I deliver meals to families and am looking to setup online ordering for my customers. I need to be able to customize the "store" to match my menu/website and I need to be able to add and change menu items weekly w/o knowing html. I also need for the customers to be able to pay with paypal or cash or check. I need to be able to set up different delivery zone prices and I need to run reports on items sold to make my production report. I have been researching for weeks and am overwhelmed by all the choices. I appreciate any advice. Thanks, CustomerABC

Dear CustomerABC, Thank you for your email. There are a few things to consider. Firstly, how do you plan to handle your online orders once they start coming in? Too many (e)retailers are starting an online store without a plan in place to handle the orders. Putting the cart before the horse, so to speak. Do you have a process in place to take care of the volumes you want? Do you have an accounting package that this information will eventually have to end up in?

Once you take care of your processing situation, and then consider which type of cart suits your business the best. No use investing in a cart and then trying to squeeze your business into a model, that may work for electronics, but does not work for you. Think of your workflow first and then get the shopping cart that fits you. My recommendations are carts especially designed for your industry:

• ProductCart Catering Software
• Catering Solutions Online
• Top Draw Media

To take care of order processing, consider integrating the shopping cart with your ERP or accounting package. This way the ERP remains the central product hub: all discounts, stock information & pricing structures setup here need to immediately translate to the webstore. Then, from the online store side, all orders will pass through a clean checkout, payment gateway and into your ERP. Planning for the growth pays off.

Email me and I would be happy to discuss your the integration side and help with your exact requirements.
Email: rachael at rapidtrade . com . au.

Kind Regards,
Rachael Shaw
Rapidtrade Software
www.rapidtrade.biz

As great as the AjaxControlToolkit is, it still contains a couple of (big) annoyances. The good thing is, that you can change the source-code yourself. So here it is, the changes I need to remember, when I do another custom build of the AjaxControlToolkit.

TabControls
The TabControl has the annoyance, that on Internet Explorer, a small rectangle of the tab is not displayed. Adding the following lines to the web page or changing the TabControl stylesheet Tabs.css will solve the problem:

<style type="text/css">

    .ajax__tab_xp .ajax__tab_tab { height: 21px; }

</style>

ModalPopupExtender
Why should the ModalPopupExtender actually work on Microsoft's own browser? Well it does, as long as the DOCTYPE of the web page is set correctly (meaning transitional). But when IE is in quirks mode, the popup shows up centered to the top left corner, and when scrolling, the page gets larger and larger, because the background element created, to prevent clicks on other elements is moved down. Thanks to this great blog entry.   

• Change the function 'getClientBounds' in common.js. In the browser switch, change the IExplorer part:

• 	
  
  		switch(Sys.Browser.agent) {
  
  		    case Sys.Browser.InternetExplorer:
  
  		        if (document.documentElement && document.documentElement.clientWidth)
  
  		            clientWidth = document.documentElement.clientWidth;
  
  		        else if (document.body)
  
  		            clientWidth = document.body.clientWidth;
  
  		        if (document.documentElement && document.documentElement.clientHeight)
  
  		            clientHeight = document.documentElement.clientHeight;
  
  		        else if (document.body)
  
  		            clientHeight = document.body.clientHeight;
  
  		        break;
  
  	
  	

• Change the function 'initialize' in ModalPopupBehavior.js. Replace the lines

this._backgroundElement.style.position = 'fixed';
...
  this._foregroundElement.style.position = 'fixed';

  with
  
this._backgroundElement.style.position = 'absolute';
  ...
  this._foregroundElement.style.position = 'absolute';


• To get the background element hiding all the links and other elements on the web page, you'll need to give it a separate CSS stylesheet (BackgroundCssClass) and just use a transparent image for the background. That's it.
  

  		.PopupBackground { background:url(spacer.gif); }
  	

Using the InnoSetup preprocessor, you can automatically give the setup file the same version as the program file you're packaging with InnoSetup. Predefined functions are

• GetFileVersion, e.g. 3.3.3117.29914
• GetFileProductVersion, e.g. 3.3.0.0

Additionally, you can add the following macro to your InnoSetup script found here. It supports only single digit version numbers though.

;
; Inno Setup Preprocessor macro to simplify the version string.
;
;    The following situations are covered:
;
;    (1)    1.2.4.3    -> 1.2.4
;    (2)    1.2.4.0    -> 1.2.4
;    (3)    1.2.0.0    -> 1.2
;    (4)    1.0.0.0    -> 1.0
;    (5)    1.0.0.2    -> 1.0
;    (6)    1.3.0.1    -> 1.3
;
#define SimpleVersion(str S) \
Local[0] = Pos (".0.0.", S), \
/* (4) and (5) */ \
(Local[0] > 0) ? Copy (S, 1, 3) : \
( \
Local[0] = Pos (".0.0", S), \
/* (3) */ \
(Local[0] > 0) ? Copy (S, 1, 3) : \
( \
Local[0] = Pos (".0", S), \
/* (2) */ \
(Local[0] > 5) ? Copy (S, 1, Local[0] - 1) : \
( \
Local[0] = Pos (".0.", S), \
/* (6) */ \
(Local[0] > 0) ? Copy (S, 1, 3) : \
( \
Copy (S, 1, 5) \
) \
) \
) \
);

and then use that macro to define the version

#define MyAppVersion   SimpleVersion(GetFileVersion("app.exe"))

We are using the following pingservices.xml file for BlogEngine.NET.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="yes"?>
<services>
    <!-- Wikipedia: Open Ping Servers -->
    <service>http://rpc.weblogs.com/rpc2</service>
    <service>http://ping.blo.gs/</service>
    <!-- Wikipedia: Aggregators -->
    <service>http://api.blogblogs.com.br/api/ping</service>
    <service>http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc</service>
    <service>http://ping.feedburner.com</service>
    <service>http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2</service>
    <service>http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/</service>
    <service>http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping</service>
    <service>http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2</service>
    <service>http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping</service>
    <!-- Wikipedia: Multi-Pinging services -->
    <service>http://pinger.blogflux.com/rpc</service>
    <service>http://blogpinger.de/</service>
    <service>http://www.kping.com/</service>
    <service>http://ping.in/</service>
    <service>http://pingoat.com/</service>
    <service>http://rpc.pingomatic.com/rpc2</service>
    <service>http://mohanjith.net/pnp</service>
    <!-- Various -->
    <service>http://www.bloglines.com/ping</service>
    <service>http://services.newsgator.com/ngws/xmlrpcping.aspx</service>
    <service>http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/</service>
    <service>http://xmlrpc.blogg.de/</service>
    <service>http://api.moreover.com/RPC2</service>
    <service>http://ping.weblogs.se/</service>
    <service>http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/</service>
    <service>http://coreblog.org/ping</service>
    <service>http://ping.myblog.jp</service>
    <service>http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc</service>
    <service>http://ping.bitacoras.com</service>
    <service>http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php</service>
    <service>http://bblog.com/ping.php</service>
    <service>http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC</service>
    <service>http://effbot.org/rpc/ping.cgi</service>
    <service>http://mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatt</service>
    <service>http://ping.exblog.jp/xmlrpc</service>
    <service>http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php</service>
    <service>https://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZFinance.woa/wa/pingPodcast</service>
    <service>http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2</service>
    <service>http://www.blogoole.com/ping</service>
    <service>http://www.blogoon.net/ping</service>
    <service>http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php</service>
    <service>http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger</service>
    <service>http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates</service>
    <service>http://www.wasalive.com/ping/</service>
    <service>http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php</service>
    <service>http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2</service>
    <service>http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php</service>
    <service>http://www.focuslook.com/ping.php</service>    
</services>

If you want to install BlogEngine.NET or any other web application in a virtual directory (or subdirectory) underneath a DotNetNuke installation, you'll have to make sure, that the configuration settings of DotNetNuke are not inherited by BlogEngine.Net. In order to prevent this, you need to change the web.config file of DotNetNuke and surround the <system.web> part with the following tag:

<location path="." inheritInChildApplications="false">
  <system.web>
    ...
  </system.web>
</location>

If the username and password textboxes don't show up on the login page of a BlogEngine.NET installation, you probably have uncommented the following line in the BlogEngine.NET web.config file:

<add name="CleanPageModule" type="BlogEngine.Core.Web.HttpModules.CleanPageModule, BlogEngine.Core"/>

Comment this line out again, and it will work.