Adding countries to zone definition

I'm not sure if this should go here or over in General Questions. My apologies if I picked the wrong forum.

We're setting up shipping so that it's a flat rate for the lower 48 states and real-time USPS shipping quotes (with the USPS module) for Alaska, Hawaii and the rest of the world. I have already set up the zone definition for the lower 48 states by tediously adding each state one at a time from the drop down list. That was bad enough, but I now face the daunting task of doing the same thing for the one with all those other countries. Ugh!

Is there anyone out there who has created an SQL file that will do the job? I could probably create one myself, but it would end up taking almost as long as adding the countries manually.

My eternal gratitude to anyone who can help with this.

In case you need this info:

ZC version: 1.3.8
MySQL version: 5.0.75
PHP version: 5.2.5

See if this thread helps ... post #5 is one that might get you pretty close to the Rest of the World ... :smile:

Ummm . . . what thread? :blink:

I was testing you ... :smartalec:
http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=39978&highlight=shipping+country+set

Well, if my crystal ball wasn't on the fritz, I could have psychically divined the thread for myself, but it's just not very reliable anymore, and taking it to the shop doesn't seem to help. I probably need a new one, but they're just so darn expensive these days. :wink: :D

Thanks for the link. I did do a search to see if I could find the answer myself, but I guess I missed that one. Since I've already created the zone definition, I'll only use the second insert, and I'll have to change the geo_zone_id from 20 to 3 to match what I have.

Well, this worked, but I did notice one thing. All of the U.S. Territories (Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, etc.) are listed as separate countries. USPS requires that they be listed as United States addresses, otherwise the shipping quotes won't work. So I need to delete them as separate countries and add them as U.S. zones.

Thanks for the help. This saved me a lot of time.

Territories and Islands "owned" by the US are listed as States of the US to work with USPS ...

To work with UPS, they are also listed as Countries ...

The trick is, when you want to offere both shipping modules ... now it depends on how your customer added their address ...

I am working on a translator for a future release so that the Customer can add their address either way and it will get translated for UPS and USPS the right way so both can run at the same time ... :cool:

If you only intend to use USPS and NEVER intend to use UPS or FedEx etc. you can remove those countries that are also listed as US States ...

If you only intend to use UPS and NEVER intend to use USPS then you can eliminate those "States" that are also listed as Countries ...

Make lots of backups before doing this ... :smile:

Yep, I already know about the difference between the way USPS treats those places and the way that carriers like UPS and FedEx do. As I mentioned in my first post, all shipping outside the lower 48 will be done via USPS, so, to avoid the possibility that someone living in one of those territories will erroneously select them from the country drop down list instead of choosing U.S. as the country--and, therefore, not end up getting a shipping quote--I will remove the individual listings.

Oh, and I always make DB backups before making changes to them. I'm really paranoid about messing up my DB or doing something I won't be able to easily undo. I have a complete backup of the "virgin" ZC DB before any changes were made, which really came in handy when I had to restore all the countries to the countries and zone lists after my client decided to change their plans for international shipping.