provide email adres to customer via oscommerce

[renzo.verschoor]

Hi All,

 

I'm working on a new site and was wondering if oscommerce support providing email addresses to customers.

As example, I do have a website ('mywebsite.com') and connected to that an unlimited email server (.com')......"]'unlimited@@MyWebSiteScripts.com')...... I want the customer to register with his own email address (private, so normal protocol of oscommerce), however I want oscommerce to provide a random (unique) email address for each user, at the login, generated out of my webserver.....by using this email address i want my customers to have the freedom to communicate to eachother without providing their own 'private' email address.

Is this possible?

 

Thanks in advance.

Regards, Renzo

[burt]

Anything is possible. You need the following;

 

1. ability to set up an email address on the fly for a user.

2. somehow send the user that email address along with password to log in somewhere to get emails, I assume some sort of interface you already have set up?

 

What is to stop the user from using that email account to send out emails to anyone?

 

OR.

 

Did you mean that you want your osCommerce shop to have some type of internal messaging system (a bit like the "private Messages" in any forum).

[renzo.verschoor]

thanks for the fast reply.

 

Looking at your questions, I would more go for the second one, a sort of private messaging.....this way the customers can communicate to eachother without sharing private email addresses etc.

[burt]

Possible. But not ever done before as far as I know.

I would suggest that you sit down and work out how this is going to work.

 

EG:

- all members need a username (or a full profile (avatar and so on?)).

- will you list these usernames somewhere? Else how would 1 member know another members username?

- how will a member create a message that another member can see ?

- what about deletion of messages?

- should the sender be informed that the recipient has read the message?

- there are loads of things for you to think about.

 

You get the idea. It's a very big project, but one that could end up useful for lots of other oscommerce users.

I would take a look at a forums messaging system and try to replicate it in osCommerce.

[renzo.verschoor]

yes indeed....i need to do a lot of work, but that would not be a problem.......i also was thinking that, maybe, a chat box per product will work also, this way people can communicate which eachother using their own oscommerce username and can I, on the background, keep the attendees up to date by sending an email to them (on their private email...)........not sure if the database can handle that amount of data....

[jhande]

can I, on the background, keep the attendees up to date by sending an email to them (on their private email...)........not sure if the database can handle that amount of data....

 

I would think that a forum type private messaging program will include a notify recipient feature.

Definitely utilize 2 databases; one for your products and another for your messaging.

[renzo.verschoor]

Hi Jim and Gary,

 

I currently created a very nice PM system (also with the help of surfing the net....) and indeed it will work with a separate database, however the login of the shop should be the same as the PM system as , of course, their should be a link somewhere to setup the communication between people owning an shop account.......I will try it later and see if I can connect it into oscommerce, which should not be that hard I think.....

The only thing which is important is how to make the PM system secured, same as the shop....I use SSL certificate for the shop.....so I need also the PM to set behind the SSL....

Maybe you guys on can help me with this?

 

Thanks in advance.

[jhande]

Hopefully Gary can help with that one. I have only ever setup a basic HTML site with access to a php forum which had it's own security.

[MrPhil]

You would use tep_href_link() (I think that's the call) to generate the link for the Private Messaging page, and would include 'SSL' as a parameter to put the whole page under SSL.

 

I would think long and hard before implementing such a system. You will have to somehow publish a directory of customers and their PM handles, and many will consider that an invasion of privacy. Are you going to publish what products they've purchased? At a minimum, you would have to ask permission from each customer before making public (to other customers) their PM handle. The act of a customer deliberately setting up a PM account (separate from their customer account) might be considered sufficient permission in most jurisdictions to publish their handle. Such a system wouldn't be of much use to other customers unless they knew what products you had bought, so again you'll have to ask permission for each product.

[renzo.verschoor]

Hi Phil,

 

Thanks for your reply.

I will explore the forum for more info on SSL and will review the code of the admin pages.

Don't worry the way I'm going to use PM system no privacy will be harmed.

Nevertheless, i'm still thinking high level and will finally go into more details when I start adding the new coding....

[renzo.verschoor]

Yesterday evening I tested the pm stuff which I found on the web.....Tested it on a separate server/database. It was doing exactly what I expected and what I need.

The customers, in my case, are internal users (couple of hundred, so not everybody know each other). The website will be a sort of SharePoint, sharing documents, instead of the ‘review’ capability I want users to send pm’s towards the document owner if something need to be updated/changed/etc. Will try this weekend to insert then code into oscommerce keeping the safety/etc. of oscommerc.

[renzo.verschoor]

does someone knows how to call 2 databases?

just added the following to database.php.......is this correct or do I need to do this another way? .....what do I need more? ...

 

// Database 2 for PM

function tep_db_connect2($server2 = DB2_SERVER, $username2 = DB2_SERVER_USERNAME, $password2 = DB2_SERVER_PASSWORD, $database2 = DB2_DATABASE, $link2 = 'db_link') {

global $$link2;

 

if (USE_PCONNECT == 'true') {

$server2 = 'p:' . $server2;

}

 

$$link2 = mysqli_connect2($server2, $username2, $password2, $database2);

 

return $$link2;

}

 

function tep_db_close2($link2 = 'db_link') {

global $$link2;

 

return mysqli_close($$link2);

}