[Project] shopX 2.1

Perhaps something along these lines. http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php?topic=19696.0

Of course, if the MODx part of the site doesn’t need a login, you could install any ecommerce script, customize the template to match the MODx template, and use the ecommerce app’s login system. You would use weblinks to link from the MODx part to the shop part.

thanx Susan,
for helping. It’s sad to leave modX for that (cause I love it). So I move myself into openCart (which I respect although, without a question) for a shop with up to 20/30 offers per month. …

Well, every tool for its purpose. I bought a lovely Pfaff quilting sewing machine, and it’s wonderful for quilting. But it doesn’t do zigzag, so it’s useless for buttonholes. So I have an ancient Singer somebody gave me for doing buttonholes and any other zigzag stuff. I also have a four-thread overlock machine for sewing my clothes. But I still love the Pfaff the best.

well, I know each of these wonderfull mechanics , because I changed at least a needle of it or drop some oil.
You may as well know the feeling to set up the old machine, insert a special gear and then have to notice that the only one yo have has a tooth under. ;-(

Quote from: sottwell at Dec 03, 2007, 11:52 AM

That’s why it’s pretty much dead; it proved to be too difficult to make it "out-of-the-box" and I just don’t have the time or the expertise in the field to be able to be helping everyone set it up and customize it to their needs.

What Susan says is pretty much how I feel also. I use SHOPx myself (setting up another store today), but it still feels like too custom a system to set loose on the public and have to support. It is not yet structured well-enough to be able to easily modify core features, so with every new store I need to revisit the logic to make it work for that client’s specific needs.

Another factor in my personal reticence to release SHOPx as a resource is that 0.9.7 is just on the horizon, and like a lot of other people I wonder whether I should wait until it’s out so that SHOPx isn’t obsolete right out of the gate.

I really like the idea of a native MODx cart that is totally modular itself. I think that perhaps SHOPx should be released as an "eCommerce toolkit" rather than one standard package, and people can develop and post different modules and variations to it. If we did that now I think that when 0.9.7 is released we might just have a solid modular system that could be reworked for it and become a standard eCommerce package.

eCommerce really isn’t all that difficult. Ditto does the catalog pages and eForm does the checkout (with some tax, shipping, and processing snippets plugged into it). The challenge is developing a system that allows for all sorts of different store needs and configurations, and that’s why most eCommerce packages are such bloated messes (and that’s exactly what I would not want to help recreate or support people in using).

So perhaps the solution is to provide only the parts that are tricky to implement, which in my opinion would be:

- payment processing (PayPal with IPN example)
- shopping cart

Then provide examples for multi-page checkout using eform and document creation with TVs.

I don’t believe that you should wait for 0.9.7. Will all due respect to the developers, 0.9.7 has been around the corner for quite some time now and there is nothing wrong with that delay, but surely it won’t be such a radical change that everything will need to be re-written? If you wait for a new release of MODx which quite rightly has no schedule, then essentially you are paralyzed. Jut my $0.02 worth.

Andy

Quote from: Andy at Dec 03, 2007, 05:56 PM

surely it won’t be such a radical change that everything will need to be re-written?

er... yes, it will

"Well, gee, Buddha ZAP - that wasn’t very helpful ..." (but understandable)

what I wanted is: to get working the cart and the checkout "for now", not even paypal and such things …

Why does it run for you? I did see a page some time ago that runs shopX too (but forgot its url). :-( so I dived into this.

Is it creative for modX to dunk into a code not famliar with modx?

Quote from: sottwell at Dec 03, 2007, 05:58 PM

Quote from: Andy at Dec 03, 2007, 05:56 PM

surely it won’t be such a radical change that everything will need to be re-written?

er... yes, it will

So all snippets and plugins will have to be re-written? That would be a mistake IMO... I hope the devs have some level of backwards compatibility otherwise they are creating two things:

- starting the community effort again from scratch

- causing paralysis such as this one for development of large community additions

Andy

Quote from: Andy at Dec 03, 2007, 05:56 PM

So perhaps the solution is to provide only the parts that are tricky to implement, which in my opinion would be:

- payment processing (PayPal with IPN example)
- shopping cart

Then provide examples for multi-page checkout using eform and document creation with TVs.

Actually I think those are among the easier tasks, at least in my experience. I use documents with TVs for each product, so Ditto can easily create catalog pages (and a simple template can generate the product page with form), and payment processing is as easy as a couple of eForm functions. The harder parts (in my opinion) are all of the calculation logic (options affecting prices and weights, shipping and multiple packages, tax and coupons, etc.) and the assorted extra features above and beyond the basics that every client seems to need.

What you’re suggesting is something like what I imagine releasing a "toolkit" would be, in that it wouldn’t be a full package but rather bits and pieces that can work together.

Quote from: Andy at Dec 03, 2007, 05:56 PM

I don’t believe that you should wait for 0.9.7. Will all due respect to the developers, 0.9.7 has been around the corner for quite some time now and there is nothing wrong with that delay, but surely it won’t be such a radical change that everything will need to be re-written? If you wait for a new release of MODx which quite rightly has no schedule, then essentially you are paralyzed. Jut my $0.02 worth.

I certainly don’t want to make waiting for 0.9.7 my excuse for not releasing my SHOPx code, because that’s not true. If anything it’s been a convenient excuse for not trying to package it up properly, since I’ve had a rough and extremely busy year and I just haven’t had time to do much of anything extra. I was also very happy when I saw Kiwee Cart being developed because it seemed as if it would give MODx folks a nice native cart and I wouldn’t have to stress on releasing SHOPx.

But what Susan says is also true: We probably will need to rewrite a lot of resources for 0.9.7, and even those that wouldn’t have to be rewritten probably should be in order to take advantage of it’s new features.