OpenCart Community

We're using 3.0.2.0 and have tried to use the Date Available field to track and show when a product was published. It seems that Date Available is more like a flag that hides a product until that date.

What we would like to do is to set up a field "Published Date" that would let people see a product and know when it will be sold. They could preorder if they like, but they would be able to see the item.

Ideally we'd also be able to sort multi product views (search results and category pages) by that date also so people could see what's new.

Is this a known problem that's been solved well? I see some extensions that allow sorting by date added, but I'd like something more like a "published on" date or "will ship" date that would be publicly visible if possible.

It is not a "problem". Date Available does exactly that - you set a date when you want the product to be available for purchase on your store.

OpenCart does not come with "Published Date" or "Pre-order" feature. Such feature will require further modification or extension to make it happen.

One way you could let customer to view the product but not able to purchase it is by setting its stock Quantity to 0 and Subtract Stock to Yes. However, of course, this would require store owner to manually update the stock Quantity value when the date available has arrived.

Maybe you can try to look at the extension marketplace for such solution, or reach out to developers in the Extension Support forum to request a customisation work.