Cart System for e-book publishing site.

Hi Guys,

Not a very descriptive post title, but still. I am currently trying to implement a shopping cart system, that allows the following:

• User to be created an account with a product(s) associated with that account. The products will be e-download.
• A Client will have access to a page on their profile where they can see how many downloads of a particular product have been made + current account funds and other features
• Customers will make an account to purchase a e-download, and will get a profile page containing links to all their products they have purchased for download, with a limit on the number of times that a product can be re-downloaded
• PayPal Intergration!

Now is this possible with a ModX based solution? Or is there another open source system that could do this for me.

I have looked at a custom implementation of something, but i have a bit of a tight deadline (1 month), and am trying to find an appropriate solution, with a bit of flexibility for the future.

One of my ideas based in modx was to modify WebLoginPE so that when a user can be created as a client (via a secured manager page) and that will automatically create a document with some template variables, and then if they are logged in show a chunk with the data from those tvs. Then everytime a product is purchased it will update the tv for that particular user.

All the payments from each e-download will go into one paypal account, and then the clients "cut" will be passed to them at the end of the month by a simple report system and some manual paypal work.


Edit: Could KiweeCommerce be modified to support this?
Any ideas?

Al

This isn’t really formally announced, but FoxyCart with FoxyBack-MODx could do pretty much everything you want to do. FoxyBack is solid and working on a handful of sites right now but there’s not much documentation so far.

http://code.google.com/p/foxyback-modx/
In the repository:
http://modxcms.com/FoxyBack-MODx-2181.html

The only thing you mentioned that FoxyCart can’t handle right now is PayPal Standard (but that’s coming to FoxyCart in a future version). It might be a bit of work to set up FoxyBack at this point, but you could definitely get it exactly how you want it. I’m not sure about Treasure Chest but maybe somebody more familiar with it will chime in.

Ok Dude that sounds grand, but before this sounds too good to be true, does this include the multi vendor stores?

Man, everybody’s been asking about multi-vendor stores lately. The tricks are in how you handle the payments, tax, and shipping. Much as I’m loathe to recommend anything but MODx, X-Cart has a "mall" thing for $500 or so, which supposedly handles all the tax and shipping, but it still handles the payment distribution manually (from what I’ve been told by a sales person).

Also, if you’re doing a multi-vendor store, who’s doing the product management? Should your vendors be able to log in themselves and add new products, or is that something only you can do?

It gets quite complicated quite quickly, so if you’re serious about a multi-vendor setup you’ll likely need to sketch out the desired functionality a bit more. I’d love to help you figure it out though, as I’ve had a half-dozen people ask me about it in the past week. (One way to automatically the payment distribution that I’d thought of would be to use iDevAffiliate to handle it, since iDev has that functionality built in.)

You could definitely make it happen with MODx + FoxyCart or possibly TreasureChest or Kiwee, but knowing exactly what you need would be your first step.

Ok Dude, i will dig out my spec and post it up here so watch this space!


Till then time for work

Right, i could not find the origional spec that i drew up, but i have the one my client overviewed for me. I have attached it as a pdf.

My favorite thing in the world is when specs include language like "anything else I might not have thought about!" Haha.

Ok so anyway, that’s helpful but there’s definitely some questions you need to answer. When an author requests payment, is that automated or no? (It says it’s just an email, but how are the payments recorded in the back end? Etc.) When an author uploads a book, is there an approval process or are they published live immediately?

In any case, this would certainly be possible using MODx + FoxyBack + FoxyCart, or possibly Kiwee or TC, but I don’t know as much about those. You’d likely need to map our all the functionality for the authors, and tie in the self-hosted downloadable FC code into FoxyBack, but it’d be possible.

X-Cart’s Mall version might work as well, though. Worth looking at, even though I’d hate to use anything other than MODx (personally).

I know what you mean, i did write up a full spec but started a new job 2 weeks ago and practically not left the office.

That said that sounds cool. In answer to your questions:

1. An author requesting payment: an e-mail is sent to us, and based upon recorded sales for their book and paypal data their funds will be sent accordingly.

2. New books would have to go through a simple approval first, from what i reckon.

And thanks for the quick reply. So do you reckon it is alot of work to do the modx implementation (as i love the flexibility, and its just smart). Think i might have to demo Xcart though just in case

It’d be work, for sure, but it wouldn’t be crazy I don’t think, particularly if you’re handy with writing some quick snippets, though you may have to post on the FoxyBack mailing list as it’s still rough around the edges. (It’s very stable once it’s up, but installing it is somewhat manual.)

As always, it takes a bit more time to do something "right", but at least if you use MODx you won’t have to learn how to hack on some other platform like X-Cart. imo, at least.

Well cheers dude, you definitly seem to be The Man Who can, i will sign up to the foxyback mailing lists, and then get to work. If i get stuck i will post back here if you dont mind.

Thanks again


Al