Free shipping issue

[mikeel100]

The game plan is to:

1. Modify the shipping php code for estimating shipping at the first level of checkout. I will also need to have it calculate the totals for each type of shipping (free, flat, ups, usps, fedex, call for shipping price) and separate those values into each category.

2. Turn off the php code that gives shoppers an option to select a shipping method at the second level of checkout and simply show the total shipping for each category of shipping.

Any suggestions on how to get started?

I will gladly share this with the community if I can get it working.

[Ajeh]

You have a lot of criteria in trying to determine your shipping ...

You might want to look into the Advanced Shipper on a google search and see if it can manage your shipping needs ...

[mikeel100]

Tried to check them out but their store/demo username and passwords are not working.

Is shipping includes/modules/estimator.php and checkout_process.php the files I would need to modify? Any admin files need to be changed?

[mikeel100]

Turned estimator off in admin and disabled radio selects for shipping choices in /templates/template_default/templates/tpl_checkout_shipping_default.php by commenting out this line (and putting the modified file in my CUSTOM folder:

<!--MIKE?php echo zen_draw_radio_field('shipping', $quotes[$i]['id'] . '_' . $quotes[$i]['methods'][$j]['id'], $checked, 'id="ship-'.$quotes[$i]['id'] . '-' . str_replace(' ', '-', $quotes[$i]['methods'][$j]['id']) .'"'); ?MIKE-->

WARNING - This stops the checkout process from proceeding...

Need a way to make the product prices go into the correct shipping category based upon the new columns added to the database.

Need a method to have all of the (now hidden) buttons selected if items in the cart falls into each of the 5 shipping methods available.

Suggestions anyone?

[mikeel100]

Ajeh, Is this going to disrupt any of the critical data needed to process the checkout process?

<!--MIKE?php echo zen_draw_radio_field('shipping', $quotes[$i]['id'] . '_' . $quotes[$i]['methods'][$j]['id'], $checked, 'id="ship-'.$quotes[$i]['id'] . '-' . str_replace(' ', '-', $quotes[$i]['methods'][$j]['id']) .'"'); ?MIKE-->

[mikeel100]

Where are these variables declared (so I can make sense of the coding)?
$i
$n1
$n2
$j
$quotes
$checked
or any others used in tpl_checkout_shipping_default.php

Is there a FAQ file that tells how the code used in zencart is structured? I could probably avoid asking you tons of questions if I new the ideology of how it all fits together.

[Ajeh]

Zen Cart does not allow for multiple shipping methods to be used at the same time ...

You would either need to prevent mixed orders of Products with different shipping methods or write your own checkout process that can compute multiple methods ...

That is why I suggested the CEON's Advanced Shipping to see if that might be a possible solution to this ... it is not a free add on, but it has been known to handle a lot of specific customization needs on shipping ...

[Ajeh]

Ajeh, Is this going to disrupt any of the critical data needed to process the checkout process?

<!--MIKE?php echo zen_draw_radio_field('shipping', $quotes[$i]['id'] . '_' . $quotes[$i]['methods'][$j]['id'], $checked, 'id="ship-'.$quotes[$i]['id'] . '-' . str_replace(' ', '-', $quotes[$i]['methods'][$j]['id']) .'"'); ?MIKE-->

Turning that off is going to prevent the options from being selected ... they will still all show but nothing can now be selected ...

Editing the individual shipping modules can allow you to determine when they each should be enabled/disabled but you would have to have some type of criteria for the mixed carts with multiple shipping methods to determine which one should be used under what ever conditions you want to define for managing it ...

You could try making it that the order has to only contain like Products for shipping, but that would really tick off customers when trying to shop and finding that if they want to order 7 things and they are not in the same shipping method they would have to figure out how to build separate orders based on the Product shipping method ...

[mikeel100]

Okay, got some studying to do. I'll try not to post anymore here until I get a clear understanding of how the shipping module fits together. Would the Zencart book be of any value to me in taking on this nightmare?

Oh, I did check out Ceon's Advanced Shipping as much as I could. I couldn't get past the log in page with the username and password they said to use on their website. I wrote them back and told them about the issue.

I'm still keeping it in my hip pocket to look at.

Thanks for your help.

[Ajeh]

Not for something like this ...

There are numerous ways to customize shipping, however, you are trying to, more or less, do them all simultaneously and that does not work well ...

If you were able to do something like test if a UPS Product is in the cart so regardless UPS is used or if a USPS is in the cart it would force USPS to be used etc. then you have a test and a result that can allow for checkout ...

But what you appear to need is how much shipping is UPS and how much is USPS etc. and combine it ...

Now you are getting into fuzzy areas where you have to determine what the partial order quotes are for the shipping and then what part of the partial quotes to use when combined together ...

Again, the suggestion to look into CEON's Advanced Shipper to see if it allows for the mix of shipping that you are trying to do ... I do not use it, but have heard numerous people with bizzaro shipping needs have found solutions with it ...