Before I choose - can Zen Cart do this??

I haven't used Zen Cart before and am considering it for a new client. Questions for my new wholesale client's site -

1. Does Zen Cart offer a registration-before-purchase option, like a
   requirement that wholesale buyers register before they can login and
   buy?

2. Does Zen Cart offer the ability to hide prices, but not hide products, until the visitor registers?

3. Does Zen Cart have an import function such that if I have 50 new products to add with their own unique ID's, can I import them without overwriting what's already in the database? Or, if I want to just replace the descriptions on 50 products, can I overwrite them with an import?

4. My clients do not want to do realtime processing at this time. They want to have orders (credit card) placed but not processed - will this work easily? They already have a merchant account for their brick and mortar store and just want to run cards manually for now. Will they need to go to their cart admin site to pick up and/or print their orders?

5. Can I have a totally different home page than the rest of the site,
   like a static splash page? Or can I set up different templates for
   different sections of the site, like for instance a 3-column one for all
   the pages with products but a 2-column version on all other pages?

6. Does the cart offer static pages as well?

7. Is there any kind of event calendar or upcoming events list that
   is included with or works well with Zen Cart? If not, can I install one of my own on one of the static pages I create?

That's it! Thanks so much for your assistance!

Debbie

Hi,

I'll take a stab at answering some of these questions, bearing in mind I'm not yet an expert.

kanjigirl:

1. Does Zen Cart offer a registration-before-purchase option, like a
   requirement that wholesale buyers register before they can login and
   buy?

Currently Zen Cart requires registration before any purchase, though the registration can occur during the checkout process if it wasn't done before.

kanjigirl:

2. Does Zen Cart offer the ability to hide prices, but not hide products, until the visitor registers?

I've seen this discussed, and it's doable. But I don't recall the details. Someone else will chime in I'm sure.

kanjigirl:

3. Does Zen Cart have an import function such that if I have 50 new products to add with their own unique ID's, can I import them without overwriting what's already in the database? Or, if I want to just replace the descriptions on 50 products, can I overwrite them with an import?

Not internally, but there is an excellent contribution called EasyPopulate which does all this and more.

kanjigirl:

4. My clients do not want to do realtime processing at this time. They want to have orders (credit card) placed but not processed - will this work easily? They already have a merchant account for their brick and mortar store and just want to run cards manually for now. Will they need to go to their cart admin site to pick up and/or print their orders?

I do exactly that with no trouble.

kanjigirl:

5. Can I have a totally different home page than the rest of the site,
   like a static splash page? Or can I set up different templates for
   different sections of the site, like for instance a 3-column one for all
   the pages with products but a 2-column version on all other pages?

Yes, and yes, though it takes some work.

kanjigirl:

6. Does the cart offer static pages as well?

Not sure what you mean, but it does have Information pages such as you might use for About Us, or Policies and such like. See my site at http://www.artcardshop.com/store for examples.

kanjigirl:

7. Is there any kind of event calendar or upcoming events list that
   is included with or works well with Zen Cart? If not, can I install one of my own on one of the static pages I create?

I think not, but you might check the Downloads section for a contribution.

Hope this helped a little.

Rob

こんにちは漢字の女の子供

rstevenson's answers above are very good, though 5 and 7 are easier than suggested.

Provided you have just the faintest inkling of PHP, #5 can be achieved by editing the $tpl_main_page.php template file and using a special varible, $this_is_home_page, in an "if" statement to make your splash page look completely different to the rest of your pages.

7 can be achieved simply defining one of your product categories to events and then creating a non-purchasable product for each event. Alternatively, Zen Cart has a facility called EZ-Pages that makes it very easy to create or link to external static pages. This facility also has a built-in table of contents that allows you to group and provide navigation for similar types of content (this wouyld work for 6 as well).

Thanks for your answers - this is just what I was hoping to hear.

Have either of you used X-Cart? That's the other one I'm seriously considering and it will come down to one of these two.

My other main concern is being able to use CSS extensively for my layout work, I don't like using tables and the fewer the better in my opinion.

Debbie

zen cart has by design
1 main table

other than that the only tables house tabular data,

so the less the better is definitly the way to go here

Debbie, X-Cart is very slick, but you're paying good money for table after table after table.

... and Merlin, what did I tell you ... :no:

a house full of sick people, what a drag
I have to get up and do something sometimes, otherwise I would go crazy...
Ok back to bed

bye

Poor Merlin! :yuck:
Even medieval superheroes get sick sometime.

Get well soon

Tina

Adding to the list of questions:

I have a prospective client that is interested in setting up a wholesale liquor site. Before they allow a sale, they need to verify that their customer has a valid liquor license.

My thought is to have my client verify the license and then add their customer to zen-cart and email their customer the log-in info. (hiding the registration feature to everyone but my client) I wondered if anyone had a similar issue, or a way to deal with this type of setup?

The other curve-ball they are throwing me is that they want to alter the prices based on what state their customer is in. Again, any ideas?

bump bump bump