I just released Potion Store 0.3.0, the latest version of my trusty store code. The most noteworthy improvements are sales charts and automatic credit card type detection. You can get the gory details of the release here and check out the project here. The project page has some screenshots of the administration interface now.

Here's a nice detailed tutorial on how to go about making your own online web store. The solution will involve php rather than rails, but some of the advice will apply to the Potion Store as well.

Jump to "Processing Your Own Online Payments - A Brief Tutorial [Part 1]"

The latest version of Potion Store is now available.

It's now better, faster, and stronger!

• Google Analytics integration for credit card and PayPal orders. It's nice to see the orders—in gory detail—in relation to all the data GA brings
• Add and edit products in the admin interface
• Look up orders by the order number
• Order process button gets disabled when clicked to prevent double submission
• Basic functional and unit tests (thanks to Jamie Hardt)
• Admin dashboard statistics had a off by one day bug. Fixed
• Code has been cleaned up in general and lots of minor bugs have been squashed.

Link to the Potion Store Project

I am pleasantly surprised to see a new store based on Potion Store go live just four days after the project was open sourced.

Scott Gruby of GGT Entertainment LLC has gotten his new store up and running after just two days of tinkering despite being a rails newcomer.

Read about his experience at his blog:

Jump to "Yet another new store" on Scott Gruby’s Blog

In just two days, over two hundred people have downloaded the Potion Store source code. That's not bad, considering how niche this app is.

I was surprised to see a patch submitted already as well. Thanks go out to Jamie Hardt for that.

Infrastructure-wise, there is now a subversion repository at Google Code and a mailing list at Google Groups.

See the updated project page for details.

I am pleased to announce that the code that powers the Potion Factory Store is now available to anyone, free of charge, in the form of an open source project.

Link to Potion Store Project

When we first launched Podcast Maker back in September of 2005, we just went with Kagi without giving much thought to the issue. We wanted to get our software out ASAP and payment processing was the last thing on our mind. After all, if it's good enough for Brent Simmons and NetNewsWire, who are we to argue, right?