Valentine Greetings!

Sure, it's still January, but only for a few more days. We were going to wish you a happy January 22nd, but that seemed a bit boring, hence the Valentine's Day theme.

Why is every holiday about candy? I have my fingers crossed that my wife doesn't buy me any. I still have a drawer full from Christmas, and I can't afford new pants right now. Speaking of pants...

Squirrelcart v4.2.0

Version 4.2.0 is now available. It includes some great new features, some bug fixes, and some uneaten molasses chews*.

Add-On Products

With the new add-on products feature you can assign products to another product as "add-ons", using the related products feature.

Improve your sales by letting your customers add an item and related items to the cart in a single operation.

• Add-ons are flagged as add-ons in all checkout and order views.
• When removing a product from the cart, add-ons are also removed.
• All the features that work with products also work with add-ons, including product options.
• With the Quick Total module installed (sold separately), customers will see a grand total below the Add to Cart button, updated on the fly as add-ons are selected.
• Add-ons can have their own quantity field, or a checkbox to select them.
• Thumbnail images do not appear for add-on images during checkout by default (but can be enabled if desired).

SEO URL Improvements

How did it work in older versions?

Our SEO** URL feature transforms URLs that would normally contain query strings and parameters that look like gibberish:

Category: http://example.com/store.php?crn=228
Product:  http://example.com/store.php?prod_rn=526&action=show_detail
Content:  http://example.com/store.php?sc_page=85

It turns them into search engine and human friendly URLs containing meaningful information:

Category: http://example.com/categories/books
Product:  http://example.com/products/war-and-peace
Content:  http://example.com/content/about-our-company

What has changed in version 4.2.0?

We've added a new Smart Base setting. When enabled, the categories, products, and content bases seen underlined above are not used. URLs will appear even more search engine and human friendly:

Category: http://example.com/books
Product:  http://example.com/books/war-and-peace
Content:  http://example.com/about-our-company

Products that are in a category will have a URL that includes the base (name) of the category as shown above. Products not in a category will have shortened URLs like:

Product:  http://example.com/super-widget

Why is this better?

• Unecessary information is removed from your URLs (the categories, products, and content bases).
• It adds more meaningful information to product URLs (category name), for better SEO.
• Your content page URLs are shorter, easier to remember, and easier to read.

What about older format URLs already indexed by search engines?

When the Smart Base feature is enabled, any requests for older format URLs will be answered with a 301 redirect to the new URL. This will ensure the search engines are given the new URL to update their indexes, and gets your customers to the correct place.

Would you like to try this new feature?

Click Here for a Live Demo

For a full list of changes, see our version history page.

How to get this version

Squirrelcart v4.2.0 is now available for download on our Downloads page, to all customers with active download access.

You can check your download access status here.

Has your download access expired? You can renew it for an entire year for only $85 USD by purchasing a Download Renewal.

Switch to Squirrelcart Pro

If you are a regular Squirrelcart user, you can change your license to Squirrelcart PRO for the difference in price. For a comparison of the two versions, see this page. If you'd like pricing or more information, just reply to this message.

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