CMS Made Simple Forums

Hello all,

I had posted this a few months ago, but as I got no reactions I'll try again:

I am looking for a good shipping module to go with Calguys Ecommerce Base. They seem to be rare!

So far I found FRShipping2 - which would work fine if I only needed weight based flat rate shipping to anywhere in the world. But as it happens: there seems to be a considerable difference in local shipping, EU shipping (in our case) and Worldwide shipping...

So what I am looking for is a shipping module that can set options for different countries/parts of the world and would calculate postage based on weight.

Searching through the modules in the forge I cannot seem to find any module that would allow for this or isn't marked as stale. I might be looking in the wrong place..

There seems to be a module called destshipping that might do the job, but as it hasn't been updated since 2013 I wonder if it would work with CMSMS 2. [edit] This module does seem to work but is absolutely useless, all it does is allow you to set one (and only one) rate for postage to a particular (and not even several) countries [/edit]

If anybody knows of any good modules I would love to hear it!

Somebody must have a module that works, there seem to be several people out there claiming to build webshops with CMSMS and I cannot believe that they all use a flat rate postage charge? Somebody must be shipping worldwide and using a weight based postage system that allows different rates per country or countries...

Thanks a lot,
Edwin

The problem with E-commerce and shipping is that it's a complicated problem.
Prices vary by the shipping company, weight, size, packaging, source location, destination location, priority, coupon codes, and probably a bunch of other variables I can't think of at the moment.

The modules written to date are very simple modules to meet very simple requirements. They may not meet your needs.

That said... there is a new version of my E-commerce suite in the works with a Packing module (to package items into boxes) and for Canada Post shipping. If you want to ship via UPS or Fedex, or DHL or <insert name of company here> then a custom module needs to be written.

Thanks Calguy for your reply.

As I am not skilled enough to make my own module I might be completely wrong in what I am saying next, correct me if that's the case..

I don't see shipping as something that needs to be very complicated. Regardless of shipping company there are basically two ways of calculating postage, either by weight (I'd image the most common) or by dimension (probably for larger items). The only other factor in this is the destination, national and international. Obviously there could be different rates for different countries - in my case it would cost more to post outside of the EU - but that is basically it.

In the admin section you need to be able to set rates for each weight bracket to each country (or better group of countries) of your choice and after this you need to give each product its appropriate weight, add together the weight of all the products in the shopping basket, check the destination and voila: the rate for postage is calculated.
And you can do the same if you would use dimensions.

Doesn't sound all that complicated to me.

Obviously you can complicate matters more by giving customers a choice in shipping company, stuff like insurance and registered post. But even that would simply be a matter of different rates for different options.

I would certainly be happy to write a module to your specifications, for a fee.

Thanks, but we're not there yet. I can probably make do with one of the modules that is available.

I am just very surprised that nobody has ever made a proper module like this. There seem to be loads of people using CMSMS as a base for their webshop, but nobody seems (judging from the replies on this topic) to use anything for postage - just makes me wonder how people actually ship things to their customers..