Getting started

[jenky77]

Hello. im wondering whether someone could advise me. I am a junior client side developer and i have been asked to create an online store. The products for sale are items of clothing so the user needs to be able to fill in a form to specify sizes and quantities required etc. It isn't going to require e-commerce as such in that no payment will be taken online but rather that a shipping order will be sent to the store via email. What is required is that when they choose a size specific product, the info is sent to the 'shopping cart' as in the demonstration on your site, with the same options as your going to the 'checkout' or 'carrying on shopping'.

I have created the form using standard HTML and was wondering whether i could use this in conjunction with your code to get the required results, and whether the code is something that a lowly junior client side developer could adapt accordingly :huh:

Sorry if i am being naive but unfortunately at present i have no server side experience whatsoever!! :(

 

Many thanks in advance for your help.

 

Leigh

[♥kymation]

If I understand you correctly, you are selling ready-to-wear clothing. This can be done by osCommenrce with little or no modification. Sizes and quantities can be selected using Attributes (options) and the existing cart. I wouldn't try to integrate an HTML form when osC does everything that you will need.

 

You don't have to use a payment gateway; you can get the customer's information and process payments manually.

 

If you don't want to add any functionality to the standard osC store then you don't need to learn the code. If you do want to make some changes then you will need to learn a bit of PHP. If you already know client-side code (Java?) then learning PHP should be no problem for you.

 

Regards

Jim

[jenky77]

Thanks for your advice Jim.

Having delved further, it appears to me that the osc store is used to create the entire site. Am I right in thinking this?

Maybe i should have mentioned in my initial post, the site has already been designed and the templates all coded (other than the form page displaying the chosen products and their size, co;our information etc). So i was really after just being able to implement some code into my existing page cells to get the required results.

 

Am I way off track here or is the osc store the answer Im looking for?

 

many thanks again

 

Leigh

[jenky77]

By the way here's the url to better demonstrate what i mean as explaining myself has never been my strong point ;)

 

http://www.k1vt.com/norm/trousers/index.shtml

 

Leigh

[♥kymation]

osCommerce does in fact generate the entire site. Product information, customer data, and orders are all stored in a database. It is possible to have content outside the store, but it is not easy to purchase products from outside the store. There may be solutions that do what you want, but the only one that I recall seeing is an expensive closed-source package.

 

It seems that there are two ways for you to go here:

 

1. Using your existing HTML and graphics, develop your own shopping cart system. This is going to be a major undertaking, unless you are a coding genius with ecommerce experience. I would hesitate to tackle this project.

 

2. Modify osCommerce to look like your design, possibly with some modifications where the osC way of doing things is better. Use as much as you can of your existing design, but don't be a slave to it.

 

Most people who have been faced with this choice seem to have taken the second route.

 

Ok, I will admit to 3. Add "Buy Now" buttons to your existing code and run the shopping cart only from osC. This would probably combine the worst features of the first two, including integration problems and difficulty in maintaining the whole mess. But it could be done. I would not even want to try.

 

Regards

Jim

[Guest]

You don't have to use a payment gateway; you can get the customer's information and process payments manually.

That is precisely what I want to do but can't seem to be able to get around the option of an automatic credit card processing via a payment gateway. What do I need to do?

 

Thanks in advance Jim,

 

Diane

[♥kymation]

Go to Admin > Modules > Payment Modules and click on Credit Card. If there is an install button then click on it. Then click on Edit and select the following:

 

Enable Credit Card Module

True

 

Split Credit Card E-Mail Address

[email protected]

 

Payment Zone

--none--

 

Set Order Status

Pending

 

Sort order of display.

1

Set the sort order of display on all other options to 0. Part of the credit card number will be stored in the database and part will be emailed to the email address that you specified here. This keeps your customer's credit card info safe from hackers. You will need to reassemble the cc number and process it manually.

 

Regards

Jim