X-Cart 4.7.6 released: Improved Performance, Bugfixes
X-Cart 4.7.6 comes with significant performance improvements and of course includes several new features. Also, by the release of 4.7.6 we’ve closed 80% of existing bugs and continue working on the remaining major improvements which require complex changes.
PHP 7
X-Cart 4.7.6 is compatible with PHP 7 and demonstrates better performance if runs on the server with PHP 7. You can check this out for yourself in the table below which shows performance test results.
We tested X-Cart 4.7.6 on AWS c4.xlarge instance with Apache 2.0 handler on PHP 5.5 and PHP 7 via Gatling service. Every minute new 100 users came to the store and followed the route: homepage, category page, product page, adding a product to cart, cart page, another category page, back to the home page. Also, we tested performance with 300 new users per minute (432K users per day) on PHP 7. We’ve got the following response time (the time to load the full page without static content) results:
| X-Cart 4.7.6 | Response Time (s) 100 new users per minute PHP 5.5 | Response Time (s) 100 new users per minute PHP 7 | Speed growth | Response Time (s) 300 new users per minute PHP7 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Home page | 0.769 | 0.541 | +42.14% | 0.633 |
| Category page | 0.535 | 0.313 | +70.92% | 0.398 |
| Product page | 0.528 | 0.308 | +71.42% | 0.443 |
| Cart page with added product | 0.450 | 0.272 | +65.44% | 0.329 |
| Category page with added product | 0.527 | 0.310 | +70% | 0.408 |
| Home page with added product | 0.525 | 0.289 | +81.66% | 0.373 |
| Global average | 0.534 | 0.330 | +61.81% | 0.421 |
Order tracking
The store administrator can specify several tracking numbers for orders shipped in several packages. These tracking numbers are visible in the customer area as well. There is a button next to each number, so that the store administrator and a customer can check the shipping status in one click. Depending on the shipping service provider, you can track from 10 to 35 numbers for an order at a time.
Tax number validation
A new setting has been added to tax management functionality: “How to operate if Tax Number validation service not available”. Previously, if it was unavailable the order was successfully processed and the VAT number was considered as invalid even when it was valid, and the tax was charged. Now, the store administrator can set if tax numbers should be considered invalid, valid or checkout should be blocked when the Tax Number Validation service is not available. 
eWay integration
This payment gateway has already been integrated with X-Cart 4, however there are some updates in 4.7.6. eWay – Responsive Shared Page method has been added. It supports 3D Secure, PayPal, MasterPass and Visa Checkout. The existing integration ‘eWay – Hosted payment’ has been renamed to ‘eWay – Hosted payment (old integration)’. An obsolete ‘eWAY – Stored payment (Shared)’ integration has been removed.
Miscellaneous
X-Payments users have got an opportunity to save credit cards on behalf of their customers;
Search by name in address book added;
Improvement in work of Special offers and product variants;
Australia Post integration updated to support recent changes in their Postage Assessment Calculator API, new international methods added;
Image Uploader added to HTML Editor (CKEditor) which also allows to drag and drop images to a text area;
Compatibility with MySQL 5.7, PHP 7, mariaDB 10.1 added which significantly decreases response time and page load time in store back-end;
jQuery updated 2.1.4 → 2.2.4, jQuery.tooltip.js changed to jQuery UI Tooltip;
HTML purifier updated 4.6.0 → 4.7.0;
PHP Mailer updated to 5.2.16.
Anastasia has over 8 years of experience in the eCommerce industry. Having been a Customer Care agent in the past, she knows exactly what eCommerce merchants' needs are, and uses her knowledge in Marketing to bring value to the community by sharing her thoughts on relevant topics.
