Some very basic questions from a very basic noobie

[wellnessclub]

Hi All,

I will be doing an install of Zen Cart over the next day or two, as long as I can confirm that it will do for us what we need.

I am looking to install the Multisite Module as well.

Here is what we are looking to accomplish:

We wish to have one shopping cart admin that we can have a number of different websites use - it looks like the Multisite Module will do that.

Our multiple websites will reside on different ip's.

The multiple websites may be constructed in WP Blog format, static html, or using XsitePro.

We need to be able to use the Zen cart as a "backend" order-processing system over all those formats.

We are looking to be able to place a variety of "Buy Now" / "Add To Cart" buttons on these various websites that will take the customer through the customer data / cc number collection process and then return them to the website from whence they came on completion of their order.

We are currently using Sumeffects DigiShop on our ecommerce sites (2 of them - one heavily customized) and I am comfortable with the DigiShop add to cart code - which looks like this:

<form onsubmit="javascript:return checkRequiredFields();" name="productForm" action="http://www.drmyattswellnessclub.com/store/cart.php" method="post" style="margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0; margin-left: 0; margin-right: 0;">
<input type="hidden" name="m" value="add">
<input type="hidden" name="productID" value="6">
<p align="right">
<input class="Form2" type="text" name="quantity" size="3" maxlength="6" value="1">
<input type="submit" value="Add XXX to Cart"> </p>
</form>

I will also need a means to obtain monthly reporting of sales tax collected - I think I saw a sales report module that will accomplish that...

My questions are,

Am I looking at the right cart solution with Zen Cart?

Can I use code similar to the above (that I am modestly comfortable with...) to place "buy now" options over differing types of websites?

As you might guess, we use the DigiShop cart mostly for it's order processing - not to create any sort of store for our customers. A waste of functionality I suppose, but my boss likes to work with static html pages through MS Frontpage...

I am sure that these questions have been answered somewhere, but I'll be darned if I can find them succinctly addressed in the FAQs - I did search, I promise!

Can someone here offer me some thoughts on this, or links to where I can find the info?

Finally, it is possible that my boss might pay to have this set up - if there are folks out there who would like to bid on it...

Many thanks,
Mark

[schoolboy]

A quick and overarching answer to your queries...

... no, zencart is not designed to operate in the way you require.

ZC is a FULL solution to e-commerce and the front and back ends are entirely inter-dependent.

You cannot "separate out" the engine, without taking the chassis and bodywork too.

Additionally, ZC (like most top-notch carts) works using scripted language that queries a database and "cobbles" html pages together "on-the-fly" - in ZC's case it's php, and there is very little manually constructed html in the program... so if your boss likes FrontPage (... it can be cured, so its OK...) then ZC is not for you.

... and I venture to say that most other dynamic content systems will offer the same answers. I'd be interested to know the php behind DigiShop... How do you construct your HTML when this is PHP driven?

What you want MAY be possible, however... but at quite a price... (Anything's possible if enough cash gets thrown at it.)

[wellnessclub]

Thanks for the thoughts and the answer Schoolboy,

*sigh* this ~is~ where I run up against it... I just don't have the language to be able to express myself properly with what we want...

Everything I have seen so far in terms of the Multicart Module and the sales reporting module looks like what we need.

What I have not been able to find so far is some way (ie: the 'Buy Now" button code) to send a product to the cart from a static html page.

Yes, our DigiShop cart is php, and yes, we are doing this with it now.

Unfortunately it is 1.) Relatively expensive, 2.) limited to one site per installation (no "catch-all" shopping cart servicing a bunch of websites).

Our current main ecommerce site www.DrMyattsWellnessClub.com uses static html pages to send products to the DigiShop cart by a couple of different methods - see http://www.drmyattswellnessclub.com/...tilityShop.htm for one example and http://www.drmyattswellnessclub.com/maximulti.htm for another.

We do not use the ability of the DigiShop cart to generate product pages "on-the-fly" - we simply send the informationfrom the html product page to the cart for all of it's functions from that point forward through the successful completion of the order.

We have all our products in the cart database, all our customer info is in the cart database, we use the cart to generate our reports and stats, and of course to send payment info to the gateway - we just don't use the cart-generated product pages - none of that is visible to the customer, only the view cart and checkout process is visible to the customer...

Surely this cannot be rocket science to accomplish?!?

Cheers,
Mark

[stevesh]

I agree with schoolboy - this could probably be done, (and we get this question a lot) but with considerable coding. One of the problems is that you run into sessions issues with switching between Zencart and non-Zencart pages.

The good news is that, if you could wean your boss from Front Page HTML pages, those sites you listed wouldn't be hard to recreate just using Zencart.

[wellnessclub]

So... it looks like SumEffects Digishop solution has Zen Cart beat in this respect... sounds like a challenge to me... but I am not literate enough to know how to compare the two carts or to see if there is some other solution that will give me that functionality of the DigiShop cart.

Too bad - I guess the search continues... or we'll just fork over more money to SumEffects each time we need to process another storefront.

Thanks anyway for your help...
Cheers,
Mark

[stevesh]

You might also check sites like hotscripts.com which offer basic shopping cart add-on scripts.

[Website Rob]

but I am not literate enough to know how to compare the two carts or to see if there is some other solution that will give me that functionality of the DigiShop cart.

Sounds like you need to hire a Consultant, not only to explain the difference between DigiShop and any other eCommerce script but to also explain the benefits of creating pages dynamically. Having done Carts in the 90's I know what a pain it can be to manually maintain many, many HTML pages.

I feel for the person who has to maintain the site after seeing all the Font tags being used and other, outdated coding styling. My God man, CSS files are not even being used which takes maintenance from a pain to a nightmare.

At some point, the move to more efficient and effective coding will have to be done; regardless of what script is used.

[wellnessclub]

Hi Rob,

Yep, a consultant would be wonderful - but highly unlikely... and I am acutely aware of the fact that our website is a nightmare of a coding dinosaur.

But, you don't know my boss - she wants things the way she wants them, and no other way - and this is the way she wants the website. The fact that it uses include files is a major achievement!

I am a nurse, who made the mistake once of revealing that I had some very, very rudimentary, 1990's html knowledge - so I suddenly became the defacto webmeister for the wellnessclub. I have rebuilt the website twice now and have no appetite for yet another rebuild of over 300 pages - especially knowing the learning curve that will be involved in mastering not only css, but php and content-management dynamic webpage creation stuff. ~shudder~ Maintenance? We don't do no stinkin' maintenance - we do crisis management when stuff breaks...

I'm afraid we'll just keep defaulting back to what we know and understand, and I'll muddle along with this ugly, inelegant combination of html and DigiShop...

Sorry to be so dour, but today has been a techno-challenge already and I have a list of "internet stuff" that I must figure out here...

signed,
Incompetent but managing barely,
Mark

[stevesh]

That's a tough position to find yourself in, but a lot of us have been there, believe me. There aren't many things more frustrating than a clueless boss, especially when it comes to tech stuff.

Once, when I was in a similar position, I took it upon myself to build a sort of clone of the existing site on my own time using the tools and methods that I thought were proper for the job. When I was able to present a completed site to the boss that was done right, it helped overcome his ignorance and stubborness.

[schoolboy]

It may be worthwhile sitting your boss down and (tactfully) explaining the benefits of database-driven, dynamic content websites.

Flat HTML is no longer used to manage sites that are high in content - particularly content that needs to be "relationally managed".

The learning curve is not steep - and a LOT of the content in a ZC site IS (in fact) "editable" using an in-built WYSIWYG html editor (Either HTMLArea or FCK Editor).

Let's say, that on a "flat html" site there are 600 products.
You need to do a blanket price increase of 5% across all products.
Each one of 600 pages needs to be individually edited, and if this takes (on average) one minute per page, the price changing will take 10 hours.

In a site using dynamic content with a database, this exercise would take about 3 seconds.

Whether you decide to use ZC or not is not the issue. You need to get your colleagues' mindset right about the benefits and advantages of a database-driven system.