ozpost shipping module

[dw08gm]

As indicated above, I believe that newcomers should at least have some prior experience with the Internet and website management/maintanance prior to embarking on something as powerful and flexible as zencart and its associated modules. It really isn't my position to 'teach' people that 'unable to connect to server' could mean something as simple as their modem not being plugged in, to something more complex such as cURL not being installed, or a firewall issue, etc, etc... .

I have learned my lesson but I think you have missed my point that 2.05 is the first module I have encountered that requires a live connection to the internet in order to install. Included amongst the other modules I had installed without going live are your AustPost and OZpost1.x series and several payment modules. If installing live is now the new order, then obviously I am learning a new lesson.

Cheers

[RodG]

I think you have missed my point that 2.05 is the first module I have encountered that requires a live connection to the internet in order to install. Included amongst the other modules I had installed without going live are your AustPost and OZpost1.x series and several payment modules. If installing live is now the new order, then obviously I am learning a new lesson.

Things change, and generally for the better.

In this case the checks that have been put in place that allow the module to be installed have been added as a result of repeated installations on systems without the pre-requisite software requirements, specifically, PHPv5 and cURL.

In short, the module now checks whether it is *capable* of working on any given system *before* it will allow itself to be installed. The idea being to categorise and minimise support questions by segregating installation/network issues from configuration and other issues.

As a 'side effect', these checks are repeated each time you go to the /admin/modules/shipping section of the site, which gives a consistent and reliable feedback system that indicates the whether the server is accessible or not (and if not, hopefully a bit more information as to why not).

Another 'side effect' is that by using the ozpost version number as the response string from the server it is now possible to notify users when an updated module is available.

Soooo, even though this change may have caused *you* to learn a new lesson, for many others (those that haven't followed the same upgrade path) it is all 'new' anyway, so they won't have to un-learn the older methods, which is why I don't see the need to document this particular change.

Cheers
Rod