You type in a state, select a country, submit the form, and return to the same page with an error message that the state entry was not correct. You can now select a state and proceed.

Practically this mean that each customer who create an account on the store is presented that error message and has to submit the form twice, each customer has to go through the frustrating experience that she/he did something wrong, right at the beginning of the checkout process. Not very motivating I think

This happens on every page where customers can enter an address

• create_account.php
• checkout_payment_address.php
• checkout_shipping_address.php
• address_book_process.php

It only work correctly in case the selected country has no zones. The majority of the stores do use zones of course

The reason for this behaviour is build into the system from day 1, the way the system work is as follows, in simple terms:

if there is a country selected, check if there are zones for that country.

If the country has zones, display the drop down of zones/states, if no zones, display a text input field.

If no country is selected, display a text input field

Now, the system know if there is a country selected only after the form is submitted. It “decide” to display a drop down of states or not only after the form is submitted

You are lucky to get an account created in 1 step and without an error message only if the country you selected has no zones or if you typed in the zone name exactly as set in admin, not very likely to happen.

There are of course some solutions available as add ons, they all modify quite many files and/or don’t work well.

I created a completely self contained system, with no code changes at all, that produce following behaviour

1)  if no country is selected, a text appear at the state field: “select country first”

2) If a country get selected, the text disappear and automatically is replaced by:

2.1) A states dropdown, in case the country has zones, people have to choose from there

2.2) A text input field in case the country has no zones, people can enter any text

If you change the country selection, the sate field update automatically, showing either a updated drop down or a text input field

The critical and important part is, that the state selection drop down appear before the form is submitted letting customers do the correct selection on the drop down

In admin, all you have to do is, install the state selector module and select what pages you want to use it on.

The page selection was added in case you are using other, alternative checkout method, like for example “Purchase without account – the easy way“

The State Selector extension does not require any file changes. Installation consist of uploading 3 files to the server (+ one more or each additional language you use) and installing the module in admin

Get in touch if you want to have this on your store

]]> http://multimixer.gr/02/12/2015/state-selector-the-easy-way/feed/ 0 http://multimixer.gr/16/11/2015/product-notifications-get-the-overview/ http://multimixer.gr/16/11/2015/product-notifications-get-the-overview/#comments Mon, 16 Nov 2015 17:43:38 +0000 multimixer http://multimixer.gr/?p=1473 You all know about the product notifications system in osCommerce: People can click, either on the product information page or after successful checkout and register their interest in a particular product. The store administrator can then send a newsletter to that customers using the – complicated – newsletter system of osCommerce.

That’s all fine, my point is that the store owner never get an overview about how many customers and who concretely registered an interest in what products.

Wouldn’t it be nice to know that e.g. there are 300 people interested in lemons and only 5 in melons? You know immediately what the important product is.

Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to export a csv file with the customer data, that you can either import into a modern newsletter program (like mailchimp) or work with the list offline?

That is exactly what this extension is doing, lets see the details

You’ll get a new page in admin (under “reports”) showing all products that have a notification entry

The list is showing

• product ID
• product name
• the number of notifications registered
• the current product quantity
• the product status

You can sort the list by any of that labels ascending or descending

You can preview the customers who registered a notification for a product by clicking the button “view” in column “view customers”

You can preview the product in question in both, the store side and the admin side by clicking the buttons “view in store” or “view in admin” in column “view product”. So you can quickly change something without leaving the page

You can expire a csv file with customer data either of the complete list (button “export complete list” on top) or of a list related to a particular product (button “export” in column “export customers”)

You can work with that list local in excel or a similar program, or import it to any online or offline program that accept csv files as a import source, like for example mailchimp for newsletters. That way you can easily create targeted newsletters

Finally you can reset either the complete list (button “clear complete list” on top) or you can reset the entries for a particular product (button “delete” in column “delete notifications”)

The extension is compatible with any osCommerce version of series 2.3.3.3 and upwards, including of course the latest osCommerce version 2.3.4

There are no core file modifications necessary, you just have to upload some files to the server, that’s all

Get in touch if you think that is something useful for your store

Why would you need such a list? There ae many reasons for, some examples:

1) You sell seasonal items and need the list to arrange shipping

2) You run out of stock for an item and need to contact all customers who didn’t receive the order yet

3) There is an upgrade/newer version for an item available and you want to inform all people who purchased that item

I’m sure you’ll find more reasons

With this modification you’ll be able to see and/or export a list of all customers who ordered a product from your store, including default address, delivery address and shipping address in case they are different to the default address. The list also include payment method, order date and order status.

You’ll get 2 buttons on the product listing page in admin, when you have a product selected

Pressing the first one – “Show Orders” – will open a pop up window showing all orders for hat product

Pressing the second one – “Export Orders” will let you download a csv file

The cvs fil contain all order elated data. You can filter that data as you like using a program like Excel, print the list ut, save it on your computer, import it to other applications etc

The installation is extremely simple and will not affect any other modifications you may have, there is just a single line of code to add to one file

Get in touch if ou think this is something useful for your store

Now, you have 10 newer products that you are selling since 3 months, and they are  selling really good. You want to have them in your bestsellers box but no chance. The old products still show, no sign of your new best selling items.

Wonder why? Easy to explain:

Say that the 10 older top products have sales from 1000 items and up. Your new product is selling 10 items per day. You need 100 days at least to get it into the top 10 of your bestsellers list. After 100 days it may not be relevant any more.

There is also no use for all time bestsellers if you sell seasonal items: You don’t want to show Christmas items on Easter just because the sold more during Christmas period. You don’t want to show bikinis in November if you sell clothing

Same if you sell items that are expiring in some way, for example technological items: It may be that you sold more iPhone 4 than iPhone 6 all over, but you don’t want to show that old iPhone 4 any longer in your bestsellers list just because you sold more of it once upon a time

You got the meaning. Old products are on top, no chance for bestselling new products to appear in your list.. The older your store, the bigger the problem.

What you need is a way to reset your bestsellers list from time to time and show recent bestsellers to your visitors.

This modification here is doing exactly this: It is a way to reset the bestsellers list,  leaving the default osCommerce data tracked in place.

Using the addon you’ll get a new page in admin under tab “reports”, showing your bestsellers

You can reset the list anytime using the button on top, the message on the left is showing you the last time of reset

For each product listed, there is a button “edit” so you can go directly and edit it in admin. You can also preview the product directly in admin if you want to check how it look on your front side

On the front page, your bestsellers box is showing the new list. In case you use mini template system, you can show the results of the new list in any of the various modules that display bestsellers

The modification is not touching any core code file and is made for osCommerce 2.3.4

Installation of the modification is extremely simple: Upload the files to your server and enable 2 modules in admin

Feel free to get in touch if you are interested in this extension, I think it’s useful and make a good sense

Things are simple: You want people to be able to checkout on your store without having to create an account. You want to store the order but you don’t want to store the customer data. All you want to know about the customer is the name and address so you know where to ship to. You don’t want your customers to be forced to create an account.

What I did is, to create a system that present an alternative checkout option to the store customers, parallel to the existing login and create account options that exist by default. Your customers can use that option and checkout without creating an account.

Best of all: no core file modifications at all. You don’t have to modify any file.

On the login page, there is one more checkout option:

If you want, you can disable all other options in admin, that way you’ll have only a checkout without account. You can also leave the login/create account as an option, this is up to you. You can name the PWA checkout option as you like, in this example it is named “simple checkout”

Using the PWA option, people arrive to a special page, where they have to enter their name, address and email. That is necessary, otherwise you wouldn’t know where to ship to

The rest of the checkout process is same as per default: People select shipping, then payment and finally conform the order.

In your admin, you can see the order with all products and the shipping address. No customer is registered

How to install: Since there are no files modified, installation is extremely simple, only requirement is, to use the latest osCommerce version, 2.3.4

1) Upload the files to your server

2) install 2 modules via admin

Thats all, the system already work perfectly on a number of websites

If you like this modification and want to use it on your website, please feel free to get in touch

If yes, then here is a nice solution for you: automated order status text. Each time you update the status of an order, the system will add automatically a predefined text to the “comments” field of the order

Lets see the details

On the order statuses page in admin, you’ll get a new text field where you can add a standard text for each status and each language you use in your store

When updating the order status for a given order, the standard text is added automatically to the order comments field

You can of course edit that text and add e.g. a tracking number or some personal message etc

The modification require some small code additions to 2 core osCommerce files in admin, there are no major changes that would affect any other functionality you have in your store.

The modification work also very well with the addon “order editor” in case you have that

Let me know if you are interested in this modification, I think its a very handy little modification that will save you a lot of time

I’ve been in the need of exactly the opposite: Copy a product to multiple categories in one step, and that is what this little modification does.

Day you have a product that you want to double or triple place and have it listed in several categories. Only way to do it now is, to repeat the “copy to” action each time. This can be time consuming in case you have many products that you want to list within multiple categories. Even more time consuming it is, to remove any additional listings of that product

With this modification, you can copy each product to any number of categories in one step directly from the product listing or product editing page in admin

You’ll get a new button on the product listing page in admin
and of course on the product editing page

Clicking the button, you’ll get a nice pop up, showing all available categories.

You can now easily select the categories you want your product to be listed in. You can add or remove the categories you want your product to be listed in any time.

Installation is very easy, there are just 2 simple additions to a single file.

This extension is made exclusively for Mini Template System users.

The image naming format was

img_[products_id]_[image_id].extension

The image names for a product with ID “1302″ would look like this

Now, while we have what we need, unique image names, related to the product in a special folder on the server, the truth is, that they are not very meaningful and not SEO friendly

So, I decided to update the modification, you can now add to the image name any or all of the following parameters, in any order you want

• products name
• products model
• products category
• manufacturer name

For example, the image name could be

[products_name]_[products_id]_[image_id].extension

or

[manufacturer_name]_[products_name]_[products_id]_[image_id].extension

or

[products_category]_[products_model]_[products_id]_[image_id].extension

For example, if we use manufacturer name and products name as parameters, the image names would be like this for a product with ID 34, of manufacturer “Samsung” and name “Galaxy”:

It is up to you what parameters you want to use and in what order you want to add them to the filename. Any parameters are cleaned up of course to ensure valid filenames. In case you have more than 1 languages installed on your store, then the entries of the default language will be used.

The installation of the modification is still very easy, there are 4 clean additions to do to a single file, the modification will work on any version of the 2.3 series (from 2.3.1 up to 2.3.4)

The modification will add a new page to your admin, where you can see and edit your warehouse locations

You can add a name and a short description to each location

You can simply add complete categories to locations

And you can add individual products to locations on the product editing page in admin

Once a order is done, you can see the warehouse location information on the order details page in admin.

Please get in touch if you are interested in this modification

This is nice and fine

The point is, that there is no way for the store owner to edit any of that additional addresses in the administration panel. The store administrator can only edit the primary customers address by editing a customer. All additional addresses remain hidden for the store administrator, who is not even aware of any additional addresses

This doesn’t sound right for me, so, I created a modification that will let you see and edit all of your customers additional addresses

The modification add one more button to the right hand area when a customer is selected

Clicking the button you get a list of all the addresses that this customer has added, the primary address and all other additional addresses

You can see that he primary address is marked as primary, you can now click on edit to edit any address you want, or you can delete it. The primary address this is the only one that you can’t delete – you need to delete the customer in this case.

Clicking on “edit” you get all address details that you can edit as you like

The basic customer details, such as email etc, are not part of the “address book”, so they are not editable via the address manager, you can fit them as usual over the customers details page

What do you think of this modification? If you want to have it in your store, feel free to get in touch. Installation is easy and won’t affect your core code, there is only a single core file to edit.

The nice address book image used on the frontage was found here

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