SIMPLE SHOP

PRODUCT ENHANCEMENT.

Each registered user has the ability to set up an individual simple shop with shop image, product images, description, price, contact details, payment methods accepted, and a few custom fields

Admin sets up fixed categories for use by the shops within the community site, set limits on each shops for number of products, activates shop.

Option to display a set number of product images from all the shops on the home page by either category, latest additioins, or latest shops.

Community members can search via category, shop name, and other filters.

Members can view each shop individually and see all the products from that users shop using same filters/menus as general search

Anyone care to quote a bal park figure to set this up ? I have full specs written

We want to use OCPORTAL for our community but without this feature its not practical, we dont even require any payment gateway integrated.


Chris

Greetings,

Would the existing ecommerce funcionality not work for your needs? Just curious here really.

The reason I ask is because the ecommerce module of ocPortal seems to cover lots of those points. For example, you can set up a payment gateway (I use paypal with mine -note site is closed at the time of this post but will be back up again soon).

The ecommerce module works with the catalogue module. There is already a catalog made for ecommerce, I think it is called product, and it is easy to add to that catalogue or make some changes to it. You can make categories for the different catalogues and even tie in catalogues to the CEDI (think wiki here). The catalogue allows for pictures, all the details you could ask for, even screen cast videos should you want them, and with the ocportal permissions system, you can allow members to create their own product catalogue.

It attaches to the shopping module allowing for a simple shopping cart.

Now the ecommerce tool is lacking in one area as far as I can tell (and it could be simply from my own misunderstand of how to do it), that being the lack ofpurchasing downloads. I'd love to see it work with the downloads module, but I don't think it does, or am not sure how to do it if it does lol.

Also I am not certain if you can make "individual member shops" like you can with galleries and blogs, but at least you can allow members to seel their own things as far as I can tell. And you can have the different categories.

I am just wonding if that existing funcionality would not work better for you than hiring people to make such a thing. Of course, if it doesn't meet all those needs as you'd like then nevermind my post lol.

Mythus said

Now the ecommerce tool is lacking in one area as far as I can tell (and it could be simply from my own misunderstand of how to do it), that being the lack ofpurchasing downloads. I'd love to see it work with the downloads module, but I don't think it does, or am not sure how to do it if it does lol.

The general approach taken by ocPortal's ecommerce system is that "products" are physical items, and these use the catalogue system as you rightly pointed out, whilst 'digital products', like downloads, aren't sold directly. Instead, you host them as normal from within ocPortal, but restrict all access to them. Then you set up some new usergroups, give those usergroups access to the digital products, then sell membership of those usergroups via the usergroups subscription system. The advantage of doing it this way is that, if you make the membership permanent, users can purchase a digital product once and re-download it as many times as they need (eg. after a disk failure, laptop stolen, etc.). If you set it up so that subscriptions expire, and there are multiple digital products available to each usergroup, then you can sell rolling subscriptions for access to new content, even using different 'tiers' of membership

Edit: I should point out that only staff have permission to set up new usergroups like this. Regular users can set up "clubs", which act like usergroups, but they have no associated permissions.

Well yes, there is that method, though I still think allowing the use of the ecommerce with downloads would be ideal.