Better Together Contribution Support Thread

Now guess what....it works after updating the Master_Category ID to be nonzero
"0"

For the people with the same issue:
I used Easy Populate to load my shop data. This caused many of my products master categories to be zero (0)
In this case, all Master_Categories have to updated to contain a non zero value.
Scott's documentation does explain in detail how to do this.

Thanks a lot Scott.
Really helpful contribution as it was missing so far.

I just realized that ZC is related to MySQL :laugh: ... I better start learn some more stuff

Thanks for the update, pivey. Meanwhile, I have posted a message to the Easy Populate thread about your problem; perhaps a future version of Easy Populate will fix this.

http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?p=278614#post278614

Regards,
Scott

Another suggestion has been added to the Better Together FAQ:

http://www.thatsoftwareguy.com/zencart_better_together.html

If you are concerned that people don't know they might have a discount coming
when they look at their cart, try changing SUB_TITLE_SUB_TOTAL in includes/languages/english/shopping_cart.php

to something like 'Sub-Total BEFORE Discount'
This will emphasize the fact that a discount will be added at checkout time.

Good luck,
Scott

Yes, this would be a solution, but customers actually need to see what they are earning in discounts. The only way to do this, is to always going forward checkout 2 steps.
Not very user friendly.
Customers should have their deduction displayed in their shopping cart.
If not substracted, at least somehow "savings from discounts" displayed always visible.
This is an essential (marketing) feature to shopping carts, should have been added in development.

Easier said than done. Anyone can load items in the cart and click the shopping cart page, even before logging in. Having no idea of their address, how then would I compute the discount, which may include shipping and/or tax? What about the order in which order_total items are applied, which affects the computation of discounts such as the group discount?

If you can guarantee me certain pre-conditions, then yes, I could integrate this logic with shopping_cart.php, which draws the shopping cart page. But then who's going to port this every time shopping_cart.php changes (which is pretty much every release)?

Having said all that, of course I would be delighted to rewrite this code to your personal
specifications. Just give me a statement of work and your credit card number and I'll
have it done in no time!

Scott

Hi Scott.

..should have been added in development means, that the shopping cart page could have been optimized to display all savings from purchases, not only your contribution ones.

I just asked myself why this possibility is not given as long customers(e.g. purchasing specials) whould be happier to have a "tatal of savings" substrarcted from their total, or at least mentioned.
I mean, it is displayed in product detail as "You save.." without taking care of additional savings (shipping/tax) at that point.
Even to customers not logged in...

So please don't take peoples comments personal.
This is not a issue concernig just me. I thing every shop owner would be glad to offer this option to his customer instead of telling him "proceed checkout and you WILL see what you pay in total.

A lot of people have asked for this sort of capability. Unfortunately, the model I had of how this would work was so hideously complex that I always resisted doing it. I've worked out a more straightforward preview capability that I'm testing now. Details shortly.

Scott

Here it is.

http://www.thatsoftwareguy.com/zencart_discount_preview.html

Scott

Better Together interoperates with 1.3.6. There have been changes to the tax computation in other order total modules that I may incorporate (possibly optionally) at a later date.

Thanks,
Scott

The discount preview mod is a fine option. Now it is perfect. Thanks Scott!

If you are using the get_discount_info() function from 1.1 to advertise your better together discounts and you are using add_cat_to_cat(), please edit ot_better_together.php and change line 286 from $disc_link .= to $disc_link =

Do not use the dot equals assignment for creating $disc_link. So the whole else block should look like this:

else if ( ($li->flavor == CAT_TO_CAT) &&
                ($li->ident1 == $cat) ) {
              $match = 1;
              $disc_link = '<a href="'.zen_href_link(FILENAME_DEFAULT, 'cPath=' . $li->ident2).'">'. zen_get_category_name($li->ident2, $_SESSION['languages_id']).'</a>';
           }

This will be fixed in the next release.

Scott

Hi, Scott -

I'm putting this together on a new site, but had a quick question:

has there been a mod to this contrib to allow for a picture instead of/in addition to the text link to the other product?

"Buy this, get that for 25% off!"

is cool, but I'd like something like

"Buy this, and get for 25% off!"

Ideas? Possible?

thanks -

Certainly it's possible. PM me for a quote.

Hello,

I've installed the better together module and it works just fine in most cases.
However, I've got problem in the following (real-world) tax nightmare case :

• The product and its linked product are in two different tax classes. I can add both products to the cart and get the correct discount, however if ...
• I add a third unlinked product to the cart (from a third tax class!) ...then I get a wrong discount.

I guess the discount should not be re-calculated when I add an unlinked product.

My shop displays prices with tax included, and I've set the better together module to "include taxes"=true and "re-calculate tax"=standard .

Am I missing something ?

Yannick Deltroo:

Am I missing something ?

Nope. This is just an ugly problem. I wrote a pretty long explanation of some of the issues:
http://www.thatsoftwareguy.com/zencart_order_total_sales_tax.html

Try the Group Discounts module in Zencart and see if you like the tax behavior they used. It was changed in 1.3.6 to use a ratio of the prediscount to post discount prices as a multiplicand to determine a new "adjusted" tax. As mentioned on 31 Oct, if there is sufficient demand, I may fold this algorithm in as an option.

Scott

Version 1.2 has been released; there is now support for 2 for 1/Buy One, Get One Free type discounts for identical items. You may permit these discounts at the product level or the category level.

Download here: http://www.zen-cart.com/index.php?main_page=product_contrib_info&cPath=40_60&products_id=309

Help here: http://www.thatsoftwareguy.com/zencart_better_together.html

Good luck,
Scott

swguy:

Version 1.2 has been released;

Download here: http://www.zen-cart.com/index.php?main_page=product_contrib_info&cPath=40_60&products_id=309

Multiple attempts to download result in:

(404) File Not Found

The file you requested cannot be located on this server.

You are being redirected to our main page...
Click here if you do not wish to wait.
IP: XX.XXX.XX.XX
URL Requested: /pub/blahblahblah/better_together_1.2.zip

And no reference to v.1.2 at
http://www.thatsoftwareguy.com/zencart_better_together.html

Maybe I am too early ;-)

Woody

UPDATE:
Waited a few minutes and reattempted. Downloaded fine. I've been intermittently observing the above errors when downloading from ZC DOwnloads area lately. Never observed such errors before. Something possibly on my client side or is it a server/host/network issue?

New sample possibilities in v.1.2

// Buy item 12, get a second one free.
// $this->add_twoforone_prod(12);

     // Buy any item from category 10, get a second identical one free
     // $this->add_twoforone_cat(10);

define('TWOFER', 'Buy this item, get another just like it free!');

I like BT v.1.2. Thanks for the update Scott!

Will eventually need to add some buttons to display the BT special offers on the product pages, instead of just the BT text links. Maybe a generic button like: "Discount/Special Offer" then below the button display whatever BT text link applies to the particular discount: e.g. "Buy this item, get TestProduct 2 at 25% off". Or could get really complex and call different button images depending on the type of offer. ;-)

Also on my radar:

I'm also using qhome's Tabbed Products v3.8 mod. So just like 'Reviews', 'We Also Recommend', 'CrossSell', and "Ask A Question' it would be cool if 'Better Together' could be integrated into the Tabbed Products mod tab structure. Possibly have a separate tab for Better Together offer. Or even better put objects from 'We Also Recommend', 'CrossSell', and 'Better Together' mods all on the same tab? Just some ideas...

If using this Better Together feature creates some sales will talk shop owner into springing for the BT extension and Discount Previews extension.

First I need to roll the new 1.36 shop out and quit the continued detailing, customizing and adding features. Anyone else with the same problem ;-)

Woody

Glad it's working well for you. One thing I forgot to mention in my last post is that the marketing text returned from get_discount_info() has been improved for users of add_prod_to_prod when the first and second parameters are the same (this is a buy one, get the second at a discount type of promotion). For instance, if the third and fourth parameters were "%" and 100, the previous message was

         Buy this item, get a <item name> free.  

The message is now

         Buy this item, get a second one free.

(and if the third and fourth parameters were, say, "%" and 50, the message would be "Buy this item, get a second one at 50% off").

The message is unchanged when the first and second parameters differ.

I think this is a bit less awkward sounding.

Good luck,
Scott

Woodymon:

Will eventually need to add some buttons to display the BT special offers on the product pages, instead of just the BT text links. Maybe a generic button like: "Discount/Special Offer" then below the button display whatever BT text link applies to the particular discount: e.g. "Buy this item, get TestProduct 2 at 25% off". Or could get really complex and call different button images depending on the type of offer. ;-)
Woody

You could use GD to cook up a button dynamically with the discount verbage on it. A good little project for someone. :)

Scott