TreasureChest: MODx eCommerce solution.

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EDIT

TreasureChest (TC) is now GPL.
This has been quite an experience. I know know that I am a terrible businessman
I really wish I had more time to dedicate to supporting and developing this software.
I trust that this recently GPL’d code will be in better hands with the MODx community than it was with me.
The TC Site will stay up as a demo and for support, but if you want to download TC, get it here:
http://modxcms.com/TreasureChest-1745.html

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It’s true, I have been away from the forums for a while, but with good reason. I have been working on a new Snippet/Module/Plugin eCommerce program for MODx. It’s called "TreasureChest", and it is a 100% MODx native shopping cart, product manager, inventory manager, shipping assistant, and sales tracking solution.

I am posting here today because within the next couple days I will be finishing the final touches and adding a web based installer, but here is a 20 minute video demonstration to whet your appetites.

http://www.scottydelicious.com/video/

Feel free to post any questions you have about it here in this forum thread.

-sD-
Dr. Scotty Delicious, DFPA.

Thank you, as always Scotty, for your contribution. Great name and looks very promising; love the ongoing pirate theme!

Very cool ScottyD. Keep up the PE-goodness!

As always, this is going to be amazing. Thanks for all you do. On a side note, anyone having trouble loading the video? As of yet, I am unable to whet my appetite

ARRGHHH! Video isn’t loading for me as well...

Scotty! fix it ASAP... pirates are waiting

Looks very nice indeed. Everything you do always looks so nice, Scotty! You’re a bloody gifted pirate.

I thought that you were using a module with separate product database tables instead of individual documents for each product to keep the document tree from becoming unwieldy and slowing things down for stores with hundreds of products. But then I saw that you also use a unique document with a TreasureChest call for each item so that you can specify its appearance and whatnot. It seems to me as if you’re losing the speed benefit of using separate product tables by doing this, and you’re also not able to take advantage of the easy integration with MODx resources (AjaxSearch, etc.) that you’d get if you stored each product’s info in the document itself. I really like the module that you have for managing products at a glance (including inventory management), but you could still do that if you stored product data in the documents themselves. So I guess my suggestion would be to consider using one or the other method (separate product tables or unique documents for each), although I realize that this is kind of a major wrench to throw in the works and your system does work as is.

The other thing that I’ve found in working with SHOPx is that it can be extremely difficult to add in alternative logic to the code after it’s completed with one scheme in mind (or maybe I’m just a sloppy coder). So for example should you decide to change the shipping calculation methods, or make option choices dependent on each other and separately tracked in inventory, or charge tax based on the shipping address, or allow for splitting up an order into multiple packages, etc. you can easily find yourself in a situation where you have to rewrite practically everything from scratch. I’m sure that you already know this, but you might want to map out the most likely major additions/changes that you think may be requested and structure your code as if those features were already there so that adding them later doesn’t cause too much trauma.

I also use jQuery and ThickBox for my cart process, and I love ’em. I’ve never felt the same way about mootools. Every time I need to do something new in jQuery I end up feeling reinvigorated by the learning process, but mootools just makes me feel like a hopeless dunce instead.

Keep up the good work!

P.S. The video worked fine for me.

Obviously sounds exciting but the video doesn’t work for me either. Firefox 2.0.0.9 (OS X).

tip for the video: upload it to youtube and paste the generated code into your webpage. It then plays in a flash player which almost everyone can play. And it will be much smaller and faster too

Olaf

Sorry about the video.
I thought about the youtube thing, but I hate youtube.
The video resolution and compression suck, the 10 minute limit, etc...

I did recompress it in DivX 480p (720x480) and uploaded it to stage6.divx.com.

The link is the same, http://www.scottydelicious.com/video/.
Grab the DivX web plugin if you don’t have it already.

Zap...
All good points. thanks.
I think that a store with hundreds of products is getting beyond the scope of this web app.
For a mom and pop type web shop selling between 1-50 products, looking for an easy to use, easy to install, low cost solution that does not require getting your own merchant account and payment gateway... This will be a great "plug in and go" shopping cart system.

For the type of business you describe, this might get in the way. That type of MODx user is going to need some custom programing which is going to cost lots of hours and many hundreds dollars to hire programmers like us to fit that in.

This is not for them (although if you know someone in need, I am for hire!).
This will be more like a $20 program you can install and get started selling with paypal from your website in a few minutes.

-sD-
Dr. Scotty Delicious, DFPA.

I do want to clarify what this product is.
It is an integration for PayPal Website Payments Standard which allows you to have a catalog of items at your MODx site... it lets your visitors look around and add/remove items at any time without leaving your MODx site, then when they are ready to check out, the temporarily leave your MODx site to have their payment processed securely at the paypal site. Then, if you want, they will be redirected to your site.

This is a nice solution for smaller businesses or a small online presence that can’t realistically justify the cost of a merchant account, payment gateway, SSL certificate, and a dedicated server for securely storing and processing payment info.

http://www.scottydelicious.com/video/

-sD-
Dr. Scotty Delicious, DFPA.