I cannot require customer address or phone number. . ANY solution?

[darlanne]

I have spent the last entire week building my template shop and I thought I had done all my homework prior to choosing Zen-Cart. My situation is a bit unique in that I sell ######## (not entirely adult) web templates for a specific niche group. Therefore, I am not able to use PayPal. I had set Zen-Cart to perfectly meet my needs for the entire store ...

UNTIL ...

I realized there was NO way for my customers to go to the site, choose a template, sign up with their email address and check the heck out.

I realize there is a lot of controversy here as to checking out without an account and so forth. I will say that in my own situation it is VITAL that I do not require anything beyond an email address. I do not want my customers phone numbers or addresses. I would lose business, as privacy is just a big issue. And because I cannot use PayPal or Google Checkout, I'm stuck I guess.

The current Checkout w/Account contributions are not an option since they still do ask for address and phone.

I've built my entire shop with zero way to finish it. It is of no use to me without being able to bypass asking for the address and phone number.

I love all else that Zen-Cart does and I love how my store turned out. And I hate that I've poured countless hours into it and I know I'm asking probably for no reason since I scoured the forums for any alternative but I figured I'll ask anyway, perhaps in different wording that might present me some ... ANY alternative:

Is there ANY way at all to NOT require the address and phone number for my customers? I do not mind having them create an account, but it would not be appropriate (or necessary in the least) to require those two pieces of information.

ANY insight at all would be appreciated. I so want to use Zen-Cart and what I have developed with it.

Thanks in advance!

[afo]

Try this... in the admin under configuration->minimum values, set the minimum length of the unwanted fields to 0 (zero) or spaces and see if that helps.

[stevesh]

I just tested this in my test site, and 0's don't work, but leaving the box blank works for everything but the State field. If you then go to Customer Details and set State to false, it should work (does for me, anyway).

If you don't mind my asking, how do your customers pay you without entering address info?

[afo]

Thanks for trying out my suggestion! I didn't get to test it myself, but I know I set the telephone number to spaces to make it optional.

Interesting question, Steve. For most credit card processing, you need the billing address.

[darlanne]

Thank you so much for the suggestion. I will go try that right now.

Steve, my customers pay me via a separate company's billing system that acts as it's own payment processor for telephone services provided. It's definitely a unique situation. LOL.

Going to try that now thanks!

[darlanne]

Afo and Steve, did I read that you did get it to work by leaving those fields blank?

I just tried setting those to blank in the Minimum Values section (and the 0's, and spaces and all I could think of) and it's still asking for all the info.

Am I doing something wrong? Anything else at all I could try? I don't even mind asking for the state. It's only the actual address and phone number that I can't require.

Thanks for your help : )

[afo]

There's a difference between the field displaying and being required. Can you get past that screen if you leave the fields blank?

[darlanne]

Oh my gosh I think it worked. Thank you SOOOO much. I think you saved my store! :) :)

I'm assuming now I just have to edit the templates where it is asking for that info?

Where would I go to edit the first billing page screen and then the success screen?

[coffee granules]

Having set

Configuration -> Minimum Values -> Telephone Number

to 0

you will then be stuck with this darned annoying red asterisk on your create account page, so customers still won't know that the field is not compulsory.

Fear not, - open up the tpl_modules_create_account.php file from within the

includes/templates/template_default/templates

directory and remove the following

 . ((ENTRY_TELEPHONE_NUMBER_TEXT) ? '<span class="alert">' . ENTRY_TELEPHONE_NUMBER_TEXT . '</span>': '') 

from the following lines

<fieldset>
<legend><?php echo TABLE_HEADING_PHONE_FAX_DETAILS; ?></legend>
<label class="inputLabel" for="telephone"><?php echo ENTRY_TELEPHONE_NUMBER; ?></label>
<?php echo zen_draw_input_field('telephone', '', zen_set_field_length(TABLE_CUSTOMERS, 'customers_telephone', '40') . ' id="telephone"') . (zen_not_null(ENTRY_TELEPHONE_NUMBER_TEXT) ? '<span class="alert">' . ENTRY_TELEPHONE_NUMBER_TEXT . '</span>': ''); ?>

...so you should end up with:

<fieldset>
<legend><?php echo TABLE_HEADING_PHONE_FAX_DETAILS; ?></legend>
<label class="inputLabel" for="telephone"><?php echo ENTRY_TELEPHONE_NUMBER; ?></label>
<?php echo zen_draw_input_field('telephone', '', zen_set_field_length(TABLE_CUSTOMERS, 'customers_telephone', '40') . ' id="telephone"'); ?>

...and no red asterisk!

[coffee granules]

If your create account page is still working you can also now inflict this little hack on it so you don't have a telephone field 40 characters in length and a fax field that's only about 25 characters in length (when I last checked the two are normally the same length!):

Change the line that deals with the fax field as follows:

<label class="inputLabel" for="fax"><?php echo ENTRY_FAX_NUMBER; ?></label>
<?php echo zen_draw_input_field('fax', '', zen_set_field_length(TABLE_CUSTOMERS, 'customers_fax', '40') . 'id="fax"') . (zen_not_null(ENTRY_FAX_NUMBER_TEXT) ? '<span 

class="alert">' . ENTRY_FAX_NUMBER_TEXT . '</span>': ''); ?>

No major changes. - Now it basically mirrors the field line for the telephone with changes where necessary to keep it as an entry box for a customer's fax number should they have one.