Shopping cart that does this?

[Jumping Bean]

Hi,

We're looking to develop a site selling "standard" products as well as custom printed products. I'm looking for a shopping cart that can do the following things either as standard or with extra modules. Don't really want to get into custom programming.

1) The ability to calculate the final price of a product based on the options selected ie width, height, backing material, quantity, lamination etc. (Essential)

2) Preferably to be able to calculate this and update the total on the fly so the customer can see the price update as they select the options. (Desirable)

3) To be able to take this final spec and price and produce a quotation that the customer can choose to have emailed to them and that could be saved to the system and/or emailed to us. (Desirable)

4) To allow customers to enter custom sizes when selecting a product (ie 1273mm x 549mm). Obviously this won't be possible with drop down menus so text input fields I assume are the only way to do this. (Essential)

5) A mechanism for customers to upload their own artwork to the system when/after making a purchase. (Almost Essential)

6) Could be free or paid, preferably open source with support available. (Desirable)

7) We would prefer to own the software rather than use a hosted solution. (Essential)

8) PHP based. (Desirable)

I know this can be done because I've seen many sites that do similar - Too many for them all to be custom made. Any help with this would be really appreciated as we're drawing a bit of a blank at the moment. I've also posted this on Sitepoint but things seem to be a bit slow over there at the moment so thought I'd see if things are a bit better over here.

Thanks.

 

[Deleted member 69689]

Basically you're wanting an all-singing, all-dancing, tailored-to-your-needs website but without a custom coding price tag, and no-one replied.

Go figure.

 

[cmcp]

What you're after (php cart with custom and user defined product options) is actually fairly run of the mill.

 

[Jumping Bean]

Basically you're wanting an all-singing, all-dancing, tailored-to-your-needs website but without a custom coding price tag, and no-one replied.

Go figure.

Hardly all singing all dancing. Hardly tailored to our needs as these are pretty common features. And why would I want to pay for custom work when modules almost certainly exist that do everything we need? I'm perfectly capable of putting the site together all I need is the correct cart software.

So you're wrong on every count. Don't bother to make another comment unless you have something constructive to say.

 

[Jumping Bean]

What you're after (php cart with custom and user defined product options) is actually fairly run of the mill.

Indeed. Just having a bit of trouble tracking down one that does all/most of what we need.

 

[MartCactus]

I'm not aware of any cart that will do all of these out of the box.

Ours can do most of what you want, but would need custom work for items 4 & 5, and its asp.net, not PHP.

PM me if you wish to know more.

 

[awebapart.com]

1) The ability to calculate the final price of a product based on the options selected ie width, height, backing material, quantity, lamination etc. (Essential)
...
4) To allow customers to enter custom sizes when selecting a product (ie 1273mm x 549mm). Obviously this won't be possible with drop down menus so text input fields I assume are the only way to do this. (Essential)

Just looking at your 2 essential requirements, even those will be difficult to find in an off-the-shelf solution, because from your requirements, it sounds like:

a. You want customers to be able to type in any width or height, but at the same time have these as options which determine the price. I cannot think of any off-the-shelf ecommerce solution that supports this, drop downs that affect price yes, text fields that affect price no (except quantity of which there can only be one quantity field, and you probably want to use quantity anyway in its normal use).

b. Since you are treating width and height separately, this also infers that there might not be a direct correlation between width and price (e.g. 2 inch wider add £3), but perhaps there is a correlation between area (width x height) and price (like made to measure curtains), which requires a price calculator that multiplies 2 of the different options to get a final price. Again, I cannot think of any off-the-shelf ecommerce system which supports this.

So I'm thinking you might have to consider a semi-bespoke system, which does include some custom coding.

One ecommerce system that might be worth looking at is Open Mind Commerce, which I vaguely remember as having a development history involving some printing company customers in the past, so it might have some options more suited to your printed product requirements, but it is not developed in PHP rather Coldfusion.

 

[limessl]

I doubt you'll get that out of the box, but the system I use (nBill - www.nbill.co.uk) is designed for handling non-standard ecommerce so it would be able to calculate prices based upon customer inputs.

The only two things to consider are 1. it needs joomla to run (although you could install it and only use it on the shop part of your site) and 2. it will require some additional php and javascript skills to get it fully working.

A licence costs £65 so it is not exactly megabucks, although I can't comment on how much the additionaly work might cost you.

 

[edmondscommerce]

I think we could make Magento do this with some careful use of custom options and maybe a small amount of custom coding but not loads.

 

[fhm]

Jumping Bean, happy to help you out here. Check out our product Zingiri Web Shop. It'll cover most of the functions out of the box and we can add the rest as a custom development.

 

[FreelanceSoftwareDeveloper]

Some interesting requirements, not simple but I think this could be done with some modifications to Zen Cart.

Can I just ask a couple of questions from a functional point of view.

1. You suggest the artwork is uploaded after the order, what if the height/width is not the correct aspect ratio and the finished product is going to look awful.

2. What if I choose a 1m square poster then send you a tiny picture from my mobile phone?

How do you handle the technical aspects which many users might not understand?

Is this a consumer sale site, holiday snaps onto various media, or a business printing service?

 

[liams7]

Hardly all singing all dancing. Hardly tailored to our needs as these are pretty common features. And why would I want to pay for custom work when modules almost certainly exist that do everything we need? I'm perfectly capable of putting the site together all I need is the correct cart software.

So you're wrong on every count. Don't bother to make another comment unless you have something constructive to say.

How very rude of you.

To ask for advice and then slag off the person for trying to help you out. Not nice at all.

And no thye are not "pretty common" if they were you wouldnt be asking for help would you. So you will need some customisation what ever you use.

And if you dont have the money for be-spoke dont slag people off for trying to suggest it. Bespoke is not always more expensive and comes with many many advantages.

As for smashing about something that is off the shelf to try and make it do what you want. You need some one specialist. There are specialists here as you can see so maybe one of them can help you.

I could help but i just dont want to help some one who is so rude to others that have tried.

 

[Jumping Bean]

Thanks for all the comments it's given me lots of options to investigate. Already looked into a few and some are looking quite promising.

 

[Jumping Bean]

Some interesting requirements, not simple but I think this could be done with some modifications to Zen Cart.

Can I just ask a couple of questions from a functional point of view.

1. You suggest the artwork is uploaded after the order, what if the height/width is not the correct aspect ratio and the finished product is going to look awful.

2. What if I choose a 1m square poster then send you a tiny picture from my mobile phone?

How do you handle the technical aspects which many users might not understand?

Is this a consumer sale site, holiday snaps onto various media, or a business printing service?

Thanks for the reply. Yes Zen cart is something I'm looking into.

Answers to questions...

1 & 2) We would manually review the artwork before we print anything so should catch anything unsuitable and would give the customer the option to resend. Eventually we would like some kind of automated process but we're happy to do it manually at the moment.

Regarding the customer base... It's a business printing service.

Thanks.

 

[Jumping Bean]

How very rude of you.

I don't respond well to rude sarcastic comments. If someone is rude and sarcastic to me I will respond. My original post was polite. Did it really warrant a sarcastic and unconstructive response?

To ask for advice and then slag off the person for trying to help you out. Not nice at all.

I didn't "slag off the person for trying to help me out", what thread were you reading? I told them they were wrong and not to post unless they had something constructive to say.

And in what part of that post were they trying to help me out exactly?

Even if they were trying to say "You need a custom built site", there's a way to say something to someone and that's not it.

And no thye are not "pretty common" if they were you wouldnt be asking for help would you. So you will need some customisation what ever you use.

None of the features talked about are new. There are thousands of sites with each of these features. I'm quite happy to take an off the shelf cart with most of what we need and modify it myself. What I don't want to do is pay for a whole system to be custom built as it's simply not necessary.

And if you dont have the money for be-spoke dont slag people off for trying to suggest it.

They didn't suggest it. They just made a sarcastic comment.

Bespoke is not always more expensive and comes with many many advantages.

Building a bespoke shopping cart is nearly always more expensive.

As for smashing about something that is off the shelf to try and make it do what you want. You need some one specialist. There are specialists here as you can see so maybe one of them can help you.

I don't want or need a specialist. What I need is a cart (free or commercial) with either the functionality we need or one that provides the kind of structure so it can be easily added. I'm fairly well versed in PHP and MySQL so am quite capable of doing this myself.

I could help but i just dont want to help some one who is so rude to others that have tried.

I'm not going to lose any sleep over that one. As already mentioned I haven't been rude to anyone who has tried to help me. Why would I?

 

[edmondscommerce]

got to love forums

 

[smo]

Cubecart can do many of those things out of the box, such as image upload. Loads of mods out there for image handling, we have ones for single image uploads, and also a modified version that allows multiples it also blocks images too small, provides previews and other nice features.

Sizes and options are again standard mods to a point and if you are capable of using php then it should be a quick coding job to fully suit all your needs.

 

[c.smith]

Go for the custom made cart.

 

[mydogisthebest]

I have a script that will do most of what you require in terms of adding up on the fly, value options etc.

.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo. .oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo.

 

[edmondscommerce]

I think we could make Magento do this with some careful use of custom options and maybe a small amount of custom coding but not loads.

hmm thats exactly what i said

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