SmartEtailing is making a number of changes to our software to help your bike shop attract more customers and increase your sales. Our Support team may be contacting you in the coming months to ask for your assistance with changes or to inform you of features that are being retired.
Why we need your help
Our platform is an enterprise software which means that we aggregate multiple business needs and large amounts of data into a single application. Each retailer utilizing SmartEtailing has a individual consumer facing website personalized for your local market, while leveraging common infrastructure.
The complex balance of common software and local businesses creates challenges as we enhance the performance and security of our platform. Your business, for example, may host your domain name with a third party, or you have an individual payment gateway account for your business. Situations like this mean that when we are making changes to our application infrastructure we may need to contact you to change your individual accounts to enable us to take steps for the system as a whole.
Examples of changes we may need your help with include moving to a new and faster hosting environment, updating the web application development platform that powers much of the SmartEtailing system, and increased security features.
What to expect if Support contacts you
Our Support team may contact you for one of the following changes. We ask that you please respond to emails or phone calls and devote some time to assisting our team properly configure your accounts to ensure you are able to utilize new features.
Switching to SmartEtailing Name Servers
Clients using Domain Name Servers (DNS) other than SmartEtailing will need to either begin using SmartEtailing name servers or make DNS changes at the time of our migration to a new cloud hosting environment. We will be happy to walk you through either of these options.
Domain Name Servers are the internet's equivalent of a phone book. They maintain a directory of domain names and translate them to Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. The majority of SmartEtailing clients utilize our Domain Name Servers in order to simplify their business, and we recommend but don’t require it for all retailers. We will require that all retailers who choose not to use our Domain Name Servers to update certain records at the time of our upgrade to our new hosting environment.
Clients with secondary domain names will need to make changes with their DNS registrar or purchase a SSL certificate for the domains they want to use.
Updating Paypal Payflow Payment Gateway
In June, PayPal will be changing and enhancing the way their application communicates with websites through the Payflow Payment Gateway. This enhancement will strengthen the PayFlow integration as part of a broader infrastructure security initiative for the company.
If you are currently using PayPal to accept payments on your website, our Support team will contact you to facilitate the necessary changes. PayPal estimates that we will need to begin this process on or around June 1, 2018.
Responsive Migration
In 2017 we released our new responsive website platform and we will retire legacy templates on December 31, 2018. All clients will be required to upgrade before the end of the year.
Beginning July 1, we will start the process of retiring legacy templates. Clients on legacy templates will not be able to switch to other legacy templates or access the legacy template publisher interface used for styling changes on non-responsive templates.
Client who have not yet migrated have a number of options available for switching to the new templates which you can learn about on our Responsive Migration Options page. Our Support team will reach out to you with progressive urgency as we approach end of the year in order to assist you with this change.
We are removing select legacy features on May 15th
In order to effectively invest in innovation for the SmartEtailing software we need to trim underutilized or outdated features from our application. By removing these features we can limit the scope of new enhancements, reduce exposure to bugs, and focus our efforts on the areas of your business where we deliver the most value.
In the coming months the following features will be removed from SmartEtailing and therefore your website.
- BikeSpeak Forum
- Classifieds
- Cycling Links
- Cycling Tips & Highlights
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Glossary of Cycling Terms & Highlights
- Legacy Email Sign-Up
- Legacy Templates & Template Publisher
If you are actively using these features for your business we encourage you to find an alternative for the specific feature and work with your customers to inform them of the change. Based on our software usage data, the vast majority of SmartEtailing clients no longer use these features so we expect minimal impact to our clients as a whole.
Whenever possible we will send emails to notify you when these features are retired. As always feel free to contact our Support team if you want help in replicating a feature that you think is important to your business.
We are here to answer questions
This process of enhancing software that is so crucial to the health and success of so many independently owned bicycle dealerships is very important and complicated work. We appreciate your assistance and support as we undertake these changes. Please feel free to contact Support with any questions about these changes or others.
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