Mark Bowen Shopping Cart Plug-in

Hiya,

Hey, I don’t want to pressurize on you guys but can you give us an idea as to when Mark’s Shopping Cart Plugin will be ready for version 2.0?

Unfortunately I can’t say at the moment because as it stands the plugin is still only 1.6.x compatible. I will definitely be converting the plugin as it would be silly for me if I didn’t but as to timeframe I’m afraid I can’t give any more details. I want it to be as soon as possible obviously but just before Christmas I had some rather personal problems which just threw me totally out of whack with everything.

I am currently working on my first e-commerce site with EE and I wonder what version I should use, 1.6.8 or 2.0?

Well the 1.6.x version does work fine if it is just a simple shopping cart that you are after and I don’t see any major architectural changes being on the horizon for the 2.0 version but I don’t want to tell you to use any version of ExpressionEngine if that’s not what you want to do. There are other options out there and I would definitely say look into those if you have to use ExpressionEngine 2.0

Sorry that I can’t give any more detail than that at the moment but if you do decide to purchase the plugin then please do contact me via PM to purchase the plugin as I don’t think Marcus is selling it via his site any more.

Best wishes,

Mark

Hi Mark,

I think your plug in could be a good solution for me…

two questions:

how much does it cost?

where can I download it?

Thank you

Marco

Hi Marco,

Hi Mark, I think your plug in could be a good solution for me… two questions: how much does it cost?

At the moment the plugin is priced at $50 USD

where can I download it?

Currently the plugin is available from myself directly and once payment is received I will send the plugin and documentation / templates across to yourself via e-mail. If you’re interested in purchasing then if you PM me then we can get things rolling if you like.

Best wishes,

Mark

Hi Mark,

just another question: I’m going to develop a multi-language site with simple commerce module.

Could you suggest a good multi-language solution that fits with simple commerce and your plug-in?

(I know there are many out there, but a hint would be appreciated)

Thanks

Marco

Hi Marco,

Hi Mark, just another question: I’m going to develop a multi-language site with simple commerce module. Could you suggest a good multi-language solution that fits with simple commerce and your plug-in? (I know there are many out there, but a hint would be appreciated) Thanks Marco

I’d really suggest trying a few of the solutions out from the Wiki and the forums as they shouldn’t have any affect on the plugin working with the simple commerce module. If you are creating a multi-language site then I would seriously suggest getting that part worked out first and then adding in e-commerce once that’s all sorted. I can definitely say though that multi-language shouldn’t affect the plugin / module at all though.

I’ve only ever really done one site with a multi-language set up and that was with one of the methods in the Wiki which was really easy to follow although I know that there are a few other alternatives out there now which I haven’t used so I wouldn’t really be best in a position to comment on those I’m afraid.

Best wishes,

Mark

Hi Mark,

Thanks for your swift feedback. I think EE is suitable for this particular project, so I’ll probably go for it. Just one more thing: If I develop the site in version 1.6.8 using your plugin, will I later be able to upgrade easily from version 1.6.8 to version 2.00? What could be possible pitfalls here?

There will be around 60 products in the database by that time. Thanks for your help in this matter.

Hiya,

Hi Mark, Thanks for your swift feedback. I think EE is suitable for this particular project, so I’ll probably go for it. Just one more thing: If I develop the site in version 1.6.8 using your plugin, will I later be able to upgrade easily from version 1.6.8 to version 2.00? What could be possible pitfalls here? There will be around 60 products in the database by that time. Thanks for your help in this matter.

As mentioned above I will definitely be converting the plugin but due to some personal problems have had to put some things behind for a while, the plugin conversion being one of them for the time being. That said I will definitely be updating the plugin and as far as I know from EE2.0 plugin development nothing on the side of the site developer should hopefully change i.e. you will still use all the same tags so nothing will change there and your templates should just work immediately.

That said again I can’t give a solid date on when the plugin will be converted though, sorry. :-(

Best wishes,

Mark

Hi Mark,

Thanks for your help. Yes I would be surprised too, if any of the tags would change in any way. From my experience it is very easy to upgrade an existing project from 1.6.8 to 2.00. The tags that have changed will be updated by EE2 automatically.

Hi Mark and everybody,

I am getting on quite well with my first e-commerce project and I am now very close to purchasing your plugin, Mark 😉

I just finished reading this whole thread again, but I didn’t see some of my questions asked.

My client sells sheet protectors (yawn) and these are only available in bulk, mostly multiples of 50. To make things worse, prices decrease the more sheets a client will order, e.g. 50 sheets will cost 50 euros, 100 sheets will cost 95, and so on.

Is there any way to implement this using the plugin?

I am not good at PHP, so I wonder if anyone can assist me with this, if I pay a little extra.

Second question: If an order is below 20 euros, there needs to be a shipping cost added to the total. I have already seen this implemented in some other projects with Mark’s plugin. Is it hard to do or can someone point me to a tutorial where I can read up on it?

Thanks a lot for your help…

Hi Mark,

I’m thinking of purchasing your shopping cart plugin for a site I’m building. I just wanted to ask a couple of questions:

• Is the Simple Commerce Module required for the plugin to work? At present, the site doesn’t need any payment functionality as the orders just get emailed - so I don’t see any benefit of having the SCM and would therefore prefer not to use it.

• Is it possible to add numerous items to the cart at once or can items only be added one-by-one?

• Can the cart be displayed within any template group or just a single specified group (e.g. only cart/index/ and not delivery/index or contact/index).

• Not really a necessity, but I saw mentioned on another thread that you said others had the cart working with AJAX so no page reload was required. Is there any info anywhere on how this was done?

At present, I am torn between using your plugin and jCart. I’m swaying to yours as it seems more integrated into EE. Are there any pros/cons to either of them that anyone can share?

Thanks

Will

Hi Will,

- Is the Simple Commerce Module required for the plugin to work? At present, the site doesn’t need any payment functionality as the orders just get emailed - so I don’t see any benefit of having the SCM and would therefore prefer not to use it.

It does use the SCM but only to hold the price of each item / entry. I decided to go this route as then people who want to continue and use the rest of the SCM functionality can do but you certainly don’t have to use the full functionality of the SCM.

I just thought it made sense to use the SCM to hold the prices so that you get the best of both worlds really as they need to be stored somewhere.

- Is it possible to add numerous items to the cart at once or can items only be added one-by-one?

There is in fact a way of doing this yes. It’s not fully documented but if you can get a URL created with the entry_ids of the items / entries that you want to add formatted with commas between each item then yes it can be done. As I say it’s not something the plugin does off hand but it can be done.

- Can the cart be displayed within any template group or just a single specified group (e.g. only cart/index/ and not delivery/index or contact/index).

You can call the cart absolutely anywhere you want. I usually have a template that I embed on each page for showing the cart but you can definitely just place a call to the plugin wherever you want yes.

- Not really a necessity, but I saw mentioned on another thread that you said others had the cart working with AJAX so no page reload was required. Is there any info anywhere on how this was done?

Unfortunately my AJAX / Javascript is terrible so I’m not sure how this is done but maybe you could ask someone who has done it, I’m sure they’d be willing to lend a hand.

At present, I am torn between using your plugin and jCart. I’m swaying to yours as it seems more integrated into EE. Are there any pros/cons to either of them that anyone can share?

I’m afraid I’ve never used jCart although I’ll admit I’ve heard some people on the forums here who have used it successfully. My plugin is just a nice quick way of implementing a cart throughout your site using existing ExpressionEngine tags. I’m sure there are definitely other ways of doing it but I like mine, obviously 😉

Hope that helps a bit.

Best wishes,

Mark

Thanks for the prompt reply Mark, that’s definitely cleared a few things up.

I just thought it made sense to use the SCM to hold the prices so that you get the best of both worlds really as they need to be stored somewhere.

Ah ok, my plan was just to store the price as a field in the weblog. I’ve never used the SCM so wasn’t sure whether I’d need it, but if it makes life easier I will.

There is in fact a way of doing this yes. It’s not fully documented but if you can get a URL created with the entry_ids of the items / entries that you want to add formatted with commas between each item then yes it can be done. As I say it’s not something the plugin does off hand but it can be done.

Can this be used to add the same item x number of times. e.g. item_1, item_1, item_1 - where the count is pulled from a quantity input field in the form?

Unfortunately my AJAX / Javascript is terrible so I’m not sure how this is done but maybe you could ask someone who has done it, I’m sure they’d be willing to lend a hand.

No worries, as I said it’s more of a nice to have function. If there is anyone out there who has implemented it with AJAX I’d be very grateful for their experiences of doing so.

I do like the way it uses ExpressionEngine tags and having someone available for quick support through this thread, so I’d rather use it instead of jCart 😊

Thanks

Will

Ah ok, my plan was just to store the price as a field in the weblog. I’ve never used the SCM so wasn’t sure whether I’d need it, but if it makes life easier I will.

Well I just thought it made sense to do things that way as the method is already built-in to the system plus it gives people who want to continue to use the rest of the SCM functions a way of doing that.

Can this be used to add the same item x number of times. e.g. item_1, item_1, item_1 - where the count is pulled from a quantity input field in the form?

People have indeed modified the plugin to do this. You can indeed send the same product multiple times by sending the correct type of URL but as to having a field in a form to do this that would require some custom coding as it’s not something the plugin does by default.

Best wishes,

Mark

OK, I’d still like to know if sliding scale prices can somehow be done with this plugin…

I guess the functionality is not included in the plugin. But is it theoretically possible to add some PHP to your plugin, Mark?

When the quantity exceeds 50, the total price should be 10% lower. When the quantity exceeds 100, it should be 20% lower. And so on…

No ideas on this one?

Thanks for any help.