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☆ A M B ☆
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Data? If you mean a catalog, that is merely documents and the NewsListing (or Ditto) snippets. Nothing fancy at all; just use the Document Tree structure for your catalog structure.
At this point, everything else, the shopping cart and user options are just getting loaded into the SESSION by the plugin.
Hopefully in time there will be contributed shipping option and payment processing snippets to round out this admittedly skeletal framework. I’m afraid my experience in this area is severly limited, although I am working on some fairly basic options and processing for shipping and tax calculations. The more I do, the more complicated the whole business turns out to be, so the more I have to study and research, and the more complex the underlying code becomes.
As I’ve mentioned before, this probably will never be suitable for Amazon, but should do fine for small shops with relatively few and simple shipping and payment options, and a simple catalog. Otherwise, there are some nice complete packages that can be themed to match your MODx template, such as CPCommerce, or ZenCart.
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It definitely needs a ’bridge" to a more heavy-duty system, although I suppose a complex catalog could be created using TVs and filters and tags with Ditto. For more serious user management, the registration snippet could be upgraded with an "edit profile" addition.
But really, if a plug-in and module to connect to CPCommerce or ZenCart or even <shudder> OSCommerce were available, it would save a lot of complex work; ecommerce is not a simple feature.
Again, I’ll emphasize that even with a more robust checkout and payment module, ShopX will never be suitable for more than a very simple small eshop, at least not without a lot of hacking, in which case it really wouldn’t be ShopX any more
Carsten,
Have you considered creating a chunk with a paypal button? Then maybe TV’s for the product name and product price? This was something near horrible in Joomla that should be pretty easy here (right?).
Susan,
I have ben using CubeCart (it was recommended here). Maybe a plugin for that system would be a nice way to go (though its not free).
Chuck
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☆ A M B ☆
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I have no problem with the shopping cart snippet, and making it use Ajax with the new db API will be a pleasure. The problems come in the checkout part, only because there are so many possible shipping, tax and payment methods. I am trying to make it so that it is as easy as possible to plug in custom units for these. Even worse, I have no experience in this area, and keep finding things that I didn’t know about... do you tax the shipping as well as the items? In some places no, in some places yes.
I’m going to go ahead and post what I’ve done so far, it’s an improvement on the original checkout system. But it still has a ways to go before I start playing with the Ajax front-end.
Susan,
Drupal has just released an eCommerce module. They say it has a really nice API for shipping and payment options. You could also see how www.virtuemart.com (from phpshop) does it.
Tho virtuemart is a real headache, they do have a good plugin system for payment and can accomodate different shipping options.
I used to use virtuemart on all of my Joomla eCommerce sites, but it is just too buggy and needs too many maintenance updates for good use on a production site.
Chuck
Quote from: sottwell at Jun 18, 2006, 10:42 AM
It definitely needs a ’bridge" to a more heavy-duty system, although I suppose a complex catalog could be created using TVs and filters and tags with Ditto. For more serious user management, the registration snippet could be upgraded with an "edit profile" addition.
But really, if a plug-in and module to connect to CPCommerce or ZenCart or even <shudder> OSCommerce were available, it would save a lot of complex work; ecommerce is not a simple feature.
Again, I’ll emphasize that even with a more robust checkout and payment module, ShopX will never be suitable for more than a very simple small eshop, at least not without a lot of hacking, in which case it really wouldn’t be ShopX any more
Don’t sell yourself short. ShopX is a very good start towards a superior eCommerce system. It takes advantage of MODx’s organizational, templating, and database structure to create the catalog and checkout pages, which is most of what an eCommerce program does.
I just completed a CubeCart site, and I’m about to do two more eCommerce sites. I’m going to try to make ShopX work instead of using a "real" eCommerce program. I’ve used several of those in the past (including ZenCart and <shudder> osCommerce), and frankly they all seem to be necessary evils at best.
My opinion is that 99% of the code of most eCommerce programs is templating and language files and allowing them to work with various gateways/currencies/regions/etc. If you don’t need all that bloat it just makes your life more difficult. ShopX with different snippets for gateway options seems to me to be a perfect solution (small is beautiful, after all).
Ok, looks like we’re on version 2.5 here.
I’m finally getting a hang to this but I’m stumbling big time on the checkout page.
How in the world do you checkout?
@@ I’d be happy at the moment with just a simple email @@
Am I missing something here?
Tangent-Warrior
