I have a site that creates bundles of software 12 apps for $49.99 kind of thing.
I am thinking about switching it to CS-Cart Pro, but am wondering how to create bundles.
I saw the buy together add on, but the look and feel seemed a little funky if you had that many products.
Is that the best way to do it? Is there a better way? Are there Add Ons available that have the functionality? Any Developer interested in writing?
Thank you,
-John
I use the buy-together addon with one small change. You could probably adjust it to change the presentation to a small icon and brief description as a listing instead of the larger icon and the product name underneath. That might be more visually appealing for a larger group. You would probably need to also adjust the discount presentation to fit within the list-type presentation.
The change I made was to get it to be the default tab if there were bundled products configured for that product. Otherwise I use it as is. An example is:
[url]http://www.ez-ms.com/addonproducts/auto-mail.html[/url]
Thanks for the info.
Do you know of any 3rd party add ons that do bundles? Or enhance the buy together function?
-john
Unfortunately, CS-Cart is very much lacking in this area of offering a true “Product Bundling” capabiltiy… 
Doing bundles becomes a can of worms when you get into pricing and product discounts, promotions, etc. There are so many dependencies on price in the cart that you can’t really intercept it via a hook and expect the rest of the system to use it. Some places go directly to the db, others expect it to be set in the product_data and others go by what was posted to the cart (if the saved flag is set in the cart). So it’s really a lot of work to find all the corner cases. That’s why you probably won’t find an addon that works correctly in all situations.
A “unit of measure” should become a core “type” within the cart (like a quantity abstraction) so that it can be used in all the above type calculations. Otherwise, you’ll be chasing this at every upgrade and install of every addon. Then you could have a price for “each”, “box”, “case”, “gram”, etc. But that capability isn’t there.
Feel free to post the request to Uservoice but I doubt it would ever get enough votes to get on the radar screen.
There are actually some settings you can use to get the addon with small changes. Changing the presentation of the small icon with some additional information to be displayed underneath would probably be the area you would look on to as it will take effect on what you have established.
Is there a way to show a bundle (buy together option) in a block on your home page for example? I cant seem to find a way to do it??
By together is specific to a product so putting it on the homepage would have no way to determine what bundles.
Formula based pricing is not supported other than something you might do yourself and then use usergroups to deploy for different users.
[quote name='tbirnseth' timestamp='1310085708' post='116518']
By together is specific to a product so putting it on the homepage would have no way to determine what bundles.
Formula based pricing is not supported other than something you might do yourself and then use usergroups to deploy for different users.
[/quote]
I think what I was getting at was once I have created a Buy Together option for a specific product, it makes a nice graphic of the 2 together and shows its discount when purchased as a combo, I was wanted to feature that very thing on the home page, like take that code and make a banner from it if not possible to call from it in blocks.
[quote name='tbirnseth' timestamp='1310085708' post='116518']
By together is specific to a product so putting it on the homepage would have no way to determine what bundles.
Formula based pricing is not supported other than something you might do yourself and then use usergroups to deploy for different users.
[/quote]
I think what I was getting at was once I have created a Buy Together option for a specific product, it makes a nice graphic of the 2 together and shows its discount when purchased as a combo, I was wanting to feature that very thing on the home page, like take that code and make a banner from it if not possible to call from it in blocks.
You could create a custom block that was a manual filling type that would allow you to select products manually and then display their buy together groupings as the displayed items…
Interesting concept, I might have to play with it…
Hello!
Please pay attention to our Product Bundles add-on. It allows to create the collection of products and give a discount on it.