News
Beta Buzz
1 Comment(s) | published by Halarewich D. on Tuesday, February 23, 2010
More and more web designers and developers are gradually becoming aware of LemonStand's existence. This has led to some great reviews, screencasts and interviews coming out.
Here are a few that we wanted to mention.
Video Review on Practical eCommerce
Practical eCommerce published a review of LemonStand beta on their website that includes a video. Armando does a great job running through the application and highlighting the juicy areas.
Armando mentioned packing slips and invoices. These features have not been integrated yet, but they are coming and will be completed before version 1 releases.
LemonStand Under the Covers Review
Bruce Alderson did a brief review of LemonStand, covering the areas that he found most useful and interesting. Concise and to the point, Bruce includes some code examples that drive the message home.
You can read that review here.
Interview with Danny Halarewich
I did a Q&A with Bruce that included several questions about LemonStand. It also covered some other questions relating to design, life and business in general. This interview was later published on Techvibes as well.
Update: Audio Interview
I recently did an audio interview with Armando that was published on the eCommerceDeveloper.com website. The entire discussion revolved around LemonStand. Check it out here!
First LemonStand Store: Seventh.Ink
2 Comment(s) | published by Halarewich D. on Thursday, February 04, 2010
On February 1 Seventh.Ink opened the virtual doors of their new store, now located at www.furyshirts.com
It's a custom eCommerce site powered by LemonStand. Owner and designer, Matthew Johnson has been with us since the early stages of testing and has built a terrific custom shop to sell his clothing line.
The store design is clean and easy to navigate. The beautiful t-shirts and other items pop over top of the dark background and really put the focus on the great products.
Seventh.Ink is currently running some great sales, with shirts starting at only $10, so be sure to check that out too.
We look forward to seeing more LemonStand powered sites pop up. If you want to tell us about yours, be sure to send us a message.
Open Beta Successfully Launched
2 Comment(s) | published by Halarewich D. on Monday, January 11, 2010
On January 11, around 3am PST the beta version of LemonStand was released to the global public. Simply by registering on the website, people everywhere can now get a beta license key and install LemonStand and start learning how to use the platform.
Virtual camp out
Within minutes of putting the form online, before we had a chance to announce it on Twitter, Facebook or to our email list we started getting registrations. It was as though people were sitting at our homepage, waiting for the "Download Beta" button to turn yellow.
The immediate results were very exciting and encouraging for the team. Once we announced the release through various channels, registrations accelerated quickly and are still coming in every few minutes.
Feedback, feedback, feedback.
Our main goal for running the open beta was to get feedback and bug reports. Especially concerning various hosting environments. There are many server configurations out there and we need help from all of you to get LemonStand compatible with as many of these as possible.
We have already squashed a few bugs in regards to the installation process, and this led to us updating the installer. More on that later.
Join us in the forum
If you are having issues installing LemonStand or otherwise, register on our forum and post the details. We'll help you sort it out as quickly as possible. We have alredy helped several people get issues resolved and look forward to helping more of you.
This is a very exciting milestone for us, and we look forward to seeing our sprouting community continue to grow and mature over the coming months.
Announcement: Open Beta Coming January 11, 2010
11 Comment(s) | published by Halarewich D. on Monday, December 28, 2009
After many months of developing LemonStand into a maturing and flexible eCommerce platform, we are finally able to announce a date for the open beta: January 11, 2010.
We know a lot of you have been patiently waiting for a chance to use LemonStand, so we are very excited to be giving you a firm release date. In two weeks you will be able to download LemonStand, install it, and begin getting familar with using it to build your eCommerce websites.
What you can expect in 2 weeks
Come January 11, you will be able to register for the open beta on our website. It will be a form that you fill out and submit to us. You will then automatically recieve an email back with a license key, and a link to download the installer. This will be everything you need to install LemonStand. Our current wiki will become public as well, giving you access to development documentation so you can dig into things.
After the beta
We do not have any specific timeline for how long the beta will last. We have a roadmap for things we need to complete before releasing version 1.0 of LemonStand, but the actual timeline depends on some variable factors. We are planning to focus on completing all of these tasks as quickly as possible while the open beta is running.
Once version 1.0 is released you will be able to upgrade your installations of LemonStand. You will just need to purchase a license and follow some simple actions to accomplish this. Along with releasing 1.0 will be launching other exciting things. Things like partner programs and the marketplace. We'll provide more details about those in the future.
3 New Features to get excited about
1 Comment(s) | published by Bobkov A. on Tuesday, December 22, 2009
During the last month we have been working very hard on preparing LemonStand for the open beta test and the following release. While some tasks are in queue on our to-do list, we decided to share with you some great new features which we recently added to LemonStand.
1. CMS extensions - automatic navigation menus
We improved the LemonStand CMS engine by adding the page grouping feature. Now it is possible to maintain a page hierarchy by specifying a parent page when you create or modify a page. LemonStand can use this page hierarchy for dynamically building navigation menus. It enables you to create site maps, menus and breadcrumbs, which are updated automatically when you change the page hierarchy. In our usual style, we do not impose any limits on the HTML markup generated by LemonStand for your navigation menus. The feature uses partials, which are the core component of the templating engine. This allows you to issue any HTML markup for the navigation with very simple API calls.
2. Better protection on shared hosting environments
LemonStand can now be installed using the command-line installer. It gives the application better protection, especially on the shared hosting environments where all application files are owned by the account user, and the web server doesn't need to have writing permissions on the application files and directories. Therefore, there is only one user who can modify LemonStand files - the owner of the hosting account. To some this might seem like overkill, but we're striving to create the best shopping cart available.
3. Configurable checkout process
The checkout process in LemonStand is now flexible and can be implemented in various ways. If you run a local store and ship only to local customers, you probably do not need ask your customers to specify the country and state during the checkout process. If credit card is the only payment method you accept, then you probably don't need to ask the customer to select the payment method. So that step could be removed from the checkout process. The same thing goes for shipping - the step for shipping method selection could also be removed from the checkout process. You can even implement a one-click checkout! This gives you ample opportunities in customize the checkout process and implement unique scenarios.
LemonStand gets more exciting each day as the platform matures and is refined. Very soon you'll be able to download the public beta, so keep checking back for updates and join the community.
LemonStand is in pre-beta
3 Comment(s) | published by Halarewich D. on Tuesday, November 10, 2009
We invited a very small group of participants for a pre-beta testing bonanza. The intention was to find and fix any issues that would have put the public beta off to a bad start.
The pre-beta test group was invite only. We brought in people that seemed most excited about LemonStand mainly by monitoring what people were saying on Twitter, Facebook and other channels.
Current Status
"Your backend is just amazing and we are truly humbled at the opportunity to use your software even before the release...
We spent quite a bit of time yesterday on the backend and it’s amazing reporting features. They were just incredible. We really liked the fact that it is easy to use and the charts are just outright fabulous."
- Joe Praveen
It has only been open for about 2 weeks, and we have already fixed several issues related to installation, server compatibility and the general licensing procedures. So we feel that things are going quite well.
Everyone participating has been providing great feedback thus far. While we have not seen any of the testers creations using LemonStand yet, we know it's going to be very interesting once these sandbox sites start popping up because of the talent we have on board already.
We have around 10 people/companies on board right now.
Thank you to the pre-beta participants
Your feedback, bug reports and questions have been extremely valuable. We would like to thank you. Some of these include Incognito, LOUD! Creative, Mack Richardson, Fair Trade Jewllery, Political Pixel, Torpedo Juice, Seventhfury, Rachel Greaves, OnWired, ElectricPulp and Squared Eye.
And for all the rest of you...
We have recieved outstanding support from the online community so far. From getting showcased in design inspiration sites, CSS galleries and having blog articles writen about us, it's all very humbling. We also want to say thanks to everyone who has connected with us over Twitter and Facebook to help us spread the word.
We're working very hard on getting the initial issues out of the way so that we can release the public beta. The pre-beta group is pushing us along now, so we don't anticipate there to be many more obvious issues. And once all these issues are resolved, we'll release the public beta.
We encourage you to subscribe to our RSS feed for updates, and also get in on our email list (to the right). You won't want to miss this.
Sage Pay payment method implemented
1 Comment(s) | published by Bobkov A. on Thursday, October 29, 2009
Sage Pay is the UK and Ireland's leading independent payment service provider. We have received multiple inquiries about whether LemonStand will have Sage Pay payment methods implemented. We are glad to announce the availability of Sage Pay Direct and Sage Pay Server payment methods out of the box.
Sage Pay Direct
Sage Pay Direct is a payment method which allows you to host the payment form on your website, providing consistent shopping experience for your customers. However, you will need to take corresponding measures, like installing an SSL certificate to your server, in order to satisfy required security level for the payment form.
Sage Pay Server
Sage Pay Server payment method implies redirecting your customers to the Sage Pay-hosted payment form. This method does not require customers to enter any financial information on your website, so security requirements are not as strict as it is with the Direct method.
Both payment methods will be available by default in the LemonStand Beta and 1.0 Release.
How LemonStand protects your data
0 Comment(s) | published by Bobkov A. on Wednesday, October 28, 2009
The worst thing that could happen with an eCommerce website is a data loss. We have developed a number of features which helps to prevent possible data loss caused by hardware faults or human errors.
Backup system
LemonStand has a built-in backup system which can be configured for creating backups of all data on daily, weekly or monthly basis. By all data I mean the database content as well as any files which you can upload to LemonStand, such as product images, CSS files, and any other website resource files. The backup system creates a complete snapshot of the current state and saves it into a file. LemonStand can rotate archive files, keeping only the most recent files (10, 20 or 50 files), or it can be configured to never delete archives. By default, LemonStand creates archives on user login, but you can create an archive manually at any time from the administration area.
If you need to, you can restore a system from an archive and continue working in no time. The backup system can also be used for easily moving a LemonStand website from one server to another.
Concurrency locking
The concurrency locking features helps to prevent database records from being overridden by another user while you are editing the record. This feature protects pages, partials, templates, resource files, products, orders and customers. When you start editing a website page, for example, LemonStand creates a lock in the database. If someone els tries to edit the same page, LemonStand will show a warning.
Another things to note is that LemonStand is smart enough to delete a lock if you close the browser window without leaving the Page Editor form.
Casual form abandonment protection
The causal form abandonment is a most frequent type of human errors. You can be editing a website page and accidentally command your browser to return to a previous page. It happens quite often if you intensively use hot keys during text editing. We took care about this issue and added the protection feature to most of the forms in LemonStand. The feature tracks changes in a form, and asks your confirmation if you try to leave a form with unsaved data.
Resource Manager update
1 Comment(s) | published by Bobkov A. on Saturday, October 10, 2009
We recently made some improvements to the Resource Manager. The "Resource Manager" is a feature built into the CMS module which allows you to manage website resource files – CSS, images, JavaScript and so on – everything that you use for building the website. The new Resource Manager's user interface looks even better. Specifically, we reworked the folder tree look and feel, updated the icon view mode and added a new view mode – Thumbnails, which displays large thumbnails for image files.
Another minor update we made – it's now possible to overwrite existing files during uploading, using the checkbox which has been added to the upload form.
Announcement: Pricing and value
11 Comment(s) | published by Halarewich D. on Thursday, September 10, 2009
As we draw closer to releasing the beta and ultimately version 1.0 of LemonStand, we are determining more things in regards to our pricing, licensing technology, distribution, customer management, tech support and the LemonStand Marketplace.
Aleksey Bobkov and myself, Danny Halarewich the co-founders of LemonStand have been planning the details of these things for quite some time now. And we are ready to make a few announcements, even if certain things are not written in stone (it's more like sand at the moment).
Pricing
There is a huge range of prices for eCommerce products. From free (open source with no support), to thousands or tens-of-thousands of dollars per license (so called "enterprise" level). When determining a price, we had to consider the value we are providing, uniqueness and who our target market is. It's no secret that our main customers will be web designers, developers and agencies. We believe that our solution is unique and addresses a major problem that noone else has done effectively. While considering those things we came to a few conclusions.
Our main customers are repeat ones
Web professionals and agencies usually complete more than 1 project each month. And with the continued growth of eCommerce, many of those projects are perfect candidates for leveraging LemonStand. With that in mind we will be offering tiered pricing for our customers. The more you use LemonStand, the more benefits you'll get, including lower pricing.
Value added services
Web professionals need ways to promote themselves and win projects. We'll be offering partner programs to help you do this. Certain opportunities will be available simply by becoming our customer, and others will be available for people enrolled in higher-level partnerships with us. These opportunities will result in you ultimately getting more projects. There will also be access to "insider information" accessible only to customers and/or partners that will provide early announcements and tips on using LemonStand. We have many things in the oven right now, and will make specific announcements closer to launch.
Support
We had planned to provide email support for customers for 1-year right from the start. This is a major differentiator between a commercial product and open-source. We also plan to offer high-levels of support (probably after launch though) for customers that need it. The details are being worked out, but this might mean telephone support or faster email response times.
What's the verdict?
After considering all of the value we're offering, and the cost of providing proper support, we have come up with a price that we feel will work for us and you. That is around $300 USD, per-license. Each license is good for 1 website. You may also use this license for a development environment.
Some extra things to consider
We anticipate that we'll provide an initial discount for our beta testers. We may also open up for pre-orders prior to release as well, which would earn you a discount. And don't forget that LemonStand will use tiered pricing, so the more sites you build with it, the bigger your discount.
This price leaves much room for profits if you are creating websites for any sort of profit, whether you are building them for customers or selling products yourself.
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.
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.
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.
Live Demo of LemonStand now up and running
15 Comment(s) | published by Halarewich D. on Thursday, August 27, 2009
We just put up a live demo of LemonStand for you all to take it for a test drive.
You can log into the Admin area and test out the CMS features, generate some reports and manage the shop including products, customers and orders. Take a look at the front-end and reference the templates, partials and pages to get a feel for how design implementation works within LemonStand.
Keep in mind that some features from the administrative panel are missing. We removed these to prevent tampering with the demo store in a way that would remove access for everyone. Some of the missiong features are very powerful, but you'll need to wait for the Beta to try them out. So other than that, you can feel free to play with things however you like. The environment will refresh itself back to its original state every hour.
We realize that there isn't any documentation or guides for you to figure out the subtleties of LemonStand at the moment, so we'll be working diligently on these things. Writing tutorials, documentation and even creating videos will be a priority for us moving forward. In the meantime, try to reverse engineer the demo store to get an idea for how things work.
Please note that the software is still in "Alpha" stage. If you notice any pecularities let us know!
Etsy Products
The store products are real. If you want to purchase them, follow the link to its makers Etsy store.
Have Fun
We hope you enjoy the demo and have fun getting to know LemonStand a little better. We're excited to continue sharing more and more with you and we get closer to the Beta release.
Thank you for all of the mentions
1 Comment(s) | published by Halarewich D. on Tuesday, August 25, 2009
After our website launched, several design galleries and blogs showcased our work. We really appreciate this and wanted to say thanks to the folks who listed our logo and website.
So... Thanks!
There were also people who shared our link via Twitter. We thank all of you as well! Your support has been absolutely terrific so far. As we move forward and build our product, community and website to support it all, these early days will definitely be remembered.
Special thanks to the websites that showcased our website and logo
- www.instantshift.com
- www.problogdesign.com
- www.creamycss.com
- www.designsnips.com
- www.designbombs.com
- www.screenalicious.com
- www.cssillustrated.com
- www.cssline.com
- www.cssmadness.com
- www.thedesigninspiration.com
- www.logospire.com
- www.welovecss.net
- www.inspiremix.com
- www.cssevo.com
- www.designfridge.co.uk
- www.d-lists.co.uk
- www.csswow.com
- www.logooftheday.com
- www.designbygrid.com
- www.cssmania.com
Beta users will be able to upgrade to version 1.0
14 Comment(s) | published by Halarewich D. on Tuesday, August 04, 2009
We have decided that we'll allow beta users to upgrade to version 1.0 once it is available. The beta will be dropping soon, and during that time we'll be making small refinements to the system, building up our documentation and rolling out our customer service features.
To upgrade you will just need to purchase a license from the website and enter it into your install of LemonStand. This will enable upgrades and the system will update to version 1.0 or whatver is the latest release.
This will make it easy for testers to continue using LemonStand from testing stages right into production.
What is LemonStand anyway?
0 Comment(s) | published by Halarewich D. on Tuesday, August 04, 2009
You might be wondering what LemonStand is. Or maybe you just want to understand how it is different from other products and why it exists. This post will explain all of that.
Why it exists
As web designers and developers we had to evaluate available shopping cart solutions, choose the best and then work with it. The problem is, "choosing the best" is not easy. This is because many shopping carts brag about all the features they have and how "powerful" they are. Or even talk about their "templating" system. What they don't tell you is how hard it is to actually implement a custom design that you created for your client. They don't tell you that you're stuck in many areas with their HTML and cannot change it. They don't tell you to change basic HTML you need to navigate a deep maze of folders and download and edit 15 or more files manually, then upload them again, manually.
eCommerce sites are not just about products either. But you might think that after seeing their CMS and blog features... if they even exist.
After experience lots of frustration and almost smashing a keyboard or two we thought "We can't be the only ones facing these issues. Their must be a better way to build and manage eCommerce sites.". And there is. And it's LemonStand.
How is LemonStand different?
The main difference is our focus on flexibility and ease of use. This has led to a unique approach in building out eCommerce websites. Let me explain:
Design flexibility
Implementing websites in LemonStand is easy and powerful. Using the syntax highlighting code editor and resource manager, you create your templates and pages right from within the interface. Write your code using your favorite editor, and then just paste into LemonStand. Add in some simple tags to output dynamic content. Upload your images and CSS files and ready to go. All done without having to navigate complex folder structures and remember which files to edit.
We'll provide more details on the build process in future posts.
Ease of use
LemonStand is very easy to use. We have developed a consistent UI that makes managing all aspects of your site simple. We have used AJAX to reduce page reloads and make the interface more snappy.
The color scheme of the interface, and the logo can even be customized to match your business.
Of course there's more to it
LemonStand has a lot of great features and unique differences from other products. We definitely can't cover them all in one blog post, so we'll gradually be writing about different features and explaining how they work.
So keep an eye on the website or subscribe to the RSS feed.
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