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Ecommerce Templates > Newsletter > December 2018
Welcome to the December edition of the Ecommerce Templates Newsletter. We would like to wish everyone all the best for the festive season and a big thanks to you all for supporting us in 2018. We're finishing the year with a bang - ECT Version 7.0.2 has just been released and contains some very exciting new features.
PayPal Checkout work in conjunction with PayPal Payments Standard and allow you to define the layout, color and shape of the buttons displayed on checkout along with dynamically generated icons for the available funding sources.
You can define the design of the buttons in the store admin and then depending on the configuration and a buyer's location and cookies, PayPal dynamically displays the appropriate funding source options for your buyers to choose from.
Currently the integration is only for the PHP version of ECT but we are working closely with PayPal to see if a solution can be engineered for the ASP version too.
Coupon and Discount Start / End dates
You can now plan your marketing campaigns well in advance as the discount feature in 7.0.2 allows you to set a start date and end date for each of your discounts and coupons. The calendar display means you can start the campaign at midnight (server time) on the date of your choice and have it expire on the date you select from the calendar pop-up.
Image handling improvements
Google has often reported invalid path errors in the Webmaster Console as the product images were encoded in javascript functions. This has now been changed and Google will no longer be reporting these false positives in the crawl error section of GWT. This should make it easier to see any real invalid paths or missing files in the reports.
Regional text changes
The shipping estimator now takes full account of the store / buyer location with dynamic display changes for zip / postal code / state / county / province text
Mailchimp additions
Improvements have made to the Mailchimp integration - the number of successes and failures is now reported so you can view precisely how the list creation has gone. There is also a fix in the date format which may have caused lists to not be transferred to MailChimp.
Browser User Agent capture
It is now possible to capture the Browser User Agent when taking an order for viewing on the admin orders page. This can be used for debugging purposes, statistics and can sometimes aid in detecting fraudulent activity.
Database Integrity Check
The Admin Database Utility now includes a database integrity check - a whole suite of new features to identify and fix potential problems on a store. Some of the handy features include checking for products not assigned to categories or those assigned to the wrong type of category, situations where the manufacturer might be set up incorrectly in relation to products and attributes, or where there is a problem with the product attributes themselves.
As with all of the features in the Admin Database Utility we strongly recommend taking a back up of the database before making any changes or fixes.
Version 6.9.5
Version 7.0.2 is currently the Advanced Release whilst 6.9.5 is the latest Stability Release. We won't really be adding new features to this line but any fixes will be added when and if required.
Version 6.9.5 includes some important fixes and you can read all about them on our support forum
We are still publishing new articles based around the setting up and running of an ecommerce store. Our latest is focusing on writing great product copy, attracting users and search engines and how best to lay things out on the page...
If you have any suggestions for further articles, be sure to contact us and we'll see what we can do.
Updaters as always are available from our updaters page - it doesn't matter which version you are currently running, you can always update to the latest and greatest without going through all previous versions first. If you want to be informed automatically of the new features included in the updaters you can subscribe to the Updater forum - that means you'll receive an email each time a new post is added.