It is bundled with Affiliate Manager 5.x (and you’ll need the latest version of that module to go along with the import module) and is capable of importing:

• affiliates from Affiliate Manager 4.x
• affiliates from Merchant’s 5.x affiliate feature
• category and product configuration data from flat files

At this point it does not import the payouts, orders, or hits data from Affiliate Manager 4.x (or Merchant’s affiliate feature) but if the demand is there I’ll likely update it later to import that to a separate sets of databases which can be viewed from inside of Affiliate Manager’s admin. You can view the new module’s documentation here

The only way to get the module right now is by downloading the latest version of Affiliate Manager 5.x (it’s included in the download zip). Once it’s installed, new versions can be obtained, when available, from the “check for upgrades” link in the module’s admin.

Now that’s done I’ll be focusing all of my non-tech support time on “Focus” our new search module. I’m looking forward to getting back into that groove as it’s been a great pleasure to work on (but then that’s generally true about all coding…and definitely NOT true about writing documentation).

Two weeks ago I finished adding the product specific payouts feature that lets you configure each affiliate to be paid a specific amount for individual products. And along those lines, you can configure it a “category at a time” so that all of a cateory’s products have the same affiliate payouts.

Last week I added the option to send “New Affiliate” notification emails up the referral chain so that you can notify affiliates when someone they have referred signs up to become affiliates themselves.

And today I have just completed adding the ability to configure specific global headers and footers for each affiliate. These can be used in place of the default header and footers whenever customers shop in the store as a result of a referral from that affiliate.

You’ll find specific entries addressing all of these new features in the module’s FAQ.

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The first is Flyout 5. You may have already seen the 4.x version we released that a couple months ago. Flyout adds Netflix type pop-ups to your Miva Merchant store. Any place that you can display a product in your store, you can display a pop-up. You can display pop-ups on your category pages, product list page, storefront - or anywhere else. View a demo of Flyout here.

The second module is Reveal 5, for Inventory Manager 5. This module addresses the oft answered question when dealing with attribute combinations - how can I hide inventory options that are out of stock?

For example, say you are tracking two attributes: size (small, large) and color (red, blue). A customer selects small, however it is only available in blue. Given the way Miva Merchant and Inventory Manager 5 are designed, a customer would have no idea that red is out of stock. With Reveal, an AJAX request is sent when someone selects an option and checks what remaining attributes are in and out of stock. In this case, red is out of stock, so it is removed from the attribute drop down list. Additionally, when your product page is initially loaded, an AJAX request is sent and any completely out of stock options are removed. So, if red is out of stock in both small and large - that option is removed from the drop down list.

Since the module is currently in beta, there are currently a couple shortcomings and known issues. The first is that it is only compatible with drop down list attributes. It is not compatible with checkboxes or radio buttons. Support for all appropriate attribute types is planned. Another shortcoming is that if you have multiple attributes but are not tracking all of them, the module will incorrectly remove non-tracked attributes. So, if a product has three attributes displaying (e.g. size, color and style) and you are tracking two (size and color) the module will not work. A fix is currently in the works. The last limitation is that the module will only work (correctly) on Product Pages. In its final version, it will be compatible on any Miva Merchant Page that can display attributes.

Reveal, being in beta, is selling at a discount right now. All future updates and bug fixes (as with all our modules) are free. Get it while it’s at a discount!

It is compatible with all of our template modules including Storefront Template (it was not in the beta release). I have completely re-worked the token processing in the module. All tokens in all template modules are now supported. For example, consider a case where you are using Storefront template to display a random image. You can now using the following:

%module|LC_FLYOUT| %random|thumbL|01|% |%
%module|LC_FLYOUT| %random|thumbL|02|% |%
…

You can do even more complex things with the tokens supported in other template modules. Consider the case where you want to display a the first 100 characters of a product’s description in your category template, then have a customer mouse over the description to see the entire description with Flyout. You can do the following:

%module|LC_FLYOUT| %var1|substring(Products.d.desc, 1, 100)|% |%

Any token supported by the template module should now work in any Product template for Storefront Template, Category Page Templates, Product Page Templates (you’d probably only want to use it in the Related products template), Other Page Templates and Search Manager.

Also, Merchant 5 store owners - do not fear. We will be releasing a 5.x version of this module over the coming weeks!

p.s. Here are some of the forthcoming additions to Pulse:

- hide User Agents from general reports (so they don’t take up as much space). This will be optional though as many people get a buzz when the search bots show up

- truncate/wrap long referer* urls (need this in order to prevent long urls from bleeding)

- add pagination to long reports

These have already been partially implemented so we hope to have them available in the next update.

* Did you know that “Referer is a common misspelling of the word referrer. It is so common, in fact, that it made it into the official specification of HTTP – the communication protocol of the World Wide Web – and has therefore become the standard industry spelling when discussing HTTP referers.”?

Thanks Wikipedia.

Update 03/05/08: we’re back from the Miva Merchant conference and working on Pulse. Today we have added a product name field with sorting to the Product Stats, fixed a bug that arises when you are blocking IP addresses, and changed to Order Stats referer so that it picks up the initial referer–the site the visitor came from rather than the page that lead them to the checkout. (In hindsight, it’s obvious that’s what it should have been doing but these things sometimes get overlooked when you’re knee deep in the code!) There isn’t an update as yet as we also want to include a handful of other tweaks and fixes.

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Here are some screenshots so you know that it really does exist:

The module is currently compatible with:

• (added 3/10/08) Storefront Template
• Category Page Templates
• Other Page Templates
• Product Page Templates (mainly for use in the related products template)
• Search Manager

The module is in beta and is selling at a discounted price of $40. After we test it out and work out the kinks, it will be priced at $49.95.

http://vikingcoders.com/go.mv?ID=LC_FLYOUT

We plan on releasing a 5.x version of this module as well. Be on the lookout for other AJAX modules over the coming weeks and months!

- Luis

The update of Affiliate Manager to compatibility with Merchant 5.x (although it’s a bit of a stretch to call it an upgrade given how much re-writing had to be done) has been done for a number of weeks now but the development of the module is still on going. It was my intent to add the ability to permit “product specific” payout configuration (i.e. the ability to, on an affiliate-by-affiliate basis, set different payouts for different products) to the initial release. However, I ran into some indecision on how best to implement it which slowed it down enough to get left out. I am still working on it but the indecision remains on how best to go about it. I polled a few developers who were looking for the features for their opinion on how they saw it as working but I never got a reply. So, I’ll lay out some possibilities and see if any one out there has an opinion (more specifically an opinion on how best to go about it….we all have opinions but not all are particularly relevant to this particular question).

In earlier versions of the module, “product specific” payouts were sort of a hack (and that hack still works in 5.x). The merchant would set each product’s “cost” to a particular value, then configure each affiliate’s payout to be based on a % of the product’s cost and thereby achieving a variable payout for each affiliate. Of course that kept you from using the cost field for anything else, but it was a nice representative of that “bang a square peg into a round hole” mentality that typified the glory days of Merchant (ahhh, the memories).

In the 5.x version of the module I’d like to add this as a more particular option configurable on each product’s page in admin. The question is how far to take it; how many options are really going to be used? Currently, each affiliate can have their payouts configured as a percentage (of the price paid, product cost, list price, or “profit”), a “per purchase” payout, and/or a “per product” payout. And each of these can be configured separately depending on what “level” the a referral was. Do we need that many configurable options for the prdouct-specific payouts? Would it be safe to assume that product-specific configurations would be necessary only for “primary” affiliates (i.e. those directly responsible for the referral)?

I’m currently in the process of upgrading/re-writing the Affiliate Login module and hope to have that ready next week. After that will be a new module, Affiliate Design which will replace the “Affiiate store-settings” feature of Affiliate Manager 4.x. I’m not entirely certain how best to go about changing the Merchant 5.x templates but I’m sure I’ll get it worked out.

Production Release 3
Miva Merchant Engine v5.06
Database API: mysql

mysql is the magic word here. If you’re not using mysql, you may want to take advantage of the free Miva Merchant mysql conversion tool.
If you’ve used ELM Stats previously and there’s something you felt was missing from it that you’d like to see in the 5.x version, please let us know in the comments.