checkout option required

[spencoid]

I asked this elsewhere but got no response after two tries so I am trying again here. I need to have customers choose a style option at checkout that applies to all products in that order. During the checkout process I want to force them to select one out of four possible styles that will apply to the order but want to allow them to change it on another order. I can find no way of faking this with shipping options etc but am willing to do this if someone has a trick to apply.

This is the only thing keeping me from going online with my cart so I really need an answer.

[gjh42]

You're definitely looking at some custom coding. How involved it will be depends on whether you need the choice to affect prices, or just give information to you.

By "allow them to change it on another order", do you mean you want the choice to be remembered for the customer and carry over unless changed, or be entered anew for each order?

Your best bet may be to post in the Commercial Help Wanted forum.

[schoolboy]

When you speak of "styles" what exactly do you mean?

If you are selling fashion, then the styles you customers select are either product descriptions, or attributes (red trousers, green trousers) or a combination of both.

Or do you mean you want the page style to be different (this may be a CSS function)...

Or do you mean the style of shipping they choose?

What do you mean when you say "styles"?

[spencoid]

I am, or hope to be selling custom music CDs for four different piano types, Disklavier, PianoDisc, PianoMation and Stahnke LX. The available titles (and pre-arranged CDs also which are not on the cart yet) need to be made for the type of piano that the customer owns. Currently I am doing it with categories for each piano type and recommend that people choose the right category or search only in the category that matches their piano. Hopefully the customer will choose only titles from a single category. If they don't my script that creates the CD and custom paper insert will notify me that they have a mixed lot.

Since I will have stock CDs available too, I would like to allow the customer to select a type that applies to all the titles ordered on a single order and also allow them to choose a "mixed types" in case they just want to order stock CDs for different piano types. I do not want to make a customer register a preference that is linked to their accound as I want them to be able to place different orders for different pianos.

I know this is confusing but that is the nature of this business.

What I want is an option at checkout that forces the customer to tell me what piano they have and this informaton only needs to be entered on the packing slip and e-mail to me so my script can find it and choose the files from the right folder.

My cart in progress is at spencerserolls.com/zencart

I will post this to commercial help it there is no easy solution. I program in perl and can figure out some PHP but haqve essentially no experience with anything other than minor editing of it.