Allowing customer to modify a download item priced by attributes already in the cart?

I've setup a music download section within ZC that gives the customer the option of purchasing the full CD as a ZIP file or purchasing track-by-track.

I've set the Mix/Max/Units to 1, 1, 1 for the entire item

The problem I am having during testing is trying to update (ie add/remove tracks) from something that is already in the cart. For example, try going here and adding the full CD plus a few tracks. Then select the item from the cart page and the product info will re-load showing the previously selected attributes/downloads. Because the max quantity is 1, any attempt to modify the selection will result in an error when the product is re-added to the cart to reflect the updated selection changes.

If max quanitity is >1 then it just creates a worse scenario allowing people to purchase multiple quanitities of downloads.

How can I set it up so that the changes just overwrites what was already in the cart?

You may want to check this out..
Visited page you have suggested..
choose no options, but add item, Samadhi,
to cart..allowed, and my cart shows item
in checkout.. cost of 0.00, but NO WARNING
that I have not chosen any option/s..

misty:

You may want to check this out..
Visited page you have suggested..
choose no options, but add item, Samadhi,
to cart..allowed, and my cart shows item
in checkout.. cost of 0.00, but NO WARNING
that I have not chosen any option/s..

Thanks for the tip, any idea how to fix that as well? I haven't been able to find anyway to require attributes - except for dropdown attributes which won't work for this since a dropdown would only allow people to buy a single track. This is baffling to me, if you can't require at least one box checked then how do people sell music tracks using ZC?

Any idea about the first problem?

http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=30522&highlight=force+choose+attribute
You may have to set up. using help at above url, for BOTH your
options.. i.e. Force attribute for full cd, then another
force attribute for those individual tracks..
HTH

misty:

You may have to set up. using help at above url, for BOTH your
options.. i.e. Force attribute for full cd, then another
force attribute for those individual tracks..
HTH

Unfortunately the 'Display Only' option is for dropdowns and won't work for this scenario.

I'm bummed out at the moment - every music store I have checked that is using ZC has both problems I am having. After a lot of effort it looks like ZC might not fit the bill for selling individual tracks, at least not with my limited programming skills. :unsure:

If anyone can point out a way to do this I'd love to hear it.

Unfortunately the 'Display Only' option is for dropdowns and won't work for this scenario.
Can you explain why?
You are saying not possible to set up an attribute, i.e. choose,
set as radio button, add to product, and mark as display only
:blink:

misty:

Can you explain why?
You are saying not possible to set up an attribute, i.e. choose,
set as radio button, add to product, and mark as display only
:blink:

I shouldn't have said 'display only' is for dropdowns only, but instead should have stated that I need to use checkbox attributes - which don't support 'display only' as i understand it.

Because I want to be able to let the user pick and choose what tracks to add, my only option is to use checkboxes, correct? Radio, dropdown, etc. don't allow for multiple selections. Have another look and I think you'll see what I mean unless I'm missing something obvious (quite possible!):

http://www.trancevision.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_music_info&cPath=3&products_id=15

http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=50488&highlight=wimpy
plus example site at
http://www.buysoul.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_music_info&products_id=476

misty:

http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=50488&highlight=wimpy
plus example site at
http://www.buysoul.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_music_info&products_id=476

The example stores in that thread have the same problems I am speaking of. The only exception is musicmp3.ru which doesn't appear to be based on ZC. First go to the link from post #3: http://www.fiin.ch/fiin/eshop/

As you can see, I can add ‘nothing’ to the cart by clicking add to cart before making a selection. In fact, I can add multiple ‘nothings’.

The same is true with the other example you noted, buysoul.com:

My other problem I’m having, the inability to update the cart, is simply a different problem on their site because they both allow multiple copies of downloads to be purchased:

Attempting to update the track selection at the first site, fiin.ch, will result in a second copy of the album in the cart with the updated tracks. The original track selections will still be present as a second instance.

Here I selected tracks 1-4 and then attempted to add 7 & 8 by clicking the item in the cart, resulting in this:

Buysoul creates a worse situation by appearring to have updated the cart (new selections are shown) but effectively double charging the customer because the selection has in effect been added twice and thus the quantity changed to 2. This means that the customer, if they noticed, must roll back the number of items to 1 to ensure they are not paying too much. I absolutely guarantee this will confuse many shoppers.

After updating the cart to add track 7 & 8:

Both sites require the customer to manually delete the first track selections if they attempt to update the selection, though fiin.ch is more obvious. Because I currently have the maximum number set to one, my customers would need to delete the item before re-selecting the tracks or they will get an error that the maximum number of items has already been added. I think all situations are far from ideal, don’t you?

See your problem now.. me thinks you need advice from zencart dev i.e. drbyte or ajeh

I'm not sure I understand your reasoning behind enforcing Max: 1 on everything.

DrByte:

I'm not sure I understand your reasoning behind enforcing Max: 1 on everything.

I was hoping to prevent people from purchasing multiple copies of downloads. I couldn't really think of a situation where people would actually want to purchase the same download twice or more.

After playing with it a bit, it seems like the main reason to not use max:1 is so that the item can be added twice and then the first instance can be removed, whereas max:1 forces the user to remove it first. Hope that makes sense... :blush:

Veazer:

I was hoping to prevent people from purchasing multiple copies of downloads. I couldn't really think of a situation where people would actually want to purchase the same download twice or more. Understandable. If I was shopping and saw that I had 2 copies of the same download in my cart, I would go back and fix the quantity before checkout.
Veazer:

After playing with it a bit, it seems like the main reason to not use max:1 is so that the item can be added twice and then the first instance can be removed whereas max:1 forces the user to remove it first.I wouldn't say that's its main purpose, but in your use of it, that's certainly a requirement.

I'm not sure what you did at buysoul.com but when I have added tracks there they work properly, your post was not that long ago and I would be interested since I have worked quite hard on the buysoul site to get it working properly and am always interested if someone has a suggestion or a problem that we can resolve.

Needless to say I was wondering if you have resolved the issue for your website?

Regards,

Michael:blink:

Veazer:

The example stores in that thread have the same problems I am speaking of. The only exception is musicmp3.ru which doesn't appear to be based on ZC. First go to the link from post #3: http://www.fiin.ch/fiin/eshop/

As you can see, I can add ‘nothing’ to the cart by clicking add to cart before making a selection. In fact, I can add multiple ‘nothings’.

The same is true with the other example you noted, buysoul.com:

My other problem I’m having, the inability to update the cart, is simply a different problem on their site because they both allow multiple copies of downloads to be purchased:

Attempting to update the track selection at the first site, fiin.ch, will result in a second copy of the album in the cart with the updated tracks. The original track selections will still be present as a second instance.

Here I selected tracks 1-4 and then attempted to add 7 & 8 by clicking the item in the cart, resulting in this:

Buysoul creates a worse situation by appearring to have updated the cart (new selections are shown) but effectively double charging the customer because the selection has in effect been added twice and thus the quantity changed to 2. This means that the customer, if they noticed, must roll back the number of items to 1 to ensure they are not paying too much. I absolutely guarantee this will confuse many shoppers.

After updating the cart to add track 7 & 8:

Both sites require the customer to manually delete the first track selections if they attempt to update the selection, though fiin.ch is more obvious. Because I currently have the maximum number set to one, my customers would need to delete the item before re-selecting the tracks or they will get an error that the maximum number of items has already been added. I think all situations are far from ideal, don’t you?

ok, I think I see what you mean, if you don't add anything by checking a product then you will get the result that you see, however since nothing is selected all it does is add to their overhead and if someone thinks they are buying an album for nothing quite obviously they are mislead in their thinking. They have no legal standing as they select nothing and get nothing lol... We discussed this with our client and they did not want a "default" checkbox which would have solved this issue.

We could also write a small script which would look at the checkboxes to see if a selection was made when the add to cart button is pushed, which is probably something the zen gurus should look at.

genabit:

I'm not sure what you did at buysoul.com but when I have added tracks there they work properly, your post was not that long ago and I would be interested since I have worked quite hard on the buysoul site to get it working properly and am always interested if someone has a suggestion or a problem that we can resolve.

Needless to say I was wondering if you have resolved the issue for your website?

Regards,

Michael:blink:

genabit:

ok, I think I see what you mean, if you don't add anything by checking a product then you will get the result that you see, however since nothing is selected all it does is add to their overhead and if someone thinks they are buying an album for nothing quite obviously they are mislead in their thinking. They have no legal standing as they select nothing and get nothing lol... We discussed this with our client and they did not want a "default" checkbox which would have solved this issue.

We could also write a small script which would look at the checkboxes to see if a selection was made when the add to cart button is pushed, which is probably something the zen gurus should look at.

Yeah, i know that they can't really complain about the nothing-4-nothing situation financially, but it is a circumstance that should be avoided on the development side imho. think there should be some way to require at least one option selected, something like you suggested. Maybe make it only applicable to priced-by-attribute items...

I ultimately went with the fiin.ch solution - make sure that the double-added item is shown as a second entry. Until ZC has a better solution or my PHP skills improve this will have to suffice.

I think the way buysoul functions is far less obvious to the customer and more likely to create a problem, for the reasons i already outlined... to the customer it appears that they have updated their track selection but they have actually added them twice, even the ones that were only added to the cart once... hope that makes sense.

I also think not taking people the cart page after adding items will lead many buyers to think that nothing happened, they need some kind of feedback. If you want to retain this behavior you might consider moving the cart contents to the top (and maybe even listing attributes) so they can see than something happened... just my 2 cents.

btw, if i click on the 'buy now' link on the Rhian Ayanna featured artist banner i am sent to this empty product page. The artist page also has 'page not found' at the top.