Lots of dumb beginner questions.

[Se7enet]

My boss unilaterally made a deal with this guy, wherein I'm supposed to update and redo his current website to a better shopping cart system, and I was referred to Zen Cart. The problem is, until last week, I'd never heard of Zen Cart in my life. I know PHP, MySQL, HTML, CSS, whatever else you want, so I'm not a complete moron. But I've never really done an e-commerce site before. I mostly deal with creating specific purpose content engines and the like, not e-commerce.

So this guy gave us a wishlist of features he'd like to see in his new site. I've spent a good chunk of the last week installing ZC on my localhost server and pouring over the admin section, these forums, and the ZC wiki, trying to find answers to whether or not the items on his wishlist are possible. I've knocked out most of them, but there are still several I can't find the answer to. Sorry if this is noob stuff. I really did try to look through the forums and the wiki and everything as much as possible before asking, because I'd much rather find the answers myself if at all possible. If someone could be so kind as to give me yays/nays, and perhaps point me to a forum thread for the contribution (if it exists) that handles a specific function, I would be greatly appreciative.

The items on his wishlist that I have yet to check off are as follows...

1. Fedex shipping module, and real-time shipping calcs for Fedex/UPS/USPS based on weight and destination. As best I can tell, it already does do this for UPS and USPS, but it's Fedex primarily that I'm looking for.

2. Restrict shipping based on destination (ie. USPS only to APO addresses)

3. Functionality similar to this OSC contrib. ("Automated Fedex Labels"). I did find the "Super Orders" contrib, which may cover this, but I'm not sure.

4. Manual order entry by store personnel (for telephone orders). Again, I'm pretty sure this is accomplished with Super Orders, but I'm looking for verification of that.

5. Easy self-serve order tracking for customers.

6. CVV2 and AVC address verification support. (I know CVV2 is included, but what about AVC?)

7. State selection dropdown (as opposed to the current textbox).

8. Dropdown for "How did you hear about us" during account creation.

9. One-page checkout.

10. Multiple level administrative login to allow for full access, order fulfillment, customer management, etc.

11. Send email and/or SMS notification of new orders to multiple recipients.

12. Flexible reporting options (ie. send coupon to all customers who haven't ordered in the last X days).

13. Require double entry of email address when creating account, to reduce typos.

14. Ability to handle free products with purchase of certain other products (ie. free jar with purchase of a case) and/or discounts on specific combinations of items.

15. Recipe submission, requiring admin approval, sorted by category and the specific product used. (The guy sells salsa and various other pepper-related products. He wants users to submit recipes they use his salsa in, but he apparently wants this feature separate from your standard-issue product reviews.)

16. Locator for retail stores where his products are carried, and a suggestion to purchase the product from a local store if one is close by (based on the shipping address entered during order process).

17. Make the website as ADA-friendly as possible - I believe this refers to the American Disability Association, so I take this to mean it should be accessible by text readers and stuff.

Ok, that's all. Once again, thanks in advance for any help you can provide. I really appreciate it.

---Jamin

[shrooki]

really good post. id like to see some of these questions answeredif possible.

[audradh]

Hello,
No expert here, but I think I can answer a few questions.

4. Manual order entry by store personnel (for telephone orders). Again, I'm pretty sure this is accomplished with Super Orders, but I'm looking for verification of that.
This can be accomplished w/ the master_password_encrypted module.

5. Easy self-serve order tracking for customers.
If you are talking about FedEx (or whoever) tracking, I don't know of a solution. If you are talking about tracking your (the businesses') handling of the orders, this is a stock feature. The customer logs into their account and all info that has been entered into the admin panel about their orders is accessable - status changes and comments. I think there is a mod somewhere, although I don't know where, that includes the ability to add comments that are not accessable by the customer as well .

7. State selection dropdown (as opposed to the current textbox).
Pretty sure there is a mod for this, but I don't know where. It may just be a tiny portion of some other mod. Sorry I can't be of more help.

8. Dropdown for "How did you hear about us" during account creation.
This can be done w/ the addition of the ad_manager mod.

10. Multiple level administrative login to allow for full access, order fulfillment, customer management, etc.
There is a module for this, not sure of the name. Oh, wait a sec, here is a thread: http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showth...ghlight=orders
I have not used this, so I can't speak to any specifics about it.

12. Flexible reporting options (ie. send coupon to all customers who haven't ordered in the last X days).
There is a feature like this that is stock. In the admin panel Tools->Send email, the recipient options include dormant customer and active customers. I think 3 months is the threshold, but I'm sure that could be modified easily enough by someone w/ programming knowledge.

14. Ability to handle free products with purchase of certain other products (ie. free jar with purchase of a case) and/or discounts on specific combinations of items.
I have not found this ability, love to hear about it if anybody else has.

Gives you a little more to look at I hope.

Audra