LemonStand Blog

3 New Features to get excited about

1 | published by Aleksey Bobkov 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.