Pay-what-you-want feature?

[dream_mike]

I am finding pricing-by-attributes to be very difficult and obscure to set up; apologies to those of you who have written how-to's on that. Since I will have to look at and approve each purchase, and will have been in email contact with the customer before the purchase occurs, I'm hoping for a shortcut. We sometimes see items sold "pay-as-you-like", where the buyer enters his or her own preferred payment amount into a field, e.g. the various Humble Bundles. If zencart supports that, I could just tell the customer what the bottom line is.

A search doesn't reveal such an option, but one of the threads around here hints that it's possible.

[DrByte]

Like this? http://www.zen-cart.com/content.php?...ct-or-Donation

[dream_mike]

DrByte, thank you for replying. I had spotted that article, but it seems somewhat awkward to ask a user to buy some large number of $1 items to set the price. Was hoping for a way to bring up a field in which the buyer types the number we specify.

Could this be done with coupons - make the item the highest possible price and define some coupons to reduce to the option values?

[gjh42]

With proper setup, the "quantity of $1.00 items" can be quite intuitive and friendly. See the Custom Project on my website.

[DrByte]

it seems somewhat awkward to ask a user to buy some large number of $1 items to set the price. Was hoping for a way to bring up a field in which the buyer types the number we specify.

Um ... isn't that quantity box "a field in which the buyer types the number"?
It's the same difference in the end.

I suppose if you want something different, you'll write some custom code to create your own popup which then inserts the same number into the quantity box for them. Or use some javascript or custom PHP code to change the words in the quantity box for only that product.

As far as your intro comment about attributes, I'm not sure how attributes apply here.

[dream_mike]

I don't understand how I might write custom code. The price has to propagate into the credit card module for the user's card to be charged properly.

Looking at your custom project, where would I change the "Qty" label to, say, "Price"?

I've started another thread about price by attributes, but I'm thinking of Ajeh's remarks here: http://www.zen-cart.com/showthread.p...ributes-HOW-TO

Lovely rings at your custom project site!

[DrByte]

I don't understand how I might write custom code. The price has to propagate into the credit card module for the user's card to be charged properly.

Right. That's why you simply use the quantity box as I mentioned earlier by referring you to the FAQ article explaining exactly how to do that. When the quantity is used as the price, and the product price is set to "$1.00 for each", then the quantity becomes the actual price of the product, and thus is carried forward to the shopping cart and into checkout so that the credit card is charged accordingly.

Looking at your custom project, where would I change the "Qty" label to, say, "Price"?

There are many ways to do that:
a) Write yourself a custom product-type so that you can set specific language texts for individual pieces on products using that type. If you're only setting up a single product for this specific purpose, then it will of course only apply to that one product, and easily leave all other products alone working normally.
b) Write custom PHP code to intercept the normal code that outputs the "quantity" label and use a different language text ("define") instead, but only for the specific product you wish it to apply to. It's the detection of the specific product that's the real "custom" part of this approach, plus the appropriate additional define.
c) Write custom javascript to read the page, look for the product id number and if this particular product's id is the one displayed then look for the label for Qty and use the javascript to replace it with "price".

Each has its varying levels of complexity.

[DrByte]

I am finding pricing-by-attributes to be very difficult and obscure to set up; apologies to those of you who have written how-to's on that.

Wondering how "pricing by attributes" comes into this discussion.

[dream_mike]

I was considering pay-what-you-want as a possible alternative to pricing-by-attributes - either would be a way to add more control to what the user must enter on their credit card.

[dream_mike]

I've now solved my problem using pricing-by-attributes:
http://www.zen-cart.com/showthread.p...g-by-attribute

Thanks for your comments, DrByte and jgh42.