Updating the Recurring Subscription Order for AspDotNetStoreFront

 

I was recently working on a project whereby a delay in a shipment required all of the recurring subscriptions in Authorize.Net to be cancelled or postponed.

Unfortunately, there is no easy way within AspDotNetStoreFront to reconfigure existing orders within the system to sync up with the new Authorize.Net recurring subscriptions that needed to be created due to this shipment delay.

Well, after doing a bit of digging into the database and some validation/verification, we were able to come up with a SQL Script whereby we could update the existing AspDotNetStoreFront orders to be replaced with the new Authorize.Net recurring subscription IDs!!

First you need to get the corresponding order and existing Recurring Subscription ID from the AspDotNetStoreFront system:

SELECT c.FirstName, c.LastName, c.CustomerID, sc.RecurringSubscriptionID, sc.UpdatedOn

FROM ShoppingCart sc

INNER JOIN Customer c

ON sc.CustomerID = c.CustomerID

WHERE RecurringSubscriptionID IS NOT NULL

AND c.FirstName = 'John'

ORDER BY UpdatedOn DESC;

Once you have that information, you can then match up that user’s record to update his associated Recurring Subscription ID that will match up to his record in Authorize.Net:

UPDATE ShoppingCart

SET RecurringSubscriptionID = 11111111

WHERE RecurringSubscriptionID = 22222222

Once you have done that, all you need to do is wait until the Authorize.Net Recurring Subscription kicks into effect and now your AspDotNetStoreFront orders will be once again synced up with your Authorize.Net Recurring Subscriptions!!

Pros and cons of AspDotNetStoreFront

I have been using AspDotNetStoreFront for quite some time and I thought it would be worthwhile for consumers that are currently researching AspDotNetStoreFront (ASPDNSF) as their potential e-commerce platform to be able to review some advantages and disadvantages to using the platform.

Pros:

1. AspDotNetStoreFront is one of the few commercial (non open-source) ASP.NET E-Commerce Engines that provides an on-premise solution.
2. AspDotNetStoreFront provides numerous features still missing in many ASP.NET open-source platforms such as support for Recurring Billing with multiple payment providers (Authorize.Net and PayPal), Recurring Billing checkout with multiple recurring items in a single order and a wide variety of payment providers such as Amazon Checkout.  For example, a competitor such as Volusion does not have
3. AspDotNetStoreFront is reasonably affordable compared to other ASP.NET platforms especially for the Express edition and they include 1 year of support as part of the purchase price.

Cons:

1. ASPDNSF does not provide a pluggable or modular platform, thus requiring access to source code to make modifications to enhance the platform (source code is available for an additional cost).
2. Many features in ASPDNSF are provided through 3rd party solution providers which generally require Professional Edition or above as well as substantial costs in acquiring their solutions such as Real Time Shipping with Cut Off times (such as that provided by a 3rd party solution provider called SimRun (http://www.simrun.com/AspDotNetStoreFront/SEEAspdnsfPricing.aspx).  It also seems that ASPDNSF heavily relies on its 3rd party solution providers to include many of the features that the base platform is lacking, therefore, do not expect to see currently lacking features introduced into the platform in a later release version. 
3. The ASPDNSF platform is still using ASP.NET Web Forms and .NET 3.5.  At the current time, there is no published roadmap for support for ASP.NET 4.0 or 4.5.
4. The ASPDNSF platform still does not have published support for SQL Server 2012 (and the soon-to-be released SQL Server 2014).
5. The ASPDNSF platform still uses deprecated data types such as ntext (which have been deprecated since SQL Server 2005) as part of their database schema and has no published roadmap to update the schema to support the new nvarchar(MAX) datatype.
6. The ASPDNSF platform does not regularly maintain and update their documentation for newer platforms.  For example, the installation documentation still refers to Windows 7/Windows Server 2008 R2 (http://manual.aspdotnetstorefront.com/p-1229-installation-guide-windows-7.aspx) and makes no mention of newer platforms such as Windows 8 or Windows Server 2012/Windows Server 2012 R2.
7. ASPDNSF has very little customizability and extensibility out-of-the-box.  For example, some E-Commerce platforms support adding additional customer attributes to be able to capture additional customer information, however, ASPDNSF does not offer this feature nor is there any roadmap for making the platform more customizable and extensible.
8. ASPDNSF has very limited CMS (Content Management System) capabilities.  The ability to generate content is extremely limited and does not provide many of the features provided by more robust content management systems such as Telerik Sitefinity or Kentico CMS/EMS.
9. ASPDNSF ships with a default set of templates that are very basic and not very appealing visually.  If you want some more appealing templates, you can either purchase them through a 3rd party solution provider or customize the existing templates yourself.
10. The administrative user interface is especially complex (if not overly complex) compared to various other E-Commerce engines such as VevoCart or nopCommerce.  You have to dig around the administrative interface and read through the documentation to figure out how to do anything but the most simple of tasks.
11. There are a very limited number of reports that are provided out-of-the-box with ASPDNSF.  If you want to create custom reports, it requires you to have a detailed knowledge of the underlying ASPDNSF database schema and a working knowledge of SQL.  You can then create custom reports by following this documentation: http://manual.aspdotnetstorefront.com/p-427-custom-report.aspx.  There is no "Report Builder" capability or feature within the system to allow you to easily build your own custom reports out of the system.
12. The installation package is extremely primitive and basically only serves the function of extracting the installation file to a specified directory (a glorified version of WinZip or WinRaR).  Whereas most other installation packages from software vendors provide all of the necessary setup operations for you such as creating necessary file system permissions, creating the necessary databases etc. ASPDNSF installation package does none of that.  

Therefore, if you are currently evaluating your feature needs for an ASP.NET-based E-Commerce system, I would definitely carefully consider whether or not your feature requirements will be met by AspDotNetStoreFront.  If not, you should prepare for purchasing source code and making your own set of customizations and enhancements or working with a 3rd party solution provider and end up paying considerably more than the base purchase price.

Overall,  if you simply need an ASP.NET-based E-Commerce engine and have a minimal budget, ASPDNSF is an acceptable choice, however, you are probably better off choosing a more well-maintained commercial solution such as Kentico EMS or Telerik Sitefinity CMS with the E-Commerce add-on which have regular updates to the platform and provide better overall and well-rounded capabilities and features.

Creating a Custom Report in AspDotNetStoreFront

If you have started working with AspDotNetStoreFront, you may have noticed that the out-of-the-box product does not ship with very many default reports.

Therefore, if you have a need to write a Custom Report that can be easily exported to MS Excel, you can follow this article to create a Custom Report: http://manual.aspdotnetstorefront.com/p-427-custom-report.aspx

One thing to note, however, is when you are writing your own custom reports, many of the fields in the AspDotNetStoreFront database still use the ntext data type (as of the current release v. 9.4.0.0), thereby SEVERELY limiting the types of queries that you can write against the database.  Unfortunately, there is no current estimated timeframe as to when the product will be updated to support the newer varchar(MAX) and nvarchar(MAX) data types.

 

Deleting Test Orders from the AspDotNetStoreFront Database

If you need to clean up your AspDotNetStoreFront database by removing and deleting any test orders from the database, then you will need to follow the instructions described in these articles:

http://manual.aspdotnetstorefront.com/p-1286-clearing-oldtest-orders-from-the-database.aspx

http://manual.aspdotnetstorefront.com/p-411-clearing-test-orders-from-the-database.aspx

However, neither of these articles FULLY address cleaning out and deleting out all of the order data from the database.

You will need to also run these statements to delete ALL of the order data:

DELETE FROM OrderShipment
DELETE FROM OrderNumbers
DELETE FROM ShoppingCart

Getting Started with AspDotNetStoreFront

If you are setting up AspDotNetStoreFront as your ASP.NET E-Commerce engine, you may have some initial trouble getting started with setting up your site and then knowing where to begin setting up your site.

Therefore, here are the steps that I followed to get an AspDotNetStoreFront site up and running:

1. Install AspDotNetStoreFront by folowing this article: http://manual.aspdotnetstorefront.com/p-479-installation-guide-windows-vista-windows-server-2008.aspx  For some reason, they do not have an updated installation guide for Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows Server 2012/2012 R2, but the main difference is applying the "IIS_IUSRS" account instead of "Network Service"
2. Once you have been set up, you should immediately log into the Admin Console by following the instructions here: http://manual.aspdotnetstorefront.com/p-474-the-admin-home-page.aspx
3. Now that you have logged into the Admin Console, you will need to perform some customizations.
4. Under the Configuration menu select --> Site Configuration Wizard.  This will allow you to enter all of the relevant basic data about your AspDotNetStoreFront (ASPDNSF) site including Payment types and Payment Gateways.  If you need to specify a Payment Gateway such as Authorize.Net, you can click on the "Configure" link next to the appropriate Payment Gateway and then enter the required information.  Only after doing this will you be able to select the Authorize.Net radio button.
5. Beneath the Configuration menu, select Email and enter the necessary details for your Smtp Server.
6. Beneath the Configuration menu, select Shipping-->Shipping Methods to configure 1 or more Shipping Methods for your products.
7. Now to customize the content of your site, click on Content-->Manage Topics. Some of the common topics you will want to customize are the following:  
• HomeTopIntro
• Template.Header
• Template.Footer
• Template.Logo
• EmptyCartText
• Copyright
• Template.TopNavigation
• Template.VerticalNavigation
• PageNotFound
8. You may have to customize some additional "built-in" strings that are used in ASPDNSF, so you can do this by select Content-->String Resource Mgr.  For example, I needed to change the text for the following String Resource: product.CallToAction.IsRecurring
9. For additional customizations, you may need to go into Configuration-->Advanced-->AppConfig parameters and alter some values to support functionality that you might need (such as for Recurring Orders)
10. Now that you have set all of this up, you can now begin setting up Products.  However, you will need to set up at least 1 Manufacturer before you can create your first product.  Therefore, from the Products menu, select Manage Manufacturers.  Create at least 1 Manufacturer.
11. Now from the Products menu, select Manage Products.  You can then begin adding products.  If you need to add a Recurring product, you need to first save the product and then select "Show Variants" and enter the Recurring Interval on the "Recurring" tab.  You can read more about Recurring products here: http://manual.aspdotnetstorefront.com/p-459-recurring-orders.aspx.  Unfortunately, the documentation and screenshots are a bit outdated, so this is how the Recurring screen should actually look like in the most recent release of ASPDNSF (v. 9.4 as of this writing):

That should be it!  You should now be up and running with your basic AspDotNetStoreFront web site!