Minimum Customer Account Information - Support Thread

picandnix:

I'm back...
all is well with this mod, thank you very much. However I have also installed phpBB notifier hook mod to the same test store, all works well thank you as new customers do generate forum accounts too as per your design.

My question, is it possible to offer the nick name field as optional rather than required, as I'm sure that not all customers will want to join the store's forum by default.
Thank you.
I'll take this question over the the support thread for the bulletin-board integration plugins: http://www.zen-cart.com/showthread.php?204807-Zen-Cart-Bulletin-Board-Integration-Support-Thread

People are becoming more and more hesitant to give out personal information, until they are ready to go ahead with a purchase!

Can this work for sites with actual products for shipping?

Can a new customer register, without placing the following information:

First Name: *
Last Name: *
Street Address: *
City: *
Post/Zip Code: *
Country: *
Additional Contact Details Telephone:

and then get forced to place the above at checkout?

Kevin205:

People are becoming more and more hesitant to give out personal information, until they are ready to go ahead with a purchase!

Can this work for sites with actual products for shipping?

Can a new customer register, without placing the following information:

First Name: *
Last Name: *
Street Address: *
City: *
Post/Zip Code: *
Country: *
Additional Contact Details Telephone:

and then get forced to place the above at checkout?
You can use your admin's Configuration->Minimum Values and set First Name, Last Name, Street Address, City, State, Post Code and Telephone Number to *0 *and then go to Configuration->Customer Details and set Company and Date of Birth to false. That way, the only required field in an unmodified Zen Cart create_account page will be the Email Address, Password and Country.

Thank you for the reply.

Then would the user be prompted for their address at check out?

Depends on the payment method(s) you have enabled. I'm guessing here, but I *think *that if you're using PayPal it will work like you "want it to" for a 'minimum account information' ... just use the PayPal sandbox and a test version of your store and see what works.

They will be taking credit cards!

Most of the payment methods have a "test" mode. I'd suggest that you set up a test site using your payment processor's test mode, set the minimum Zen Cart account values I previously described and run a couple of test transactions to see if your payment processor is going to hiccup if the only information you're sending them is an email address.

Hi Lat9.
naturally I have the thread throughout and in particular the posts above, but, is there a way to include 'country' to the required details required please?
The idea of minimum boxes on show to customers to fill in suits my store perfectly yet for my marketing info I would love to be able to know what part of the world I will be making my sales.

picandnix, I've looked at the inclusion of the "Country" field before and it's not an easy "fix"; I'll check it out and let you know.

lat9:

picandnix, I've looked at the inclusion of the "Country" field before and it's not an easy "fix"; I'll check it out and let you know.

Thank you, very much appreciated. I'm glad you see where I'm coming from I think it would be a useful option.

lat9:

picandnix, I've looked at the inclusion of the "Country" field before and it's not an easy "fix"; I'll check it out and let you know.

...a friendly nudge in the right direction :hug:

picandnix:

...a friendly nudge in the right direction :hug:
picandnix, I'm not ignoring you ... really! Things got busy and the Country field addition turns out to be a bit of a pain since it's in the customer address table rather than the customer information table in the database.

lat9:

picandnix, I'm not ignoring you ... really! Things got busy and the Country field addition turns out to be a bit of a pain since it's in the customer address table rather than the customer information table in the database.

Thank you Lat9, I appreciate you simply looking into the potential.
Please don't feel rushed or pressured, I'm looking at it as being a bonus feature/option on a brilliant modification/add-on.

Another request for any future update please;
when one is llogged in as customer and viewing account details the option to view and change customer address seems to be active and available.

Thank you Lat9 :hug:

picandnix:

Another request for any future update please;
when one is llogged in as customer and viewing account details the option to view and change customer address seems to be active and available.
Hmm, I'm not seeing that on my test site and, given my past record, I checked the latest zip-file to make sure that the changes were there ... and they are! Did you possibly install another plugin that overwrote the changes to /includes/templates/YOUR_TEMPLATE/templates/tpl_account_default.php?

lat9:

Hmm, I'm not seeing that on my test site and, given my past record, I checked the latest zip-file to make sure that the changes were there ... and they are! Did you possibly install another plugin that overwrote the changes to /includes/templates/YOUR_TEMPLATE/templates/tpl_account_default.php?

"a picture tells a thousand words..." so here's a picture of me blushing in shame :blush:

A thought for taking this awesome mod forwards; ZC 1.6 is due to have COWOA written into it, is it possible to include COWOA into this mod too? I've had a go myself just out of interest but ran into one file where I struggled to merge.

Any thoughts on adding countries as an optional display requirement yet? :wink:

picandnix, once v1.6.0 is released I'll include the COWOA path into Minimum Customer Account Information. I'll give the optional Country inclusion a look at that time as well.

lat9:

picandnix, once v1.6.0 is released I'll include the COWOA path into Minimum Customer Account Information. I'll give the optional Country inclusion a look at that time as well.

Cool thank you, I'll stop bugging you now :wink:

lat9:

picandnix, I've looked at the inclusion of the "Country" field before and it's not an easy "fix"; I'll check it out and let you know.
OK, it took me a while but I looked and wasn't as difficult as I thought. I was also prompted to add the "Country" field because I noticed a slew of PHP (5.4+) debug log files when my customers went through checkout with PayPal Express Checkout:

PHP Warning:  Illegal string offset 'id' in <mysite info>/vinos/includes/modules/payment/paypalwpp.php on line 996

... which were due to a NULL entry_country_id being written to the address_book table.

I've submitted v1.3.0 to the Plugins area; it should be available there shortly. Features:

1. Added the capability to require the customer's country during account creation via admin configuration setting.
2. If the country is enabled, a customer can choose the value during account creation and change it using their account_edit page.
3. If the country is not enabled, the entry_country_id field in each customer's address record is set to the "Default Create Account Country ID".
4. The first time someone accesses your admin after you copy the files, any 0-value entry_country_id fields in your database's address_book table are set to your store's "Default Create Account Country ID".
5. Since the country is a demographic item only, it's not displayed on a customer invoice.