A bunch of support questions

[Remy Lebeau]

Hi guys,

 

I've just started playing around with oscommerce, trialling it as a solution for our companies online store. So far it's been quite good (STS has made integrating it a breeze!) - you can see what the installation looks like so far at www.maxon.com.au/shopstage

 

I have a number of questions/issues that I'd appreciate some guidance on. Here they are!

 

1) I need to setup the emailing from the site (for username registrations / etc) to use SMTP with authorization (as my hosting doesn't allow sendmail). I found where to change it to SMTP, but haven't been able to find where to configure the auth settings.

 

2) When an order is placed, there doesn't seem to be an order number created for that order? Is that correct? That seems a bit strange! Also, when I print off an invoice, there is no invoice number on the invoice! again, very strange. Is this how it's meant to work? Is there a way I can modify that?

 

3) Is there a template for the invoice and picking slip? I want to change the layout of it... I haven't been able to find it!

 

4) When placing an order, and it gets to the last step, it says that the order will be shipped the "Best Way", and will take 2-3 days... I haven't set that value anywhere! Is there a way of changing that?

 

5) When adding a new product, there seems to be a function that automatically creates the product thumbnail. However, I can't work out what the function that does this is, at it uses a very strange ratio for the thumbnail, and the thumbnails look all distorted. Any guidance appreciated

 

6) On the front page, I can find where to edit all the content, except for one box. Down the bottom of the centre part (where STS has a placeholder for $content), there is a box that says: "New products for may". However, I can't find where in the "index.php" (in the english template folder) that box is! You can see what I'm talking about down the bottom of www.maxon.com.au/shopstage

 

That's it for now! thanks in advance for any assistance.

[usernamenone]

And reading your documentation.pdf included in your download did not answer any of those questions?

[Remy Lebeau]

ah! now there's the problem.... having installed it through fantastico, I didn't have any downloads... I'll go and hunt that down and have a read :D thanks.

[Remy Lebeau]

Ok,

 

Having read through the documentation avialble at http://www.oscommerce.com/solutions/documentation , the only one of the above issues that is addressed is number 5, which I've now sorted.

 

Any help on the other questions would be much appreciated.

[Guest]

David,

 

As you work trough oscommerce, you will find hundreds of contributions from individual members that often are a big improvement, a time saver or a visual change.

 

I find these forums very educational and rewarding and love to browse the contributions. All these brains out there, amazing.

 

I think what you are looking for is here:

 

http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,4074

 

Wolfgang

[Remy Lebeau]

thanks for your help wooffi.

 

I've managed to sort out the image stretching issues, now I just need help with the rest (see the first post)!

[usernamenone]

#2 of original post is page 67 of the documentation.pdf mentioned.

 

New orders that are made with new osCommerce installations start with the ID of 1.

 

This value can be reset so that new orders are assigned an ID from a specific starting

 

range, for example from 1000.

 

# 3 also doesn't say what you want to change.

 

# 4 is the shipping module you choose to set in admin. More setting are also found in admin.

 

# 1 what host do you have and why are you unable to send mail?

 

# 6 find the forum for sts and ask there.

[Remy Lebeau]

#2 of original post is page 67 of the documentation.pdf mentioned.

 

Thanks, I found that in there eventually (on page 106 of http://tep.sourceforge.net/releases/oscomm...2ms2-051112.pdf ) - however, this still doesn't change the fact that on the admin page for the orders, it doesn't actually show the order number anywhere! Am I missing something? I would have thought that it would have the order number listed so you can match it if there's an issue...

 

# 3 I'll read the pdf further first...

 

# 4 Where can I change the contents of the module itself? I've found where to change what module is active, but the shipping information says 2-3 days, which is not a parameter in the configuration area.

 

# 1 MY web host has disabled sendmail, hence I need to use SMTP. The SMTP server also required authentication, so I need to provide the SMTP mail script with the authentication information for our server.... Is there somewhere I can do this?

 

# 6 I just found what I was looking for (coincidentally on the same page as above, page 106).

[Remy Lebeau]

Found another one

 

7) The prices are displayed with about 8 decimal places! I've checked in the store configuration, and tried setting the tax decimal place padding to 0 or 1, but it still has way too many characters (see http://maxon.com.au/shopstage/index.php?cPath=22 )

[bill110]

#4

catalog/includes/lunguages/english/checkout_success.php

define('TEXT_SUCCESS', 'Your order has been successfully processed! Your products will arrive at their destination within 2-5 working days.');

Change wording here

[Remy Lebeau]

excellent, thanks bill110!

 

So I have the following questions left still:

 

1) I need to setup the emailing from the site (for username registrations / etc) to use SMTP with authorization (as my hosting doesn't allow sendmail). I found where to change it to SMTP, but haven't been able to find where to configure the auth settings. - I fixed this by running my own php mail class.

 

2) When an order is placed, there doesn't seem to be an order number created for that order? Is that correct? That seems a bit strange! Also, when I print off an invoice, there is no invoice number on the invoice! again, very strange. Is this how it's meant to work? Is there a way I can modify that? - still outstanding... I can't actually see an order number anywhere... is this being generated or do I need to install a contribution?

 

3) Is there a template for the invoice and picking slip? I want to change the layout of it... I haven't been able to find it!

 

4) When placing an order, and it gets to the last step, it says that the order will be shipped the "Best Way", and will take 2-3 days... I haven't set that value anywhere! Is there a way of changing that? thanks bill110

 

5) When adding a new product, there seems to be a function that automatically creates the product thumbnail. However, I can't work out what the function that does this is, at it uses a very strange ratio for the thumbnail, and the thumbnails look all distorted. Any guidance appreciated - the ratio is 1.25:1 if anyone else needs this :)

 

6) On the front page, I can find where to edit all the content, except for one box. Down the bottom of the centre part (where STS has a placeholder for $content), there is a box that says: "New products for may". However, I can't find where in the "index.php" (in the english template folder) that box is! You can see what I'm talking about down the bottom of www.maxon.com.au/shopstage - found the answer on page 106 of the documentation.pdf

 

7) The prices are displayed with about 8 decimal places! I've checked in the store configuration, and tried setting the tax decimal place padding to 0 or 1, but it still has way too many characters (see http://maxon.com.au/shopstage/index.php?cPath=22 )

 

Thanks for you help so far guys!

[bestsitestuff]

your doing great ..pity bout the decimal places ...why is there not more concise info?

[redbone]

Do this to get your order number on Invoices/Packing slips (from Add date and order number to invoice and packing slip mod):

 

add this to the invoice.php and packingslip.php files in the admin folder:



at line 21



 //get the date from the order table

 $date_resource = tep_db_query("select date_purchased from " . TABLE_ORDERS . " where orders_id = '" . (int)$oID . "'");

 //get the array from the result

 $date = mysql_fetch_array($date_resource);

 //get the date as a string from the result

 $date_purchased = substr($date['date_purchased'], 8, 2) . '/' . substr($date['date_purchased'], 5, 2) . '/' . substr($date['date_purchased'], 0, 4);



note: this will produce the date in the EUROPEAN format. To get the date in the US format,

replace the final line in the above code with:



 $date_purchased = substr($date['date_purchased'], 5, 2) . '/' . substr($date['date_purchased'], 8, 2) . '/' . substr($date['date_purchased'], 0, 4);



and at line 88



<tr>

		<td class="main"><b><?php echo ENTRY_ORDER_NUMBER; ?></b></td>

		<td class="main"><?php echo $oID; ?></td>	  

</tr>

<tr>

		<td class="main"><b><?php echo ENTRY_ORDER_DATE; ?></b></td>

		<td class="main"><?php echo $date_purchased; ?></td>	  

</tr>



In the invoice.php and packingslip.php files in the admin/includes/languages/[language] folder, 

where [language] represents the language used. 



define('ENTRY_ORDER_NUMBER', 'Order Number:');

define('ENTRY_ORDER_DATE', 'Order Date:');

 

if you are not using english obviously substitute the required language. Exact location of these in the file is not really important - use whatever you are comfortable with.

 

This will place the order number and date in the bottom left corner of the invoice and packing slip. They can be moved around the page as required.

 

 

You can also add the order number to the Admin, which makes looking up orders easier:

 

edit the admin/orders.php and add the orders_id field

In that file there is a bunch of td cells that display the order elements just add another one

 

Find this:

<td class="dataTableContent" align="right"><?php echo strip_tags($orders['order_total']); ?></td>

And before that line add this

<td class="dataTableContent" align="center"><?php echo strip_tags($orders['orders_id']); ?></td>

Find this:

<td class="dataTableHeadingContent" align="right"><?php echo TABLE_HEADING_ORDER_TOTAL; ?></td>

and before it add this:

<td class="dataTableHeadingContent" align="center"><?php echo TABLE_HEADING_ORDER_ID; ?></td>

Open the admin\includes\languages\english\order.php and add this line:

define('TABLE_HEADING_ORDER_ID', 'ID');

 

That should take care of order numbers for ya! :)

[Remy Lebeau]

/me hugs redbone. thank you kind sir.

 

almost there folks! great support so far :D

 

I just thought of a couple more questions:

 

8) Is there a generic contribution to automate credit card processing? I have an online merchant, but I have only been able to find contributions that automate the payment to specific merchants, if there a generic one?

 

9) Does anyone have some sample "front pages"? (I still have the default up at the moment) I'm not really sure what will look good / be helpful, so other people's ideas are most welcome.

[Remy Lebeau]

another one:

 

10) Is there a way of setting a specific order for my products? Rather than just alphabetic (as seems to be the case) I want to actually be able to set the sort order completely manually.

[bill110]

9) Does anyone have some sample "front pages"? (I still have the default up at the moment) I'm not really sure what will look good / be helpful, so other people's ideas are most welcome.

Have a look here

http://shops.oscommerce.com/

26 categories of shops from all over the world. thousands of shops.

[Remy Lebeau]

Thanks again Bill!

 

Renumbering (for ease of reference):

 

1) The prices are displayed with about 8 decimal places! I've checked in the store configuration, and tried setting the tax decimal place padding to 0 or 1, but it still has way too many characters (see http://maxon.com.au/shopstage/index.php?cPath=22 )

 

2) Is there a generic contribution to automate credit card processing? I have an online merchant, but I have only been able to find contributions that automate the payment to specific merchants, if there a generic one?

 

3) Is there a way of setting a specific order for my products? Rather than just alphabetic (as seems to be the case) I want to actually be able to set the sort order completely manually.

[Remy Lebeau]

Following a few questions about how I fixed the image size problem, here's a solution using adobe photoshop (I use CS2).

 

Rather than changing the dimensions in the configuration of oscommerce, I left them as they stand, and resized my images instead.

 

The default size of the images is 100:80 (width to height), which is a ratio of 1.25:1. This means that I had to resize the images to that same ratio for them to be displayed properly.

 

I did a two step process.

 

Firstly I resized the images to a certain width or height (depending on which is larger in your image), and then I padded out the canvas to match the ratio.

 

You can see more details of how I did it here:

 

http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx/[email protected]/2

 

Basically I created two sets of "actions" in photoshop, one for images that are portrait, one for images that are landscape. The total size for each image that I wanted was 503 x 402 (just because that was an ok size for me). So, if it was landscape, it shrunk the images to 503 x whatever, then it modified the canvas to increase the height to 402, and viceversa for portrait.

 

Then, using Siva's conditional action executer (http://actionlogic.blogspot.com/2006/03/sivas-photoshop-conditional-action.html) I could tell photoshop to run one set of actions if the width is greater than the height, and the other set of actions otherwise. You can run this script on a batch of files, so voila! all done.

 

This only works if your images are larger than the dimensions I used. I you have images that are smaller, you might have to address that differently, but you can probably work out how to do it.

 

Hope that's clear...

[Remy Lebeau]

Hi guys,

 

After a lengthy pause on this project while I got a few other things out of the way, I'm back at it!

 

I still have the following questions outstanding:

 

1) The prices are displayed with about 8 decimal places! I've checked in the store configuration, and tried setting the tax decimal place padding to 0 or 1, but it still has way too many characters (see http://maxon.com.au/shopstage/index.php?cPath=22 )

 

2) Is there a generic contribution to automate credit card processing? I have an online merchant, but I have only been able to find contributions that automate the payment to specific merchants, if there a generic one?

 

3) Is there a way of setting a specific order for my products? Rather than just alphabetic (as seems to be the case) I want to actually be able to set the sort order completely manually.

 

As usual, thanks for any help!