Version 2.8 of $7 Secrets Scripts is in beta testing

Hey, folks! Version 2.8 of the $7 Secrets scripts (7DSS) is now in beta. You can download 2.8b2 (2.8b1 was a limited, private beta) from the usual place (see page 27 in the report).

While this version has been in use on 7dollarsecrets.com for the past several weeks with no problems, it has not had wide testing and it is a beta. There may be bugs and there will certainly be changes before the final release. I don't recommend using it on a production site. All that being said, I don't anticipate any problems and would appreciate your help in testing.

If you've made it this far, you should know that b2 is not a full package. You will replace index.php, ipn.php and settings.php on your site with the b2 versions, taking care to copy over your old settings to the new settings.php. I recommend hanging on to the old files, perhaps by renaming them.

There are new options to configure in this latest version of settings.php. A Read Me file will describe the new settings.

You will also copy the files in the "templates" folder to your existing templates folder. No templates are replaced.

Here are the changes in 2.8 from 2.7 as of this beta:

• The code has been cleaned up

  I changed the way some code was written to allow future expansion and changed the formatting overall. Some legacy code was removed, some functions were rewritten for clarity, and new functions were added for tasks that were executed at multiple points in the script. The HTML written by the script is now W3C validated. At the moment, index.php is 13% smaller and ipn.php is 32% leaner, perhaps offering faster script operation.

• Invalid actions now show sales page instead of expired page

  Just makes for a more professional appearance for you

• Fixed bug that split From addresses when there was a comma in the $sys_item_name
• Fixed bug that flagged purchases as fraudulent when there was an apostrophe in the product number
• Added charset variable to PayPal button code ($sys_charset) to allow proper encoding of high-ASCII characters (common in non-English languages) and to avoid errors at PayPal (see https://ppmts.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/ppdts.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=54 for more information)

  These affected very few people, but needed to be addressed

• File locking now occurs when sales are moved from fraud file to purchase file
• Change: sales marked as "not fraud" now respect the $sys_ipn_email setting
• Change: sales marked as "not fraud" are now removed from the fraud file
• Change: sales marked as "not fraud" now have the proper expiration date set

  I'm surprised these never came up, but now, when you click "not fraud" for a transaction marked as fraudulent, it will be recorded in your purchase file with an expiration date set from the time of your click and be removed from your fraud file, and a download link will be sent to your customer if your settings allow it.

• Change: giveaway cookie expiration now matches download expiration ($sys_expire_hours)

  Just kinda makes sense

• Script waits full one minute for PayPal confirmation

  Instead of 55 seconds.

• Script refreshes "Waiting for PayPal" screen in IE7 (works around default META REFRESH setting)

  This has been reported intermittently for at least several months. I managed to track it down to a default setting in IE7 that doesn't allow scripts to refresh the page. The script will use Javascript to change the page location, which will work unless the user has also turned off Javascript.

• Separated the "Purchase Record Not Found" message from the script (purchase_notfound.html)
• Separated e-mail messages sent by the script into individual, editable text messages

  This allows you to modify the support message displayed if the customer's payment can't be confirmed, and the page can be themed to match your site. The e-mail messages can be completely edited and personalized with a variety of tags.

• Localization settings have been added to settings.php

  These settings allow you to further customize your customer's experience, by enabling you to change the wording and even the language of the messages displayed to your customer.

Thank you all for your continued support!