X-Cart:What's New in X-Cart 4.6

X-Cart 4.6or above

Performance optimization

• X-Cart v4.6 is by far the fastest version of X-Cart we've ever developed.
  
  X-Cart has already won a reputation for being a reliable and speedy ecommerce solution; however, this v4.6 release takes X-Cart's overall performance to an entirely new level. For this release, we've put much effort into optimizing X-Cart's code to make X-Cart even faster than before.
  
  Firstly, X-Cart's search scripts have underone a major overhaul, so now X-Cart takes a lot less time and server resources to do searches. This is important because in X-Cart the search mechanism is employed not only when someone uses the search box to find a product on the site, but also on a number of other occasions. For example, a product search is done even when X-Cart simply needs to select category/manufacturer products to be displayed on the page.
  
  We also made a number of improvements to X-Cart's session handling mechanism, import scripts, categories behavior in both Admin and Customer areas, etc.
  
  We managed to eliminate a number of performance bottlenecks and did a lot of testing to ensure the resulting product meets our expectations. Shown below are some of the results we got while testing the new X-Cart on the Amazon EC2 M3 (Large) server (12000 products in the database, 1-50 visitors online).
          
  
  The results we got show that X-Cart v4.6 is up to almost 5 times faster than the previous versions.

X-Cart v.4.5.5 and v 4.6 with 12000 products in database, 50 users online, on Amazon EC2 M3 (Large) server
page	max value for v.4.5.5	max value for v 4.6	win in speed
search	27.55s	5.78s	4.76 times
category	8.83s	5.18s	1.70 times
home	20.70s	4.92s	4.2 times
product	9.42s	5.97s	1.57 times

Design and appearance

• A new skin: Ideal Responsive
  The New Responsive Template for X-Сart released recently as a separate add-on module has been included in X-Cart v4.6 and is now available out of the box as X-Cart's "Ideal Responsive" skin. This fully adaptive skin will ensure a great shopping experience for your customers, no matter what kind of device and screen size they are using to access your store site. Cross-browser, multi-platform, easily customizable - this skin is just the thing you need to reach customers across multiple devices.
  

• Convenient 'Modules' page in Admin area (now with tabs)
  We changed the layout of the 'Modules' page in X-Cart's Admin area to facilitate finding the different types of X-Cart modules/extensions by the merchant. The page now has three tabs.
  The first tab ('Built-in and installed modules') opens a pane with the list of X-Cart's built-in modules and already installed add-ons. This list is pretty long right after you install X-Cart, and it will grow longer as you install new modules, so we also added some filters at the top of the page to help you navigate through this lengthy list with less scrolling.
  The second tab ('X-Cart Extensions') is for commercial modules developed by X-Cart team. The third one ('Modules from X-Cart Marketplace') is for modules developed by our community partners.
  
• 'Next'/'Previous Product' buttons on the product details page
  One more thing to boost your site's usability: Your store visitors will now be able to switch to the next product within the current category without having to leave the product details page.
  

• Context help in Admin area
  Every page in the Admin area now includes a context help section from which the user can access related articles in X-Cart's Knowledge Base.
  

Taxes

• Avalara integration
  Sales tax compliance has become easier for X-Cart merchants: X-Cart now offers integration with AvaTax, the market leading sales tax automation service by Avalara. AvaTax Calculation engine is a scalable, subscription-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering that keeps your business up-to-date on the ever changing tax rates and rules and ensures you have the most current rates applied for all your transactions.

Shipping & payments

• Klarna integration
  X-Cart v4.6 offers integration with Klarna payment solution. Klarna is a Swedish-based company that provides payment solutions for online storefronts. Payment solutions by Klarna are popular mainly in the Nordic countries (Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Netherland, Finland, Germany), but Klarna is also branching out into other EU countries.
  The payment solution by Klarna allows your customers to order products from your site without having to pay right away: when an item is purchased, you get paid by Klarna, not the customer; the customer is billed by Klarna later - after the item has been received.
  With Klarna the process becomes safer and simpler both for you and your customers, as Klarna assumes all the risks: your customers will always get their goods before they pay, and you'll always get paid, no matter what.
  Here are a few screenshots showing an X-Cart based store with Klarna payment option enabled:
          

Modules

• A number of X-Cart's modules and add-ons have been updated, among them:

• Advanced Customer Reviews,
• Antifraud,
• Checkout by Amazon,
• CloudSearch,
• Hot Products,
• Product Notifications,
• Socialize,
• Social Login,
• TaxCloud,
• X-Monitoring, etc.

More information is available in X-Cart Changelog.

New X-Cart 4.6.x versions

• X-Cart v4.6 released
• X-Cart v4.6.1 released
• X-Cart Classic v.4.6.2: Subscriptions, New USPS API, Responsive Email notifications
• X-Cart Classic v 4.6.3: Amazon Payments, PayPal Access, another USPS update
• X-Cart 4.6.4: new FedEx API, ePDQ Essential, CyberSource, update of iDEAL Professional, ability to search/export "anonymous customers"
• 4.6.5: a "maintenance release" with UPS, Australia Post, Fedex and USPS updated and 58 other improvements
• X-Cart 4.6.6: Simplify Commerce by Mastercard, Sage Pay API update, Universal Analytics, VAT exemption for the users with VAT ID

See also

• X-Cart Changelog
• What's New in X-Cart 4.5
• What's New in X-Cart 4.4
• What's New in X-Cart 4.3
• What's New in X-Cart 4.2
• What's New in X-Cart 4.1