Purchasing Without Customer Accounts

[Oppen]

Hello all. I'm fairly new to osC and I am trying to set up my store to allow purchases without customers having to create accounts at all (I may wish to add account use later). After searching the contributions and forums for several days I haven't been able to find anything that will allow a store to run without using customer accounts.

 

I have installed the Guest Account 2.0 contribution which gives me a good start, although I will have to do more customization to make it so creating accounts is not allowed at all. I haven't tried installing the Purchase Without Account contrib although I have looked it over.

 

A couple questions:

1) Did I miss a contribution that addresses removing the use of customer accounts totally (at least the illusion of using accounts)?

2) Does anyone know what the basic differences are between the Guest Account contrib and the Purchase Without Account contrib? From my poking around they seem somewhat similar in what they are trying to accomplish.

 

Thx

[99darkgreenGT]

http://www.oscommerce.com/forums/index.php?act=ST&f=11&t=76853

 

not sure if this is what you are looking for, but read what JB says to do. it masks the create account process so the customer doesn't recognize that they are making an account.

[Oppen]

Thx 99darkgreenGT. I'll have to see if I can add those changes to what the Guest Account contrib already accomplishes. It adds some functionality such as not asking if the customer wants a newsletter, which makes sense if you don't have an 'account'.

 

Does anyone have any comments on my second question? I am wondering if it might be better to use the Purchase Without Account contrib rather than the Guest Account contrib as the basis for what I am trying to do. Since I will probably will want to allow the account feature as well in the future it seems wise to start with one of these.