iStyles News - Technical

iStyles Annual Medical Examination Scheduled

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Published on 24-02-2010 03:16 PM

iStyles will go offline for about an hour at 8am GMT 25 Feb for a scheduled routine annual medical examination to ensure that everything will contine to run perfectly. Order processing will not be affected.

Fan us on Facebook if you would like to keep track of the progress.

Update: Medical examination passed with flying colors. Thank you for your patience!

New Hair Cut

by

MK

Published on 14-01-2010 10:00 AM

iStyles was given a new hair cut, just like that! The purple header that we had since 2004 (yes, yes, we know) was FINALLY removed for a cleaner look. There were also many other little enhancements under the hood all around to speed up performance and experience. We hope you like it!

As always, everything is still pretty much work in progress as the site will continue to evolve before your eyes. What would you like to see?

iStyles.info

by

MK

Published on 13-01-2010 01:11 PM

We have migrated the forum, news and press sections of iStyles to iStyles.info. iStyles.info is a full blown publishing platform that will allow us to do much more, to create a central repository of information about all things iStyles for the benefit of our customers.

The site is pretty much work in progress as we continue to integrate and build new content. What would you like to see on the new site?

Scheduled Mail Migration

by

MK

Published on 29-05-2009 03:24 PM

We are migrating our mail system to Google Apps. There should be no mail downtime but if you have problems contacting us via e-mail, please use the ticketing support system instead.

Update: The migration was successful and all mail systems are functional. If you have a problem, please let us know via the ticketing support system.

iStyles Navigation Upgrades

by

MK

Published on 07-07-2008 03:18 PM

We upgraded the navigational capability on iStyles about a week ago based the feedback received from our customers and we are pleased to announce that the new system is working well. Many little tweaks were integrated to improve the overall navigation on iStyles but the major ones were mainly the addition of tag and warehouse filtering.

Filter By Tag
A problem that our customers had due to the massive number of Skins on iStyles was that it can take a long to find that perfect Skin (or Skins). The manual categorization of each and every Skin as suggested by some customers is unfortunately too rigid and extremely inefficient. We have thus decided to leverage on a popular "Web 2.0" concept known as tagging, but with a twist of artificial intelligence.

Each category will come with a tag cloud - a tag cloud may appear to be messy for those of us who are not familiar with the concept but it is the most efficient, flexible and powerful method available for sorting and categorizing huge amounts of data. A glance at the tag cloud will reveal the entire contents of the category and it may even reveal relevant tags for the customer as these tags "pop out" due to their larger sizes. The size of a tag in our tag clouds is determined by its occurrence and relevance within the category.

The iStyles website intelligently analyzes the shopping pattern of all shoppers (anonymously) to determine the relevance of a tag to a design. The tag clouds will thus evolve as the site learns. Tags are added manually by our team and we are working on algorithms that will give this "learning" a whole new meaning as iStyles.com will soon be able to automatically tag designs intelligently on its own.

Filter By Warehouse
All of our warehouses can ship worldwide, but filtering by warehouse may be useful in some cases, for example:

You are a USA based customer and you would only like to purchase products from the USA warehouse for faster delivery.
You are a European/international customer and you would only like to purchase products from the Singapore warehouse as the international shipping cost at the Singapore warehouse is only $3 and there is free shipping when more than $30 of products are purchased.
You encountered a "no shipping methods available" error because the USA warehouse is not able to ship to certain countries and you can only select items from the Singapore warehouse as the $3 'standard air mail' shipping method from Singapore can ship everywhere.

Do keep the feedback coming in. We read every single one of them!

Project Hello

by

MK

Published on 05-11-2007 03:18 PM

Project Hello is an exciting new initiative involving you, our valued global customers. What project hello does is simply to greet customers with "Hello", in the correct language, based on the customer's location. For example, if a French customer visits iStyles, he will be greeted with "Bonjour" at the store front.

Project Hello is based on one of several enhancements made under the hood of iStyles recently, which was in turn based on a new country detection algorithm that we've implemented.

We've compiled a list of "Hellos" in various languages and linked them accordingly to the respective countries.

Ahn nyeong ha se yo, Bonjour, Buna, Dobriy deyn, Dobrý den, God dag, Guten Tag, Halloisen, Hoi, Hola, Hola, Hyvää päivää, Jo napot, Konnichi wa, Labdien, Mabuhay, Mambo, Marhabah, Merhaba, Mingalarbar, Nei Ho, Ni hao, Oi, Sain baina uu, Salve, Sawa dee-ka, Vanakkam, Xin Chào, yia sas, Zdravstvuyte

Our list is far from exhaustive - if you visit iStyles and see "Hello" in English instead of your language, just reply to this thread with the name of your country and what "Hello" should be, and we'll gladly add the information such that your fellow countrymen will be greeted properly.

Full Registration Integration on iStyles

by

MK

Published on 15-09-2007 03:18 PM

The impossible has been done and the user registration for the various software components running on iStyles has FINALLY been integrated into a single registration form at https://www.istyles.com/create_account.php

There are two major software components that power iStyles - OsCommerce and vBulletin. OsCommerce is the engine that powers the online store while vBulletin is the engine that powers the forum for the community. OsCommerce and vBulletin are unfortunately not good bed fellows but they have finally been forced together.

The creation of an iStyles account with the link above now creates the account in both vBulletin and OsCommerce. Our new Support Center uses the same member login as OsCommerce to complete the trilogy.

What all these simply means is that customers fill up a single form and they can have access to all sections in iStyles with the same e-mail/username and password that they register!

We will create a tool in the next few days to link member accounts on both systems for users who have registered on both in the past, but for those who have not, please use http://forum.istyles.com/register.php to create your forum account.