand. The more your involved with the community, the more you'll benefit. You win by having access to awesome modules created by the community and you also win by selling modules to that same community. It's a viscious delicious circle.

Looking forward to showing you

We're going to release more info along with visual goodies as time goes on. It's going to be really fun to see things come together and get your feedback.

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How much will it cost and other common questions

3 Comment(s) | published by Halarewich D. on Wednesday, September 02, 2009

We have gotten a lot of people asking the same questions. This is our fault for not putting this info up somewhere easily found. I see a FAQ page coming in our near future.

I would like to provide answers to common questions and give you a little insight about why we're making certain decisions.

How much will LemonStand cost?

The final price of LemonStand has not been determined at this time. We are currently evaluating what the final feature set will be to determine this. This has been a difficult task because no other cart is comparible to LemonStand in terms of design flexibility and how extendable it is. No other cart has simple but powerful CMS features like LemonStand does. Thus there is no reference point for us. But we intend on making sure LemonStand has terrific value to our customers. Once we have determined a price we will announce this on this blog, Twitter, Facebook, and email.

Can I get in on the beta program?

Yes, but not yet. The beta program is not open yet. When it is, we'll announce it on this blog, Twitter, Facebook, and email.

When will the beta program start?

There is no hard date for this at the moment. Once we get a little closer we'll be able to announce a date. We are working on a few key features, as well writing some basic documentation.

The date will be announced most likely a week or two in advance. Again, we'll announce it on this blog, etc.

Will _______ feature or payment gateway be supported?

The final release of LemonStand will support a good variety of popular payment gateways and shipping rate APIs. We'll support as many as possible out of the box at launch, and will continue developing support for more afterwards. Support can be added by easily installing modules. You may also develop your own module to support a particulare gateway if it were more obscure for example.

Feel free to continue asking about features and suggesting new ones. We're recording these inquiries and evaluating them based on how useful they will be to the majority of our customers. Features very specific to your industry or site requirements would be better suited to be developed as a module. In that case, we are still keeping track of these inquiries and are looking at them as potential modules to be developed in the future.

Will LemonStand be translated into the ______ language?

It does support localization. Before it can be translated, it must get further along in development though. It is certainly possible and we will be doing this. We do not have a list of planned languages we will be supporting.

We'll be working with the community on translating LemonStand into other languages. If you are interested in helping, contact us about it to discuss it further. We already have some people on board for French, Spanish and Portuguese but we can always use more of course.

Is LemonStand hosted or not?

We recently added some text throughout the website addressing this, but it was quite a common question when the site first launched. No, LemonStand is not hosted. Possibly in the future we will venture into this arena, but at the moment it is not on our radar. We are focusing on providing a premium PHP/MySQL cart with commercial level support and resources.

What are the server requirements?

LemonStand will work on all common Unix hosting environments. As of now, the requirements are as follows:

• Apache version 2.0 or higher with mod_rewrite module enabled
• PHP 5.2.6 or higher
• MySQL version 5.0 or higher
• PHP Multibyte String Functions module
• CURL PHP library

We hope that helps

We have tried to include answeres to the most common questions we have been getting. If you're questions are not answered, please contact us and we'll get back to you ASAP.

Eventually we'll move this Q & A (along with more) to a FAQ page for easy reference.

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Real products in a demo store

0 Comment(s) | published by Halarewich D. on Saturday, August 29, 2009

When we were sketching out our plans for the demo store, we felt that fake "blue widget" type products were... well, kinda lame. But it is a software demo. How cool could it be right?

Pretty darn cool if you ask us

Around the same time I stumbled across some creative hand-made goods on a marketplace called Etsy. The huge number of interesting and unique products really amazed me. From artwork, to domo kun iphone cases, the place was full of neat things. So I decided that we could make the demo store a little more interesting, while helping promote some talented crafts people at the same time by using real products from real people.

We designated a person for the task and started personally contacting store owners to see if they were interested in the opportunity to get some free exposure. We gave preference to local (BC, Canada) people, but we did branch out too. Most were happy to jump on the chance and only a few looked at us with a suspicious eye.

And the data entry began

Once we had a list of about 30 people signed up, Alicia started adding products to specific categories. Individually downloading images, copy/pasting descriptions and adding links to the makers Etsy store. 137 products later, we had enough quality, unique, real products in our demo store. It was a lot of work, but well worth it.

Thanks goes out to the crafts people who made it possible

If it wern't for you, our demo store wouldn't be as interesting. Thanks for playing along, and we hope it will generate some interest in your products.

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