Please recommend software that handles conditional attributes

Folks, I have been working on my store for several weeks now and have finally decided that Zen Cart is just not going to work for me. The lack of "conditional" attributes is just a killer for the type of products that I am selling.

I have seen a lot of very helpful folks here and I truly hate to give up on this but I'm not a programmer and I need to get my store up. I've wasted a lot of hours, my own fault, but need to just get over it and start over.

Can any of you recommend a decent system which utilizes conditional attributes. It looks like X Cart may but I can't tell for sure.

When I say conditional attributes, here is what I mean.

I sell letters. There are hundreds of different fonts, sizes, finishes, etc.

Let's say the letter style is Helvetica. The customer clicks on that product and then he has a drop down box with the sizes...2", 3" 4", etc. all the way to 72 inches for some styles. Each size is a different price.

I then have a text box attribute where the customer types in the exact text that they wish the letters to say. I need the number of letters in that text box to multiply by the price of the letter than they selected in the size dropdown box.

If they picked a 3" letter and it is $5.00 then they type TEST into the text field, the amount added to the cart would be $20.00. There are also finish options. The $5.00 for the 3" letter is for a standard finish. There are options for other finishes. Let's say for example that they choose a metallic finish and that is a $2.00 per letter addon. Then the price added to the cart would be $5.00 + $2.00 = $7.00 X the 4 letters "TEST" for a total of $28.00.

I've tried a lot of workarounds but there is just no clean way to do this without conditional attributes. PLEASE recommend a software solution that will do this if you have seen something that will work for me.

Thanks much.

XCART doesn't have conditional attributes either. Please folks, does anybody know of anything?

As far as I know, there is not a cart program that will do what you are asking in the Open Source market.

Thanks but I'm not asking necessarily for open source. How about commercial software?

The upcoming Magento cart (magentocommerce.com) will have limited support for conditional attributes. I've been searching for a while, but haven't found anything else.

Thanks. I'll check it out.

can you actually get all the way through the demo now without a ton of parse and programming errors?

The demos gotten better. I'll bet the software has a good while before a production version is released, but the development team says early 2008.

When it is released, it would look as though Zen Cart will have serious competition. They've gone with a completely OO approach and their use of AJAX to reduce the number of pages during check-out, shopping, etc. would be very valuable for my customers. In addition, their attributes are very flexible and easier to work with than Zen Cart.

But, it's all just hype now. I wouldn't hold your breath until a production version of Magento is released.

from what I saw it wont be production ready till sometime in 2009

Take a look at https://www.AspDotNetStorefront.com we considered it just because it was ASP and some SEO thought that we couldn't survive without asp.

Next take a look at https://www.MonsterCommerce.Com it's a hosted solution and the attributes (they call them variants) are pretty flexible with attribute images.

Our https://www.worldclassChristmas.com site uses monstercommerce, if I get a chance I will set up a test product to see if it works like I think you need.

JOhn ><>

Nope, Monster Commerce isn't going to do it. At least the version that we have. They have been advertizing a new program, so maybe the new one will.

I can set up the Size and Font Attributes, but no Text input.

JOhn ><>

Thanks...I've actually had no luck with this at all. It just seems like such an important feature that I'm surprised that it's not a standard. Just seems like the software is SO limited without it. I'm working around it at this time but it means adding several hundred extra products to my store. For example, I sell the letters TEST....say they are $10.00 each in finish "A". I can't use a drop down attribute box for finishes "B", "C", "D", "E" because they are a different price. If you try to do that and then choose finsish 'B", it only adds the additional price to the first letter. :( So, I have to enter that product 5 times. Then there are up to 72 different sizes for some fonts so I have to add it 72 different times for the different sizes and then 4 or 5 times more for each finish for each size. WOW....I'm doing it but it's taking me forever.

I would gladly pay somebody to help write an add-on for this...I say help...I should say to do it because I'll be no help.

By the way, I just sent an email to aspdotnetstorefront asking if their software has this functionality. I'll bet it doesn't though. I don't think I've even found another package that prices per letter using a text field as Zen Cart does.