Sweet Tooth Blog & News

eBay/PayPal Buys Magento; What does it mean for Sweet Tooth, Better Store Search and WDCA?

June 13, 2011

Posted by Jay

• Last week the remaining 51% of Magento was purchased by eBay (PayPal) which puts PayPal’s total ownership of Magento at 100%. This was done in a strategic attempt by PayPal to launch their x.Commerce platform.

  For us and our major partnership with Magento, it means that we will be able to play a more prominent role in the e-commerce on-line and off-line community. With Sweet Tooth at the top of Magento, the world’s largest e-commerce system with over 100,000 merchants, PayPal’s actions will enable Sweet Tooth to move towards being a world standard for e-commerce on-line and off-line rewards.

  PayPal is planning on stimulating Magento’s growth and development to improve it further and push it towards the world’s standard for e-commerce. PayPal is also planning on creating a completely multi-channel solution with their upcoming in-store payment solutions, which WDCA plans to follow completely.

  We congratulate Magento on their success, and I extend a personal congrats to Roy Rubin and Yoav Kutner on their sale of the company!

  
  

  This post was posted in Sweet Tooth, WDCA, Better Store Search, General Announcements, Other/General

Better Store Search 3.1.1 Released Today!

March 20, 2011

Posted by Mike

• We released Better Store Search 3.1.1 today which has some pretty cool improvements to our already awesome "did you mean..." functionality. We also fixed some issues with blank searches by customers so everything should be perfect now!

  You can check all of our changes and improvements in our Change Log.

  It has been exciting to see the Better Store Search community expand over the past six months. Lots of store owners are realizing the potential gains that can be realized through improving search results for customers!

  
  

  This post was posted in WDCA, Better Store Search, General Announcements, Release Announcements

Better Store Search 3.1 Released Today

February 25, 2011

Posted by Mike

• Better Store Search version 3.1 with profiler was released today with some very cool additions. We fixed a Magento Search Terms issue, added a new Search Profiler for developers and store owners to get an explanation of search result rankings, improved some search algorithms and fixed a bunch of issues reported by the good citizens of the Better Store Search Community.

  Check out the full change log for Better Store Search 3.1.0 for details of all modifications and additions that were made!

  
  

  This post was posted in Better Store Search, Release Announcements

Better Store Search v3.0 Now Available

December 30, 2010

Posted by admin

• 
  Version 3.0 of Better Store Search is now available for download/upgrade. We factored in many client suggestions in order to make Better Store Search as effective as possible on any Magento store.

  
  If you manually installed the application please contact us to get the latest version of the software, for free of course :)

  
  

  This post was posted in Better Store Search, Release Announcements

BSS v2.0.1 released with Magento 1.3 DYM Feature Support!

December 1, 2010

Posted by admin

• 
  Now Magento 1.3 users can see the DID YOU MEAN ___? feature when they rebuild search indexes. This release also fixes a few issues that were present with Magento 1.3 stores.

  
  For developers (and installers), you should note the following:
  
  1. The database usages have changed. Better Store Search now uses bss_index table instead of the extended columns on the catalogsearch_index table like before. This was required to resolve an incompatibility on some Magento 1.3 stores, but also it's a lot nicer : ). I suppose it should have been done from the start...
  
  2. You MUST have the extended catalogsearch_index columns in order to run the update to BSS 2.0.1 or else you might get an error. If you DO get an error, see this knowledge base article: http://www.wdca.ca/support/index.php?_m=knowledgebase&_a=viewarticle&kbarticleid=8

  
  For designers, please note the following:
  
  3. With the new Magento 1.3 support we had to move all our design/skin files to the default/default theme. We no longer deploy the base/default files with the release. Magento 1.4 should fall back to default/default before trying to fall back to base/default, however if you have issues please copy the default/default files to your base theme.
  
  4. bss/dym/results.phtml was slightly modified.

  
  Version 2.0.1 of Better Store Search is now available for download/upgrade. If you manually installed the application
  
  please contact us to get the latest version of the software.

  
  

  This post was posted in Better Store Search, Release Announcements

Version 2.0 of Better Store Search Just Released!

November 23, 2010

Posted by admin

• 
  Several months in the making, Better Store Search 2.0 has just been released! This new version brings several innovative features to the most valuable search extension for Magento. Phonetic matching and "did you mean" functionality are two of the most effective features we've added.

  
  We appreciate all of the suggestions and feedback that led to this new and comprehensive version of Better Store Search. If you haven't had a chance to try out our demo store then take a look and see what your store is missing out on!

  
  

  This post was posted in Better Store Search, Release Announcements

Better Store Search 2.0 To Be Released Before December!

November 11, 2010

Posted by admin

• 
  Within the next few weeks Better Store Search 2.0 will be released. This revolutionary new version of the already-successful Magento extension has a variety of new features which will allow customers to find the products they're looking for much quicker and with less hassle.

  
  A few of the new features:
  
  - A brand new patent-pending algorithm to provide phonetic matching with items in your mySQL database, allowing customers to misspell product names and still get the right results
  - Intelligent special character matching
  - "Did you mean?" search recommendations after a search returns no results
  - Completely re-factored product match relevance system architecture to allow for more extendibility

  
  We're extremely excited about providing store owners with this huge improvement in search from the Magento default. The new version will be released very soon so stay tuned for more news. Also, all current Better Store Search users will receive the upgrade to version 2.0 for free!

  
  

  This post was posted in Better Store Search, Release Announcements

Better Store Search v1.1.0.1 Is Now Available

August 23, 2010

Posted by admin

• 
  Version 1.1.0.1 of Better Store Search is now available for download/upgrade. If you manually installed the application
  
  please contact us to get the latest version of the software.

  
  

  This post was posted in Better Store Search, Release Announcements

Better Store Search v1.1.0 Is Now Available

July 21, 2010

Posted by admin

• 
  Version 1.1.0 of Better Store Search is now available for download/upgrade. If you manually installed the application
  
  please contact us to get the latest version of the software.

  
  

  This post was posted in Better Store Search, Release Announcements

1.1 Beta now available with new features!

July 18, 2010

Posted by admin

• 
  We just finished the new Better Store Search 1.1 Beta and it's ready for testing before we make the stable release next week. We've added two new major features as well as some bug fixes.

  
  New Feature 1: Product hyphenation support
  
  Now BSS will automatically adjust hyphen usage in search terms to find relevant products. This is important for all stores, but it is especially useful for stores where customers frequently search by model numbers that may or may not contain hyphens in the product name, SKU, model number or description. For example:
  
  Search Query: "T-shirt"
  Product Name: "TSHIRT"
  Without BSS: No results found
  With BSS: Found TSHIRT.

  
  New Feature 2: Plural word recognition
  
  Better Store Search now improves your Magento product search so that plural words (more than one) will also match the singular forms of those words. For example:
  
  Search Query: "Pencils"
  Product Name: "Pencil Pack"
  Without BSS: No results found
  With BSS: Found Pencil Pack!

  
  These new features can be seen first on http://www.magedir.com. The Magento Extension Directory is currently running Better Store Search 1.1 beta.

  
  Let us know what you think about the features!

  
  

  This post was posted in Better Store Search, Release Announcements