Bakery: Small Shop Module (ORIGINAL TOPIC)

[DGEC]

Say, are you implying I'm long-winded?     Well, I guess you could say I got carried away. Ahem.     Sorry!

(re: OSC/Zen - I like OSS and checked them out for awhile, but they are huge, ungainly, ugly, unsightly messes. I like CubeCart, it's is much nicer, and although only the older version can be used freely now, it's still not very expensive for an operating business. But templating seems much harder than WB for all of them. Somebody here tried to integrate CC and gave up and duplicated the template instead)

I rarely, if ever, get receipts that don't break out the taxes.  I tried to do some research it and it seems very small businesses wouldn't have to break out some taxes but provincial or retail taxes... I can't tell. For ease of tracking and avoid legal complications, I would want to be able to offer both. I hate when people lump things together, anyway, makes me suspicious! (My business is exempt anyway) 

- True, most small businesses are unlikely to have a lot of tax lines, but I know some of the small businesses I deal with do use 2.  For those that want/need it, probably adding one more tax field would be enough.  (those with funny calculations could probably use an effective rate)

- the English on page 3, payment option buttons is improper.  You should say "I will pay with PayPal" for example.
I would suggest something like... "Pay in Advance" and "Use PayPal" for the buttons.

- I've never used PayPal - I assume they send a copy of the invoice to the buyer's email?

- also, are you doing anything with the Quantity field, a bunch of Javascript perhaps? Sometimes there is no visible cursor there. I was trying to click on it, and it looked like it wasn't "taking". But when I typed a number, it showed up, but still with no cursor.

[freeSbee]

@ DGEC
Thanks DGEC for testing and your feedback.

1) The JavaScript alert says «Please check and click OK». I intended to stop the upgrading script to give you a glance over the database changings and let you check up on the displayed success, warning or error messages. Maybe you're right, it is rather confusing than informative. I will comment it in the next version.

2) Thanks for the hint; fixed this bug.

3) Thanks for all the writing about taxes but take it with a pinch of salt. I am at one with brent though I am not at all into Canadien or US taxes.


Bakery was never intended to either turn WB into a shopping center nor compete with full featured e-commerce software. There is already a wide enough range to satisfy all needs and wishes.


@brent
Many thanks for your comments!


Best,
Christoph

[brent]

DGEC,
just a couple of comments

Not sure what Brent meant, but more flexibility in shipping would be good.

To my knowledge this is supposed to be a simple cart for a small shop. In the US a simple summary or total for the shipping charge under where the subtotal is would be adequate. If the customer already knows what the shipping rate is, a simple total is all that is necessary.


Changes! These are our demands!  Ok... "requests"

1) I see what you meant about choosing the 3 tax rates now. Unfortunately, as far as I know, North Americans must show multiple tax calculations. This stops me cold from using it in any production environment.

Americans do not need to show multiple tax calculations on an order request such as this. If for example this was a small shop for selling t-shirts, you would show the cost per item, the cost for shipping, and a single state tax rate if applicable. Other taxes such as Good & Services, and city are usually not seen or even charged to the customers. For services you may have other taxes, but again if you take a look at the mass majority of American ecommerce sites you will not see taxes other than state taxes apllied to the cost. State taxes are variable and usually only applied when a customer purchases an item online from the from the same state that he resides in. I  agree, it would be nice to have several options for shipping, UPS, FedEx, USMail, etc.  My suggestions were stricktly for American ecommerce so what may apply in Ontario or elsewhere may not be applicable here.

But this is supposed to be a simple shopping cart for small businesses. This is starting to sound like you need a solution like Zen cart to handle most of those advanced options.

[DGEC]

Thanks Christoph!

--- Rewrite!

Ok, I've tried the new version.  A few problems/oddities and some ideas/wishes:

1) ERROR when installing (actually, upgrading) to the new version I got a popup (in browser I.E.7, server is RHEL, PHP 4.x, soon to be PHP 5), asking me to review and okay the settings or something like that, with no settings and just an OK box. I clicked OK, the box closed and then something flashed up on the install screen and disappeared immediately.  Not sure what was supposed to be going on there!

2) ERROR when trying to save the General Settings, an error message flashes up:

Warning: implode() [function.implode]: Bad arguments. in /home/[nnnnnnnnnnn/wb directory]/modules/bakery/save_general_settings.php on line 50
Success

although it does seem to have saved the changes.

3) Where does the "Show State" get the state from? Or is that "state" as in country, not state as in province of a country? It *is* an essential part for some tax calcuations.

Not sure what Brent meant, but more flexibility in shipping would be good.

Changes! These are our demands!  Ok... "requests"

1) I see what you meant about choosing the 3 tax rates now. Unfortunately, as far as I know, North Americans must show multiple tax calculations. This stops me cold from using it in any production environment.

The taxes I'm aware of in North America are (grouped approximately by organization level):
- Federal/GST (Good & Services Tax, similar to VAT)
- Provincial/State level taxes - can vary widely depending on the type of item
- City taxes
- Excise/Levies/Fees (individual item adjustment obviously) - may add additional flat or percentage amount to individual items.

These need to be broken out, not summarized into 1 tax rate. There are also some common (but not universal) state dependent adjustments like no provincial or state tax calculated if it is shipped to another state or country. I believe some taxes are not charged for out-of-country orders too.

Hopefully, one more (4) level would be enough for most small business. An override for each item might be needed, but we definitely need the ability to be able to display separate tax calculations independently and cumulatively.

Wrinkles: Some states charge tax in the shipper's state, some charge it in the receiver's state, some in the home state of the company, etc - beyond ability to handle, I'm sure! And then there's the online tax moritorium for the USA...

Oh, and each tax may need to be calucated on either the net purchase total or the previous subtotal.

i.e. in Ontario, the tax calculation must be shown as something like:

Code Select Expand


Subtotal         $10.00
GST (5%)          0.50     ($10 x 5%)
PST (8%)          0.80     ($10 x 8%)
--------------------------------------
Total              $11.30

but in Quebec and PEI, the tax calculations are done cumulatively:
i.e. in Ontario, the tax calculation must be:

Code Select Expand


Subtotal               $10.00
GST (5%)                0.50           ($10 x 5%)
QST/TVQ (7.5%)     0.79     ==>($10.50 x7.5%)    - effectively, 7.875%
--------------------------------------
Total                    $11.29


2. As mentioned, being able to set the tax type terminology in General Settings to something other than VAT would avoid changing the standard language file.

3. Default value of 1 in the order quanity field.  (Which isn't labelled, by the way. Doesn't meet accessiblity standards!  )

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Some more advanced ideas/thoughts and wish list:

1. SKU# - I'd like to have an auto-generated number option here, although the default of the product name works for tiny shops. Having an auto SKU would save a lot of tracking.

2. I'd love 2 or 3 levels of item grouping categories. e.g. Clothing, Men, Shirts.  Electronics, Computers, Brands.  Stuff like that. Should be fairly simple, I think?  Maybe a slots for a "related" category or even items for cross-selling.

3. More complicated one. One nice way to standardize the product selection page is to have those "options" fields as drop-downs on the product page, rather than only on the front-end. I.e. you set them up in General Settings and you use drop-downs when editing the product.  (BTW, I like how you link to the General Settings page - need a RETURN button though!)  On the product edit screen, you would have a table populated with the applicable Option or Feature and Attributes and an "Add Option" button of course.

Hmmm. Eventually, maybe even have default Features for different categories! E.g. Selecting Clothing category would automatically create Size, Colour, etc

4. Multiple pictures. Of course, then we get into a whole mess of "options" there

  Also, Maximum size (with resize down to Max) for the full picture, not just thumbnails (which isn't labelled as Thumbnail size by the way, but excellent you've got that in there).

5. Downloadable items - link to a download gallery page, accessible by only that person when logged in, optionally with X downloads and/or X days to download.

6. Speaking of downloads - need reports - display and/or download.  Orders get emailed to you now, right?  To confirm you got all the email orders though, being able to view and/or download a report or spreadsheet of orders would probably be a good thing.  Although, most other kinds of reports would probably better be served by a real order management system, I guess everybody will have to write the SQL to export to their order/POS system.

Gak. Enough from me! 

[freeSbee]

Hi brent

Thanks a lot for your feedback!

Subtotal (total of item prices not including shipping)
Shipping (total shipping cost, not shipping based on)
Tax (show total tax not VAT, VAT not usually used in US, possibly have the option of not showing Tax %, just tax total)

Thank you for the suggestions! I am going to upgrade the english language file!
If you will find more awkward or clunky expressions please help me to improve the language file by sending a PM or posting.

If you do not want to show the tax rate % in the email and on the order summary page you can delete
{$MOD_BAKERY['TXT_INCL']} $f_tax_rate%
in the view_summary file on about line 268 and 448
and delete
$MOD_BAKERY['TXT_INCL']." ".$f_tax_rate."% ".
in the same file on about line 291 and 471.

Is there a way to reset the order number?

Reset the order number (order_id) using a sql tool like phpMyAdmin. Goto the mod_bakery_customer table and delete all rows (or those you do not want any more). Then set auto_increment = 1 and your done.

Best,
Christoph

[brent]

Christoph,
This module works nicely and getting better!

I have a few suggestions for the US version of Subtotals page:

Subtotal (total of item prices not including shipping)
Shipping (total shipping cost, not shipping based on)
Tax (show total tax not VAT, VAT not usually used in US, possibly have the option of not showing Tax %, just tax total)

Is there a way to reset the order number?

All in all, a wonderful job of creating this cart. This will really make a difference in making it easy to create ecommerce websites for small businesses.

Much appreciated,
Brent

[freeSbee]

New Version of Bakery:

VERSION 0.8 (01/03/2008)

• Added option to set a third shipping rate according to specified countries.
• If a customer is logged in, Bakery tries to get his address of a previous order from the DB to prepopulat the address fields.
• The address form has an optional state field.
• The zip code can now be display either in front of the city or at the end of the address.
• Option to set up to 3 different tax rates in the general settings. You can associate one of the predefined tax rates to a single item.
• If a tax rate in the general settings is changed, all the associated item tax rates will be changed too.
• Added more CSS classes to the html and frontend.css file to give more control about the shop design.
• After payment has been completed or order has been canceled, Bakery will not kill the session and logged in users will not be kicked out any longer.
• Deletes DB records of not submitted orders older than 60 days automatically.
• Added a quit order button to the message that is displayed when a user has canceled paypal payment.
• When a page or section gets deleted, the associated images and thumbs in the media directory will be deleted as well.
• Fixed a bug in the main page (overview) caused by a not reseted var in the items loop.  It made for items which had no option showing up the item option of the preceding item.
• Improved the code to eliminate all php notice errors.
• Order date is now saved as time stamp.
• Changed the input name="option_attributes" from maxlength="150" to maxlength="600".
• Changed CSS class .mod_bakery_table_currency to .mod_bakery_cart_currency_f
• Deleted sql query that made the bakery settings table searchable.
• Added some missing closing tags like </p> and </td> to the html.

Christoph


DOWNLOAD REMOVED
Please download the latest version from the Bakery Website.

[DGEC]

but a more simple question, actually, i do not need a quantity field for my particular check out as all customers would only buy one.  Is it easy to do away with that?

Off the top of my head... You might be able to change the quantity variable to a HIDDEN field type, with a value of 1.

Happy New Year everybody!

[trippnicki]

Hi again Christoph,

Many thanks for your guidance, I am enjoying experimenting with my first site and using your cart.  As for your last advice to add my own forms by php script at line 400, I have tried but that still seems to be over my head for the moment,

but a more simple question, actually, i do not need a quantity field for my particular check out as all customers would only buy one.  Is it easy to do away with that?

Thanks again , happy new year...

Tripp

[brent]

Awesome!
And Merry Christmas to you Chris,

Brent

[freeSbee]

Hi Brent

Will the next version have an American format for address (Address, City, State, Zip) ? This cart is perfect for my needs otherwise.

Yes, your Christmas gift lies under the tree yet... (I have implemented a setting in v0.8, where you can change the address format.)

Best,
Christoph

[brent]

Hello,
Will the next version have an American format for address (Address, City, State, Zip) ? This cart is perfect for my needs otherwise.

Thanks,
Brent

[freeSbee]

Hi trippnicki

Strange, but I do not get any notifications on this thread any more...
Sorry for letting you struggling -- but as far I have seen, you have done very well!

I am realizing I still need to write more options into the shopping cart, in my case the tour price depends on number of people coming, and I need to collect other information such as tour start time, pickup location (ie their hotel)... 

Bakery just provides one option and this will not change for the next version. Bakery is a small shop, and remember, one of the main things of WB is simplicity...
You might have your customers complete a special form after booking to gather all informations you require?! You could even try to include this form just befor payment...
Try to do this in the view.php file about lines 400/401.

Best,
Christoph

[trippnicki]

Hi again Christoph,

So I have learned how to enlargen the "maxlength" value of your php code so I can fit all the dates there under one drop down box...  Yippee.

However, I am realizing I still need to write more options into the shopping cart, in my case the tour price depends on number of people coming, and I need to collect other information such as tour start time, pickup location (ie their hotel)... 

I am struggling to learn this on my own, progress is slow, and would be very appreciate of any guidance you might offer.

Thanks

[trippnicki]

Hi, Maybe I could just use one option in the full format of "Date, Month & Year" and then I would type in all say 365 days of the year as choosable options.  I tried it, but in the "option attributes" box I am only allowed 146 characters there, not nearly enough to type all the days in there.  Is there a way to increase the characters allowed in that "options attributes" box???

Thanks again...

[trippnicki]

Hi,

Thanks in advance for helping a complete idiot / newbie.

Your Bakery Cart is great, and I am enjoying learning it.  My question is, I am selling tours which the customer also needs to specify the day of booking.  How can I capture that information?  Can I add more options to grab day, then month, then year, then number of people...  How would I write that into the page layout settings box, would I need / how to adjust the database to accept that, and have it all show up in the View Cart pages?

Grateful for any response in layman language...  My first site...

[freeSbee]

Hi Rick

...and I do push the last button "Ich bezahle per Vorauskasse" I get an error window and I get logged-out... See attached snapshot...

The error message is caused by the module post_its that uses the XAJAX framework. XAJAX is likely to fail when Bakery kills the session. But I am not sure about that. Please ask Christian (doc) http://forum.websitebaker.org/index.php?action=profile;u=3125 the author of the module for further information.

Best,
Christoph

[rickieleejones2000]

Hi Chris,

Thx for your answers...

Well, I can live with the "kill-session-after-payment" (is somehow logical) but I cannot figure out why I get the error message window (attached in my previous post)... Do I have to redirect in bakery after payment to the website's homepage? How & where to define this?

P.S: I'll wait for v0.8 to start with the french translations...

Thx,
Rick

[freeSbee]

Hi Rick

1) Small one: the "selected" in the <SELECT> html tag for country is not set correctly -> Always the first country is selected -> "Albania"... I however have "CH" set in the config...

Please read the section about COUNTRIES on the Bakery Website.
As an example I have attached a modified country file where CH = [1].

2) My shop pages are "private". When I am logged in during the checkout process and I do push the last button "Ich bezahle per Vorauskasse" I get an error window and I get logged out... See attached snapshot...

Well, thats the way Bakery does... because it kills the session after payment has been completed...

P.S: Do you already know if someone started french translation? I might be able to help translate...

Non, je ne sais pas. Mais volontiers, car mon français n'est pas very good!
Just now I am working on v0.8 so better wait until it is finished.
Thanks a lot for your offer!


Best,
Christoph

[gelöscht durch Administrator]

[rickieleejones2000]

Chris,

I am having 2 problems with v0.7

1) Small one: the "selected" in the <SELECT> html tag for country is not set correctly -> Always the first country is selected -> "Albania"... I however have "CH" set in the config...

2) My shop pages are "private". When I am logged-in during the checkout process and I do push the last button "Ich bezahle per Vorauskasse" I get an error window and I get logged-out... See attached snapshot...

P.S: Do you already know if someone started french translation? I might be able to help translate...

Thanks,
Rick

[gelöscht durch Administrator]

[kweitzel]

Hey Man,

I agree there ... do stick to your E-Commerce Package instead of using WB for it ... I think you will be better off.

cheers

Klaus

[freeSbee]

I would handle 5000 articles in my shop. Is bakery the right choice???
And dataimport. Is this possible? And how?

Hi vw-classics

No, dataimport is not possible with bakery.
You could do it by exporting your sql data and reimporting to the WB database with a sql tool like phpMyAdmin...
But, you are probably better off with a full featured e-commerce programm!

Why dont you want to stick to your osCommerce installation?

Gruss,
Christoph

[vw-classics]

Hi,
i have a question, I would handle 5000 articles in my shop. Is bakery the right choice???
And dataimport. Is this possible? And how?

Sorry for my terrible english.

Thank´s a lot

[freeSbee]

One for UK, one for Europe and one for the rest of the world.

Hi orko3001

Easiest way to do it would be to hard code it into view-summary.php file about line 140 AND 325. Look for the "Select shipping rate" comment!

Modify the code

// Select shipping rate
if($cust_country == $setting_shop_country) {
    $setting_shipping_rate = $setting_shipping_domestic;
    }
else {
    $setting_shipping_rate = $setting_shipping_abroad;
}

to

// Select shipping rate
if($cust_country == $setting_shop_country) {
    $setting_shipping_rate = $setting_shipping_domestic;
    }
elseif($cust_country == "AL" || "AT" || "BE" || "BG" || "CH" || "DE" || "DK" || "EE" || "FI" || "FR" || "GR" || "GL" || "IE" || "IS" || "IT" || "LI" || "LV" || "LT" || "MT" || "NL" || "NO" || "PL" || "PT" || "RO" || "RU" || "SE" || "SK" || "SI" || "ES" || "CZ" || "TR" || "HU" || "CY") {
    $setting_shipping_rate = 8.00;
}
else {
    $setting_shipping_rate = $setting_shipping_abroad;
}

Adapt the list of europeen countries to fit your needs by deleting or adding country codes in the same way it is done in the example. Change the shipping for Europe (in the example 8.00) to your rate.
Domestic and world wide shipping can be set in the Bakery general settings as usual.

Best,
Christoph

[orko3001]

Hi all, I would like to have three shipping options. One for UK, one for Europe and one for the rest of the world. Can you tell me which files to edit and tell me what to do? I am happy to do the work and have it as a mod for the community, just need advice. Cheers.