Client store ready to go

[RyanSmith]

http://oscommerce.nthcs.com

Groupworkcamps Foundation

Hello,

 

I have been working on this site for over two months now. This is our development(non-live) site for the store. It's about to go live here in a few days, and I would like to see what the osCommerce community thinks of it. This is just a test server so SSL isn't up on it, nor is the credit card processing (only COD) however the live site uses Authorize.net.

 

Please ignore the horrible color scheme. I know the site looks like a bumble-bee, but that is the clients color scheme, and we tried to make the best of it. This site is for a non-profit Christan workcamps foundation selling T-shirts and other parafinila to the kids going to their camps.

 

The nice thing about doing this site was the audience was build in, so we didn't have to worry about competing with anyone else. Nor did we have to worry about making it visible to search engines as everyone that will arrive at this site will get there through the brochures sent out when they sign up for their camp.

 

This was my first go at osCommerce, and e-commerce in general (as well as php and mySQL), so it started out a little shaky, however, I think by the end it really all came together.

 

This site was suppose to be an out of the box install of osCommerce but as the project went along it deviated further and further away from a base osCommerce install. The part that was of biggest frustration to me was the custom text on the shirts. The clients wanted to have the ability for customers to place 2 lines of custom text on the t-shirts and long-sleeve t's that they purchased. Sounded simple enough. I started out by installing the option_type_feature_v1.71 contribution (Which is great by the way) and using the text control. But unfortunatly, that just wasn't going to cut it for the client. They wanted to make sure that the customer had purchaed a minimun of 12 before they were allowed to add the custom text. Well I modded the code a bit and got it working, but a few days later, they said well if any user had already purchase 12 of the same custom text then anyone could purchase more without a minimum. Well this complicated things. Then they said the the custom text was associated with a given logo as well so a purchase of 12 for any custom text only worked with the given logo. More complication. So I created a bunch of custom code to make this work, and allowed for a pull down list of avaliable custom text that had already been purchased. But the client didn't want other customers to see what other customers had set for custom text so I had to make the pull down specific to the use. And this just went on and on, for a feature that I doubt anyone will end up using.

 

I'm also proud of how the camp photo CD's were done. These get done much in the fashion as the custom text but was much easier. Their all stored in a seperate DB table making it easy to update each year for the new camps.

 

Also created was some custom code for a staff discount. I figured that there would be a ton of contribs for this, however, all of them were way to robust (and difficult to install) for our simple needs, so I ended up writing my own.

 

There was also a lot of back-end work that went into this project to make it import into QuickBooks, and then into WorldShip. We wanted to provide the client with a one click solution to fulfillment, and it proved to be more difficult that it looked. We were hoping that we could just install the QBI contrib, and it would all work fine, however if any of you have ever worked with QB or QBI, you know that each product /attribute combo has to have a unique sku. and when you have product with 3+ attributes, this can make life a real pain.

 

Well I'll stop rambling, and let you check out the site. I would love to hear some feedback.

 

P.S. Thank you osCommerce community for the great product, and all the help along the way. I will be doing my best to return some of the knowledge that I have gathered on this project.

[TAPAKAH]

Nice concept on Categories (apparel items), background is too yellow hard to look at.

[RyanSmith]

Nice concept on Categories (apparel items), background is too yellow hard to look at.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Ya, I couldn't agree with you more. I hate the yellow background, but thats the way the clients other site is setup(where customers will be linking in from), so we didn't really have a choice in the matter. The left nav(apparel items) was refined so many times it was rediculous, but I think that it turned out pretty good too.

 

Thanks for the feed back

[Guest]

I like the yellow background, also, can you please share the staff price discount with me? I can help you code all sorts of stuff...

[RyanSmith]

I like the yellow background, also, can you please share the staff price discount with me? I can help you code all sorts of stuff...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I'll try to get the files for the staff discount together later today. I was planning on documenting it all and posting it as a contrib, but that might not happen for a few weeks. In the mean time, I'll get the general code for you and send it your way.

[bad_lemming]

you might want to consider being more clear about custom order requires 12 what?

Shirts?

Items?

 

 

The less people have to think, the better.

[RyanSmith]

you might want to consider being more clear about custom order requires 12 what?

Shirts?

Items?

The less people have to think, the better.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Ya, I think that your right. I always thought that needed to be clearer. I figure that I'll just let people suffer though it at this point though because the clients just can't decide on the best way of doing it. You know how non-computer-literate people can be. They always want to have you spend weeks just to put in a tiny amount of fluff. Then you know developers, we can't see past the underlying functionality, and simply can't understand why someone can't figure out how to make a simple purchase. I guess it is a rift that will never be filled.

 

Anyway, performancepartz wanted the code for the staff discount, and I think that I got it all together. I'm not sure as I don't have time to run the install procedure, but you can download my little install pack from.

 

http://oscommerce.nthcs.com/StaffDiscountContrib.zip

 

I must emphasize that you will want to backup your code before trying this, as I may have left out a critical part to this code, and didn't realize it. But you should be able to download it from there, at least for a while. That server is always getting messed with so I never really know when things are going to change on it.

 

I hope it works for you. I will be cleaning it up and adding the other features, and making the install easier here in the future. Then I will post it as a contrib. Just too much to do right now with all the other project I'm trying to juggle.

 

Thanks for all your feedback

[Guest]

Hi Ryan

 

Checked your clients site - very nice. The layout although not to your taste works well.

 

Went to buy a tee (Workcamps) put in some custom text, saw the note to order 12 and entered 12 before I added this to my cart. However it will not recognise that I entered 12 and keeps telling me that the min order is 12 and my figure is set back to 1. Im working of xp-pro, IE6.

 

Sorry I'm wrong, I did not see your right hand cart. Even when I went to buy a cd it was not immediately obvious that my cart was on the rhs.

 

Dunno if you missed it but I changed my 24 tees to 10 .. want to see if I can checkout .. ok you've a check in the shopping_cart_drop_name.php.

 

Checked the email, says that my payment method is Credit Card even though I selected cod (the only option) ??

 

Your search does not search product description - might be worth adding.

 

Well done

 

PhilipH

[RyanSmith]

Hi Ryan

 

Checked your clients site  - very nice. The layout although not to your taste works well.

 

Went to buy a tee (Workcamps) put in some custom text, saw the note to order 12 and entered 12 before I added this to my cart. However it will not recognise that I entered 12 and keeps telling me that the min order is 12 and my figure is set back to 1. Im working of xp-pro, IE6.

 

Sorry I'm wrong, I did not see your right hand cart. Even when I went to buy a cd it was not immediately obvious that my cart was on the rhs.

 

Dunno if you missed it but I changed my 24 tees to 10 .. want to see if I can checkout ..  ok you've a check in the shopping_cart_drop_name.php.

 

Checked the email, says that my payment method is Credit Card  even though I selected cod (the only option) ??

 

Your search does not search product description - might be worth adding.

 

Well done

 

PhilipH

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Hey thanks for the feedback. I had fixed the shopping cart in the live version, I guess I haven't uploaded it to the test site. I agree that it isn't obvious enough that you added a product to the cart, but the clients wanted it that way. I perfered it when it took you back to the shopping cart every time you added a product, but the clients said that it was too hard to do mass orders (Which will apperently happen often by a youth minister ordering many for the entire church). Oh well, maybe people will order more than they thought not realizing they added a bunch to their cart.

 

The e-mail is wrong on the test site, but will be correct on the live site as the only payment method will be through authorize.net.

 

We had a bunch of discussion about the search engine, but kinda gave up on it due to time restrictions. We figured that it worked well enough, and to get it to work the way we really wanted it to would require quite a bit of coding (We figured that each item should have keywords to search on ie: caribeaner would have "key ring" as a keyword). Maybe in the next version we do.

 

Again thank you for you helpful feedback.

[TerryK]

Actually, setting up the search so it at least looks in your product descriptions is very easy. Check this contribution:

 

http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contri...rch+description

 

HTH,

 

Terry

[cecov74]

@RyanSmith

Hi I have see you site and is fantastic, I search a contribution for resolve the problem for the size/color what you have installed?

[RyanSmith]

@RyanSmith

Hi I have see you site and is fantastic, I search a contribution for resolve the problem for the size/color what you have installed?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I'm sorry, I'm not sure that I understand the question. Quite a bit of this code was custom, but for the most part, the code was almost all based on other contributions and modified to make it work the way we needed it to.

 

If you asking about how we resolve the QB export, we're planning on packaging that code and pasting it as a contribution, however at the moment, osCommerce isn't our golden goose, and other projects are taking priority. But I'll do my best in my free time to help out the community as they have done for me.

 

Ryan

[cecov74]

I'm sorry, I'm not sure that I understand the question.  Quite a bit of this code was custom, but for the most part, the code was almost all based on other contributions and modified to make it work the way we needed it to.

 

If you asking about how we resolve the QB export, we're planning on packaging that code and pasting it as a contribution, however at the moment, osCommerce isn't our golden goose, and other projects are taking priority.  But I'll do my best in my free time to help out the community as they have done for me.

 

Ryan

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

The problem is that i search a e-commerce for sell fashion, oscommerce is fantastic but not associate the code whit size/color because the quantity are under code and not under size... If I select a product example shirt after i want see how much quantity for the size L and S and M, ecc.

I have see if there are a Contribution to resolve this problem but nothing. I know a few php/myslq a I think that I must modify any contribution to resolve this problem :(

[RyanSmith]

The problem is that i search a e-commerce for sell fashion, oscommerce is fantastic but not associate the code whit size/color because the quantity are under code and not under size... If I select a product example shirt after i want see how much quantity for the size L and S and M, ecc.

I have see if there are a Contribution to resolve this problem but nothing. I know a few php/myslq a I think that I must modify any contribution to resolve this problem :(

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Are you talking about how the attributes maintain state or how I have the quantity on the same page as the product description? Both of these changes were done at about the same time, and are closely related. I managed this with a HTML hidden field, and some changes in the application_top.php file. If this is what your looking for, I'll try to track down the exact lines of code. I'm sorry, but I still don't fully understand the question.

[Bigredman74]

Ryan,

 

I noticed a grammatical error on your sizing chart, "Mens" and "Womans" should be ?Men's" and Women's".

 

All the best.

[RyanSmith]

I noticed a grammatical error on your sizing chart, "Mens" and "Womans" should be ?Men's" and Women's".

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Hey, thanks. I'll get to changing that later this morning. The site seems to be doing OK. The live site http://groupworkcampstore.burtshirts.com, which has been up since about the beginning of March, Passed $16K over the weekend, so that was encouraging. The clients we did this for predict that the site will need to do about $40K in sales to break even with their investment (We didn't charge nearly that much, but they had other expenses in this business adventure). They have come back to us, and we are about to release a corporate site for them. Also, they have several other clients that want similar sites put up, so it could be busy with just this one client. I'm starting to get pretty good with what osCommerce can do. It's nice to finally spend some time with one programming language and suite, however osCommerce isn't our real money maker, and I have to juggle it between ASP, .NET, and JSP. ASP.NET is still my favorite, but PHP is a very close second, and is growing on me more and more every time I use it.

 

Thanks for the feedback, I love looking around this thread and seeing what others have done.