Cart modification - Deal of the day function

Hello fellow cs-carters,



I am looking for a way to link a promo on my home page to target one product each day. On my home page ( http://www.shipfreejewelry.com ), I have the ‘jewel of the day’ promo. I would like to establish code that identifies a product that relates to the current date. When the product is identified as the current date, it will have a new price that it offers. I would like for this promo to link to that product. Currently, I’ve tried linking it to a page named jewel of the day, yet I can’t populate the page with product details.



Anyone have any suggestions, or has anyone seen a mod that runs along the lines of what I am talking about?



Thanks in advance,



Jeff

brandonvd and I are having a mod like this made. You could pitch in if you want. :cool:



My needs are slightly different, but I have put the deal of the day in its own category for now. I modified the template so the product listing shows more information at the category level.



I’ll send you a PM with more info.

i would like to as well, could you pm me your link, thanks very much :slight_smile:

yea PM me too, I’ll pitch in - Sno

I am very much interested. Please PM me and we can get started on this.



Thanks Ogia



Jeff

Well, I’m not sure what Ogia has pm’ed everyone, but I think I can summarize what has happened so far.



Ogia and I talked about getting this addon done and so I contacted CS-Cart and Joe about doing it for us. Both replied with quotes that were definitely different prices with Joe being the lesser. So we decided to hire Joe.



Joe was in the middle of doing a mod for me and was busy with other stuff and wasn’t able to get to it right away. He then went on vacation and was supposed to return on the 20th. He hasn’t contacted me, but I know how it is returning from a vacation and trying to get back into the swing of things so I am definitely not worried about a couple of days.



Now as for the addon this is what CS-Cart sent me about getting it done:


[quote]Thank you for the confirmation.



Here is the detail task description:



The ““Daily deal” promotion” modification.


  1. We will modify the ‘Promotions’ module.
  2. We will add the ability to set the “Daily deal product” condition in the “Conditions” tab on the catalog promotion details page.
  3. After selecting the “Daily deal product” condition it will be possible to select a product and a day of the week.
  4. It will be possible to select only one product for each day.
  5. The promotion will work for the specified product in the certain day of the week.
  6. This condition will be available only for catalog promotions.
  7. We will add the ability to create a block with the “Daily deal” content. It will display a product that is discounted today with it’s thumbnail image, name, regular price and discounted price in a standard CS-Cart design. After clicking on either the image or name a customer will be redirected to the product details page.
  8. The “Daily deal” block will also display a clock that will count down the time that is left for the promotion. Basically that would be a 24 hours clock that would go from 24.00 to 0.00.[/quote]



    This is how Joe responded to CS-Cart’s description:


[quote]Hi Brandon,



Thanks for your information and I’m happy to hear what you think, no worries. I will finish the addon for both of you first and I will make it as flexible as Ogia needs. Both of you will get the addon with the same features (but the process may not working the same as cs-cart described, the result is the same). But of course, this addon is bound to your domain. [/quote]



Maybe Joe will see this thread and reply later and he might be able to fill things in better.



I also made a post a while back on the Snorocket forums at:



[url]http://www.snorocket.com/forums/showthread.php?295-Daily-Deal-Deal-of-the-Day-Addon-Request[/url]



I’m up for any suggestions on how everyone wants to go at this.



Brandon

brandon congratulations on your 1000th post, thanks for provide us everything in here.:slight_smile:

Awesome work Brandon!



I was going to code it myself, but I’m only a few weeks into learning cs-cart. I currently have a promotion on my home page that I created myself, do you think that I’ll be able to link that promo to the product details page that is associated with the deal of the day function. This function is a large part of my promotions and marketing tactics. I’ve already established a clock, here is the link to my homepage that shows the promo:



http://www.shipfreejewelry.com



Keep me posted.



Thanks again Brandon,



Jeff

Hey, that was my 1000th post. I didn’t even realize it.



@shipweb



According to condition 7 if the user clicks on the product image or name they will be taken to the product details page.



Also, I took a look at your site. It looks real nice. I like your product pages a lot. The site doesn’t look anything like the standard CS-Cart site, which is great.



Brandon

So basically I’ll have to modify the block that is created on the homepage to fit my needs - no problem. Thanks for the compliment on the site. I’ve been teaching myself everything as I move along, so it’s not been easy.



Do you think Joe can help me out with another mod? I want to establish filters for my category pages, i.e. (shop by material, shop by price, shop by gemstone). Again, I’m new to cs cart. I’m just getting use to some of the familiar names on the forum, but I don’t know who can do what.



Thanks again for everything,



Jeff



congrats on all of your posts. I’m celebrating after I hit double digits :slight_smile:

hello Jeff, yes i really like your web, i wonder if its cs-cart, because the look completely different.

you got the countdown script there, is it using javascript and php for the server time?

@shipweb,



I already had Joe do a mod for me for my category filters. You can see the thread and download the mod at:



[url]http://forum.cs-cart.com/showthread.php?t=15338[/url]



@Vidan,



I haven’t forgot your pm. I’ll get to it today.



Brandon

Vidan,



It’s definitely cs-cart. I use php to pull the server time and pass the variables to javascript. I run a loop with javascript to make the time count down. It took me a little while to code, but I finally got it to work. I still need it to refresh the page when it hits all zeros. I just had other things pressing at the time. PM me if you’re interested in the code.



Brandon,



Thanks for the mod, I’ll be sure to check it out. I also have a suggestion for you. I’ll PM you.



Thanks again,



Jeff

Id love to pitch in on this too guys.



Thanks

John

Well I’ve been in contact with Snorocket about this and I think we’ll probably head over his direction. I still am hoping that Ogia will respond, but maybe she is busy or something. I can’t imagine her having a problem with moving this over to Snorocket so I’d imagine that is the direction we’ll go.



Sno had a few questions and concerns about this and so I forwarded them to CS-Cart. Unfortunately today or tomorrow or what ever day it is over right now is a holiday and so CS-Cart is closed so I probably won’t hear back until Wednesday maybe? This is definitely one thing that has annoyed me about CS-Cart, there is something like a 11 or 12 hour time zone difference. Oh well.



I’ll let you guys know something when I know it.



By the way, this is what Sno said:


[quote]

Hi Brandon, well this is a hack of the promotions addon not a stand alone addon, I would prefer a stand alone addon but I’m afraid the price would go up, also $600 is alot for a hack.



Item #4 is limited, only 1 product?



What if we wanted multiple products. The description also doesn’t detail how it will work with the block manager, for example can we put 1 deal of the day on the pages section and another deal of the day on the home page? I think this would be a great addition but we should all make sure it works for everyone, this should seriously just be added into CS I think. People complain about bugs but we as a community have alot of clout to add in these features. [/quote]

Ok, I got a reply back from CS-Cart. With the added functionality that Sno was wanting it will increase the cost to $760.00. It’s a good chunk of money, but if there are enough of us donating to this addon than I don’t think it is to bad. I was thinking that if Sno will put this on his site to make the donation $75.00. Does this sound fair to everyone? I’ll donate $100 to it.



Also, as you read through the CS-Cart reply you’ll notice that it says that this will be domain specific and that any problems on any other domain will have to be fixed on a paid basis.



I will pass on any and all bugs or problems to CS-Cart and will share all fixes with everyone who purchases this addon. I’ll post all fixes on here and on Snorocket’s forum. Most fixes will just be lines of code here and there so I think by posting the fixes on the forums we still don’t need to worry about sharing to much of the code and having anyone “steal” this addon. “Steal” isn’t the right word, but hopefully you guys know what I mean.



Below is the reply, let me know what you guys think. It sounds great to me, but if this is a group effort than everyone’s opinion should count.



Brandon



Dear Brandon,


[quote] Well there has been some discussion about this addon on the forum and it seems that there are plenty of other people interested in this as well.

I been in contact with Snorocket and he is also interested in this. He has offered to put this on the addon club and accept donations to have this coded to help share the costs.

In one of his replies back to me he had some questions and concerns. Below is a copy of his email. Could you please let me know what your thoughts are on this.

[/quote]



Thank you for the provided information.

Please note that since the project will be developed for the exact domain we will provide support and bug fixes only for this domain. In case any problems come up on other domains we will be able to investigate them only on a paid basis.


[quote]

Hi Brandon, well this is a hack of the promotions addon not a stand alone addon, I would prefer a stand alone addon but I’m afraid the price would go up, also $600 is alot for a hack. [/quote]





This is not a hack. We develop all modifications for the CS-Cart2.0 version as addons. The 1st point of the product description states that the new addon will expand the standard “Promotions” module functionality. I will make changes to the description to make it more clear.


[quote] Item #4 is limited, only 1 product? [/quote]





The provided description was based on the provided examples ( http://www.saltwatertogo.com http://www.marinedepot.com ) taking into account the minimization of the project cost.

The ability to add several products to the “Daily deal” promotion will cost extra USD 80.

Please let me know if I should include this point into the project specification.


[quote]

The description also doesn’t detail how it will work with the block manager, for example can we put 1 deal of the day on the pages section and another deal of the day on the home page? I think this would be a great addition but we should all make sure it works for everyone, this should seriously just be added into CS I think. [/quote]





Right now the modification will display all products discounted by the “Daily deal product” promotion condition in the mentioned block. The content of the block will be the same on all pages.

If you would like we can add an ability to select a single “Daily deal” promotion for a block so that it will be possible to display different daily deals on different pages. This ability will also cost extra USD 80.


[quote]

People complain about bugs but we as a community have alot of clout to add in these features. [/quote]





I am afraid it is not clear enough to me what bugs can be mentioned here if the “Daily deal” addon is not yet developed. Please advise.


Obviously CS-Cart didn't get what Sno was talking about, oh well



I have also corrected the description:



The ““Daily deal” promotion” modification.


  1. We will expand the functionality of the ‘Promotions’ module in this addon.
  2. We will add the ability to set the “Daily deal product” condition in the “Conditions” tab on the catalog promotion details page.
  3. After selecting the “Daily deal product” condition it will be possible to select a product and a day of the week.
  4. It will be possible to select only one product for each day.
  5. The promotion will work for the specified product in the certain day of the week.
  6. This condition will be available only for catalog promotions.
  7. We will add the ability to create a block with the “Daily deal” content. It will display all products discounted by the “Daily deal product” promotion condition today with their thumbnail images, names, regular prices and discounted prices in a standard CS-Cart design. Products will be gathered in sections by different promotions. After clicking on either an image or a name a customer will be redirected to the product details page.
  8. The “Daily deal” block will also display a clock for each promotion section that will count down the time that is left for the promotion. Basically that would be a 24 hours clock that would go from 24.00 to 0.00.



    We will develop this modification for CS-Cart version 2.0.12.

    We will prepare the customization package and upload it to your File Area. Also we will prepare the instructions which will help you to install this modification on your server (www.saltwtertogo.com).

    We will use the “Basic” storefront skin and the “Basic” skin for the admin panel.



    The modification will be installed ONLY on the domain(s) specified in this detailed description.

    While developing this modification we will do only what is described above.

    All additions and changes of this modification will require some extra payments.

    This project will correctly work in Internet Explorer 6 (for Windows OS), Internet Explorer 7 (for Windows OS), FireFox 3 (for Linux and Windows OS), Safari 2 (for Mac OS) and Opera 9.5 (for Linux OS) browsers.

    We cannot guarantee you fully that there will not be any errors during the upgrade. However, we will do our best so that new addon can be upgraded with minimal conflicts.

    (!) This modification does not include Installation service (The installation of CS-Cart software).



    The modification of such complexity will cost USD 600.

    At the moment we can start working for you only in 2 weeks after the payment is made.

    The whole task will take us 6 business days to complete.



    Thank you.





    Sincerely yours,

    Alexander Repin

    (We work Mon-Fri, 9am-6pm, our local time is GMT+4)



    CS-Cart Knowledge Base: http://kb.cs-cart.com

I’m a guarantee!



From what I gathered:

  • you can establish a product for each day
  • the add on will allow you to establish a new price for the product
  • you are able to display the promotion on every page, or a page specified
  • the link associated with the new block will direct you to the product detail page
  • the clock will countdown in reference to server settings in the admin area





    A few questions that I have:



    Will you have to upload each product through the backend, or can you import a file to determine a list of products well in advance?



    I have altered tpl files to meet specifications of my projected website design, will I have to overwrite these files with the new add on? (I’m thinking that the product_data.tpl and price.tpl files will be affected)



    I’m sure that I can alter the code, however, to what extent are we talking here.



    This is definitely something that I need on my website, so I’ll just take what I can get. Give us direction from this point, so we can make the appropiate donation and get this ball rolling.



    Thanks again Brandon,



    Jeff

Accepting donations now:

[url]http://www.snorocket.com/addons/daily-deals-addon.html[/url]

SNO,



I’ve made my donation.



Please keep me informed on future updates.



Thanks,



Jeff

Unfortunately it won’t work for me… I had proposed some changes to make it more flexible but they would probably increase the cost. I guess I will have to get my own addon done.


[QUOTE]Here are more suggestions. I think cs-cart’s description is not flexible enough.


  1. Instead of assigning products to a day of the week, they can assigned a date or date range. This would allow plans to be made well in advance and allow deals to last more than one day, if desired.


  2. The block should be designed so that whatever deal is active that day would be displayed in the box. If multiple deals are set up for that date, it would have the ability to display them all. The block could be set to show x number of items if there are more than one in case someone needs to keep the box small.



    Also, I’d like to see another option for designing a block with all the options a block normally has for listing products. I need it so I can display deals on the home page. I have a block like that set up in my new store, but I had to manually chose which product(s) to display in the block. It would be nice to be able to fill with the active deal(s) with the same display options. I just got this started a couple of days ago, but here is an example:

    (PM me for link)

    Here are the settings for that block:

    Content: Products

    Filling: manually → I want this to be filled with the active deals.

    Appearance: blocks/products.tpl

    Wrapper: blocks/wrappers/mainbox_simple.tpl



    Having a block like this would also make it possible for the store owner to create a page for the active daily deal(s). That way information pertinent to the specials could be added to that page (like a limited return policy, sign up information for notification of future deals, etc.)[/QUOTE]