A small issued surfaced with the recent redesign of MyCubeCart.com. The Gooogle Checkout button had a white background, my content area did not. The button looked out of place and I was pressed to find a solution. The Google Checkout API offers a handful of button customization options, a transparent background was one of them.

After digging around in the code a bit, I was pleasantly surprised to see that CubeCart was for the most part aligned to receive the type of customization I was after. A few small updates later, I had my transparent button.

Here’s how I did it.

This modification requires the alteration of the following CubeCart 4 files:

1. cubecart root/modules/altCheckout/Google_Checkout/admin/index.inc.php
2. cubecart root/modules/altCheckout/Google_Checkout/button.php

Part 1 – All Versions CubeCart 4.2.x – 4.3.0

1. Open index.inc.php in a text, html or php editor.

2. Find:

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  <tr>
    <tr>
    <td align="left" class="tdText"><strong>Button size:</strong></td>
    <td class="tdText">
	<select name="module[size]">
      <option value="large" <?php if($module['size'] == "large") echo "selected='selected'"; ?>>Large</option>
      <option value="medium" <?php if($module['size'] == "medium") echo "selected='selected'"; ?>>Medium</option>
	  <option value="small" <?php if($module['size'] == "small") echo "selected='selected'"; ?>>Small</option>
    </select></td>
  </tr>

3. Add immediately after:

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<!-- BEGIN: MyCubeCart.com Mod -->
  <tr>
    <tr>
    <td align="left" class="tdText"><strong>Button Background Color:</strong></td>
    <td class="tdText">
	<select name="module[bgcolor]">
      <option value="white" <?php if($module['bgcolor'] == "white") echo "selected='selected'"; ?>>White</option>
      <option value="trans" <?php if($module['bgcolor'] == "trans") echo "selected='selected'"; ?>>Transparent</option>
    </select></td>
  </tr>
<!-- END: MyCubeCart.com Mod -->

4. Save file and upload.

Part 2 – All Versions CubeCart 4.2.x – 4.3.0

1. Open button.php in a text, html or php editor.

2. Find (line 167 or 168, determined by version):

168

            return $cart->CheckoutButtonCode($module['size']);

3. Replace with:

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// BEGIN: MyCubeCart.com Mod
            return $cart->CheckoutButtonCode($module['size'], $module['bgcolor']);
/* Replaced
            return $cart->CheckoutButtonCode($module['size']);
*/
// END: MyCubeCart.com Mod

4. Save file and upload.

Modification Complete!

To use this feature, login to your CubeCart 4 control panel. Under the Modules heading, click on Alternate Checkouts. From here you will click the configure link next to the Google Checkout logo.

You will see a list of options for configuring this module. You will now have a dropdown menu in place to select the background color of your Google Checkout button!

Please note, the Google Checkout API only permits white and transparent as valid options for the button background color. Do not attempt to expand the color selection beyond what is provided in the tutorial, all attempts will fail to render a button in your stores frontend.

If you are using CubeCart version 4 there is a fairly good chance you are making use of the search engine friendly URL features. This will replace a “dirty”, query laced URL with a much cleaner search engine and user friendly URL modeled off of traditional static page URLs.

In making the URL clean, a .html extenstion is added to the end of the URL. For users like me, it’s not quite clean enough.

By leaning on WordPress in many of my web development projects, I’ve grown accustom to having my URLs end with no file extension, just a slash (eg. mycubecart.com/some/friendly/url/). This is what we aim to accomplish here.

This modification requires the alteration of the following CubeCart 4 files:

1. cubecart root/index.php
2. cubecart root/includes/sef_urls.inc.php

Part 1 – CubeCart Version 4.3.0 Only

1. Open index.php in a text, html or php editor.

2. Find:

53

	if(preg_match('#([a-z]{1,6})_([a-z0-9+]+).?([a-z]+)?(?.*)?$#i', $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], $matches)) {

3. Replace with:

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// BEGIN: MyCubeCart.com Mod - cleaner urls
	if(preg_match('#([a-z]{1,6})_([a-z0-9+]+).?([a-z]+)?(/)?(?.*)?(/)?$#i', $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], $matches)) {
/* Replaced
	if(preg_match('#([a-z]{1,6})_([a-z0-9+]+).?([a-z]+)?(?.*)?$#i', $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], $matches)) {
*/
// END: MyCubeCart.com Mod - cleaner urls

4. Save file and upload.

Part 1 – CubeCart Version 4.2.x

1. Open index.php in a text, html or php editor.

2. Find:

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	preg_match('#([a-z]{1,6})_([a-z0-9+]+).?([a-z]+)?(?.*)?$#i', $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], $matches);

3. Replace with:

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// BEGIN: MyCubeCart.com Mod - cleaner urls
	preg_match('#([a-z]{1,6})_([a-z0-9+]+).?([a-z]+)?(?.*)?(/)?$#i', $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], $matches);
/* Replaced
	preg_match('#([a-z]{1,6})_([a-z0-9+]+).?([a-z]+)?(?.*)?$#i', $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], $matches);
*/
// END: MyCubeCart.com Mod - cleaner urls

4. Save file and upload.

Part 2 – All Version CubeCart 4.2.x – 4.3.0

Line numbers below are based on that of 4.3.0. The replacements demonstated are consistent but the line numbers will vary based on the actual version of CubeCart 4 you are using.

1. Open sef_urls.inc.php.

2. Find (5 occurrences – lines: 86, 121, 147, 158 and 168):

86

	$ext	= ($config['sefserverconfig'] == 3) ? '.php' : '.html';

3. Replace each occurrence with:

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// BEGIN: MyCubeCart.com Mod - cleaner urls
	$ext = '/';
/* Replaced
	$ext	= ($config['sefserverconfig'] == 3) ? '.php' : '.html';
*/
// END: MyCubeCart.com Mod - cleaner urls

4. Save file and upload.

Modification Complete!

Now your CubeCart URL’s will be so clean, the glare may hurt your visitors eyes!