Shipping Problem

[Nick1973]

Linda I've just found your post here about a multiple products duplication tool.

http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showth...=180447&page=1

Did you get this fully developed?

If this works then I can duplicate each product to the top level category which strictly I'm aware you shouldn't do as Zen Cart hasn't been built to handle products and categories within the same category. However it seems to work so if you can let me know that would be great.

Thanks

Nick

[gjh42]

If you duplicated the products to the top category, they would all officially be in the same master category and your subcats would be pointless. I didn't want to mention the practice of linking the products into their top cat unless it was determined that there was no better way. That does have the possibility of search or pricing issues, and especially if it's for someone else, I don't think it's a good idea to risk it.

It would have saved time in discussion in your other thread if you had mentioned that you already had extensive work on the shipping issue in the forum.
A straightforward method of handling this if only one category is involved is to make two top categories for flammable and non-flammable chemicals. You don't have to name them so blatantly, but with over 100 products, a breakdown into two distinguishable groups might even be beneficial. Is there anything that users would readily see as differences in kind between flammables and non? Why would it be bad for customers to see the chemicals in two categories? I can imagine that they would want to know that certain chemicals required special handling.

[Nick1973]

Hi Linda I've finally managed to get to the bottom of this and have a workable solution thanks to your mass duplication tool. It works great by the way so hope you plan to develop further.

http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showth...=180447&page=1

I firstly downloaded and installed your tool.

Then I moved my first class and track and trace categories to a category which is switched off called Chemicals Admin Category. First Class and Track and Trace are switched on inside this category as are all the products listed inside them. Then all products listed inside my Chemicals Admin Category have been duplicated to another category called Chemicals (the category where the products should all display). This means that all the products inside my First Class and Track and Trace categories are now mixed in the same category but when I put them through the cart it selects the correct postage method for the product in the cart. This is because my shipping/table1.php (first class) has code in it telling the cart to switch off first class if a Track and Trace item is added to the cart.

Its maybe not the best of fixes but its a workable solution and thats all that matters.

It would be good to have some way of selecting postage/shipping methods from the products description admin in a future release of zen cart as I'm sure there are other people that come across this issue particularly when they are selling chemicals, some of which require a shipping method with insurance. In my situation the insurance is within the shipping price so thats what made it ultra difficult. Otherwise I could probably have used the Optional Shipping Insurance Mod found here http://www.zen-cart.com/index.php?ma...roducts_id=348

Anyway thanks for sticking with me on this thread, at least I have a solution that works and thanks for all your help.

[gjh42]

The plan of hiding the "admin" top category and linking the subcats' products into another top cat neatly avoids the potential issues with the first suggestion. As long as your client can continue to link any new chemical products correctly, it sounds like it should work fine.

[Nick1973]

Glenn, my products are not going in the top level category. It is a totally separate category which is turned off and the first class and track and trace categories beneath it turned on. These contain all the products that need to be listed in the separate top level category and then these are simply duplicated.

If it was an issue to duplicate products then surely that would be a massive flaw with zen cart.

As I say its not an ideal fix but it works.

[gjh42]

It's not an issue to duplicate or to link products, only to have any products in a category that has subcategories.

[Nick1973]

Sorry Glenn I should emphasise that I meant Linked products, not duplicate products as just duplicating them would make them independent products. Doing them as Linked products means that any changes are reflected in the separate categories.

Thanks for your help with this, and sorry for not mentioning the help from Linda sooner. I started a separate thread because I was trying to find help quickly as its been going on for a few days now and was starting to feel increasingly frustrated and under pressure.

Thanks again

Nick

[Ajeh]

Thanks for the update that you have this working now ...