Free shipping to some US states

Okay, forgive me for my lack of zen knowledge, but any special shipping setup for zen cart seems quite complicated.

What I want to do is offer free shipping to most of the US states on all products in my store. The products are plants/trees and due to regulations of four US states the cost of packaging and shipping requires that I charge shipping (or handling) to those four states only to offset the additional costs of certification, inspection, etc.

Now using a great example in this thread: http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=83677
I was able to setup two zones; one containing all the states I want to have free shipping for and another for the four states I need to charge shipping based on quantity to.

This is were the confusion for me begins. I was thinking I could use the Zone Table Rate for both zones and that would allow me to setup shipping to be $0.00 to one zone and to set per item shipping charges on the other zone. However, every order during checkout comes up with Free Shipping. Previously I had all products set to "Always Free Shipping" using "freeshipper". Now that I turned that off and installed Zone Table Rate and included both zones, orders to the zone I want free shipping in work, but orders to the other four states say not shipping to your region at this time. I have also learned there are at least 5 areas in admin that effect shipping. To bad this isn't consolidated somewhere. Do I need to turn off Always Free Shipping on every product now to get Zone Table Rate to function properly? Do I need another Shipping Module? Do I need to modify Shipping in Order Total Modules and in Configuration? Sorry so long, wanted to hopefully fill in all the blanks on my predicament :unsure:

If the Free Shipping is for ALL Products in your store to all but 4 states ... you can do this using the Free Shipping Options freeoptions shipping module by setting it to Total >= 0

Then, build a Zone Definition for these States less the 4 ... and add it to the Free Shipping Options freeoptions shipping module ...

Next, setup whatever shipping module you want for the 4 States that do not get Free shipping and create a Zone Definition for these 4 States and add it to this shipping module ...

Now, if you are in the Free Shipping States Zone Definition, on checkout you will see the Free Shipping Options freeoptions shipping module ...

If you are in the Zone Definition for the 4 States who do NOT get Free Shipping you will see whatever shipping module you setup ...

If you are NOT in either of the two Zone Definitions ... you will NOT be able to checkout until you set your Shipping Address to match one of the two Zone Definitions ...

Awesome!
One more question. Well actually two.

1. In Modules > Order Total Modules, do I need to disable the ot_shipping module?

2. For each product do I need to select No-Shipping Rules Apply instead of Yes - Always Free Shipping for every product?

I am assuming I need to change them all. If so, would be nice to be able to do that globally rather than going into each of our 95 products.

Ajeh - you are awesome. You really offer a lot of help to us in all of the shipping topics I have read. Thanks for coming through again.

You need to leave the Order Total module for Shipping ot_shipping installed ...

Do not use it for the free shipping setting ...

You do NOT want to mark the Products as Always Free Shipping, just use Normal Shipping Rules ...

You need to build the zones as suggested and add them to the shipping modules that you intend to use ...

Thank you again Ajeh. Works great. Once I made it through the ordeal of getting the zones I needed built using the example I linked to earlier...which you provided), I think it was my lack of knowledge of the settings in the Order Totals Modules that slowed me down...and not wanting to go through the 95 products to disable Always Free Shipping :blink: :blush:

Appears to be behaving like I want right now.

Many THANKS!! :hug:

Thanks for the update that all is working right now for you ... :smile:

Next time, you might mention you have to disable a setting on all products as there is a simple update sql you could run ...

To disable Always Free Shipping on all of the Products and set to the Normal Shipping, you could run in the Tools ... Install SQL Patches ... (after you make a backup of your database of course) the SQL statement:

UPDATE products SET product_is_always_free_shipping = 0;

I was wondering if that were possible, but figured I had asked enough dumb questions at this point. :D