Cart Made Simple, Shop Made Simple, Payment Made Simple

[Pierre M.]

Hello all,

several active projects aiming at several but related needs : interesting. I think it would help the users if the teams tried each other's project and tell which user category should use which one. (but it is time consuming)

I have my own questions about this e-commerce topic : why coding e-commerce features rather than a bridging module ? There are even existing such attemps with osCommerce is the forge. So why not for example a zencart bridging module keeping all e-commerce features in the existing zencart ?
In fact, I'd like to see comparisons of your solutions and comparisons of your solutions and bridges to existing solutions.

As I'm not a native English speaker I'd like to make it clear this is not an unfriendly post : I'm interested in the topic of adding e-commerce to a CMSms site and I like all the good work being done on this topic.

Pierre M.

[milehigh]

"why coding e-commerce features rather than a bridging module ? "

I've tried osCommerce, I've tried Zencart. Sometimes those applications are the equivelant of using a Boeing 747 to go from San Francisco to Oakland. It's simply overkill, sometimes you just need to jump in the car.

I think many considering developing or being involved agree that we don't need full fledged ecommerce with 3 levels of categories and subcategories and 5 shipping options and quantity discounts, and product reviews, and featured products etc. If I need that I would go to zencart or oscommerce or cubecart.

I just would like to be able to say...create a page and stick {cms_module module='cart' category ='widgets'} and have it display my widgets and be able to add them to a cart. This way you can easily handle 3 or 4 categories (really no limit) and still use the other content blocks to easy add and manage content around your product pages.

[giggler]

Regarding the categories for a shop, why not use cataloger? I think it's a great module and if someone will just create a payment/cart module for it..it will be a pretty nice shop...though I don't how things like product ID would work since it's part would work.

[calguy1000]

"why coding e-commerce features rather than a bridging module ? "

I've tried osCommerce, I've tried Zencart. Sometimes those applications are the equivelant of using a Boeing 747 to go from San Francisco to Oakland. It's simply overkill, sometimes you just need to jump in the car.

I think many considering developing or being involved agree that we don't need full fledged ecommerce with 3 levels of categories and subcategories and 5 shipping options and quantity discounts, and product reviews, and featured products etc. If I need that I would go to zencart or oscommerce or cubecart.

I just would like to be able to say...create a page and stick {cms_module module='cart' category ='widgets'} and have it display my widgets and be able to add them to a cart. This way you can easily handle 3 or 4 categories (really no limit) and still use the other content blocks to easy add and manage content around your product pages.

milehigh is correct here.... we are developing yet another ecommerce solution for these type of people:
a) have simple needs... and I mean really simple needs....  AND
b) have a relatively small amount of products (dozens to hundreds, but not thousands)
c) want a site that is not primarily an e-commerce site, but also has some e-commerce functionality
d) want significant control over the display, layout, and functionality of their site
e) want to use a package that can usually be shaped to fit their special needs with little customization

We're aiming for a 'middle of the road' solution here.  We're not aiming to kill zencart, or oscommerce or anybody else.. but to allow the people that primarily use CMS made simple for their website to also sell a few things online. 

Now as it stands, these modules will probably have a significant amount of flexibility built in (especially for first release modules).... but they aren't going to make everybody happy.....

If you have many hundreds to thousands of products and/or you want 'featured products' functionality, and/or sales and/or have a complex tax situation and/or related products or many other types of functionality that you can normally find in a full fledged 'e-commerce' product.... then you probably need to look there.

Or if you have budget, and you can find them, then maybe you can hire the dev-team

[aln_cms]

Hi,

I've just spent a night trying to move esshop into the CMSMS framework - I'm giving up, it's too much work.  Not that it is coded badly or anything, it will be just easier to start from scratch. I'm looking for a shop for CMSMS too, I just finished an ordeal with zencart that I do not want to repeat.  I agree with the above comments; oscommerce and zencart level functionality are overkill for most people.

I like the idea of separate modules, the event mechanism in CMSMS modules is under-utilised - this gives us great power for module integration.  I am thinking of using www.phpshop.org as it uses a template based mechanism also.  I understand it has been slow with releases lately but a 2.0 bleeding edge shop is on the way - does anyone have any comments on phpshop?

I'm also going to write a remote & redirect Realex payment module.  This should be released within the next month -maybe it will be a starting point for other gateways, I'll keep this in mind when building it.

As for the other shops, I'm all eager to help but my time over the next two months is limited.  I am either going to use/customise esshop for my next project or integrate phpshop.  I'll report back with how  I get on.

[Duketown]

I've been working on the various modules lately. The status so far is:
ShopMS: can be used via svn to download. Prices are without decimals (to be changed soon). I just finished the link from this module to CartMS;

CartMS: I've prepared the first version in svn late yesterday. Have to change the coding around changing the quantity of a product in the cart. No connection prepared to a payment module yet. It is not possible yet to generate an order (and thus the shipping info) from a cart.

PaymentMS: there are so many providers to choose from (PayPal will probably be the first one to set up. WebMoney have to dig into that one later on). I will first concentrate on having the system send a mail to the buyer. The buyer then pays manually. The seller then ships the goods based upon order and payment.

If the PaymentMS module works with the emailing as 'payment' path, I will prepare a first version of downloadable files in the forge.

Layouts are currently based upon standard installation of CMSMS (nothing fancy).

Duketown

[bdfy]

PaymentMS: there are so many providers to choose from (PayPal will probably be the first one to set up. WebMoney have to dig into that one later on)

interesting news... looking forward for an update

[Slewey]

Any updates on this?
Would like to try this out, I used esshop before, but it needed lots of work to get it up and running.

[aln_cms]

duketown has released cart & shop madesimple.  ¡I think! you'll need some devel skills to get it trading, but it should be a good starting point.  It's coded well and fits the CMSMS framework lovely.

Alan

[Duketown]

With regards to the last remark of aln_cms:

After april 24th, three versions have been released. I would say that the lastest version at this moment (0.1.3) doesn't need a development skill at all. Templates are available in the admin which can be changed to your own likes. CSS support is garantied due to these templates.

Duketown

[eluminous]

Hi All,

Any news on the Payments MS module with Paypal integration that you have been talking about? I am really interested find out about possible release times.

[Duketown]

eliminous (and others),

Currently working on the Payment Made Simple. I want a flexible set up so other gateways can be relatively easy included afterward. Some of the gateways are not that simple and will make them upon, I'll be honust, paid request.
The current one is PayPal since I think this can be used in most cases.

Duketown

[eluminous]

Sounds great Duke,

Do you have an ETA on delivery at all?

Can I just add: On behalf of myself and I'm sure many others using CMSms, I would like to thank you for all that you contribute to this great cms. I appreciate all that you do.