Downloads, Product Attributes, and Shipping Costs

[Tyrel Lohr]

I have searched these forums, but I can't seem to find an answer.

 

We setup a new osCommerce install at shop.vbamgames.com in early September. At that point in time, the store was working great. One of the things that we sell are books and PDF downloads. For each book product, I created product attributes that would allow someone to buy just the PDF or the PDF and Print book together. Up until a week or two ago, shipping was being charged correctly against these downloads -- the PDF was not being charged shipping, while the PDF and Print were being properly charged shipping properly.

 

Now when I login, the old shipping charges that were there before and had been billed are gone, and new Print + PDF purchases are not having any shipping charges included against them -- but their purchase price is being applied towards purchases that include other non-download products.

 

I am not sure what caused the store to decide to go nuts on me. The last thing I did to the store was change the shipping values in the Shipping Table Rate module to push free shipping from $50 to $100. I also added one additional product.

 

Is there any real solution to this problem other than to setup a third Product Attribute for Print Only, and charge a slightly higher fee for the PDF+Print book to cover lost shipping charges?

 

The most infuriating part of this is that it worked just fine for a month, but is now going gonzo on me. I have tried setting the weight on the products among other things, but the only thing that I can find is that so long as the Product Attribute includes download information it will not add shipping charges.

 

-Tyrel

[Tyrel Lohr]

I think I may have hacked it to do what I wanted to do. Unless I am missing something, the check for whether a product is virtual or not is being done in the includes/classes/shopping_cart.php file. By appending another AND statement to the end of the query on line 337 to make sure that the attribute is NOT equal to the "virtual product" that come with a physical book, it seems to be working. For now.

 

Knock on wood.

 

-Tyrel