Competition/lottery style extension or plugin?

Hey,

i've been searching but can't find anything. I'm looking for a module/solution for the points below. Anybody that can guide me in the correct direction?

• The competition system is capable of running multiple competitions at once;

• Competitions are date enabled and customers can't enter after the given date;

• You can set an optional question/answer for the customer to complete;

• They are obligated to create a login requirement (ie. have to create account first);

• You can optionally force newsletter sign-up (Terms and Conditions Required)

• Optional (though recommended) terms and conditions tick box;

• Old competition details are still viewable so customers can see what they may have missed out on and perhaps revisit your site to see if there are any new competitions to enter (and hopefully buy something);

• Entrants can only enter the competion a set time, once,..., 10 by buying tickets

• I can set the number of tickets to be sold to end the competition, for instance 100 tickets

• Tickets can be free of payable

• SEO, mutli-store and multi-language enabled;

• One winners per competition.

• Competition Newsletter 'Unsubscribe' Page.

Version opencart 2.1.0.2
budget is available
example of what i want https://luckypew.co.uk/product/bbs-bangs-smokes/

Hello,
Trust you're keeping good.
Surely, we can assist you on your requirements.
Please Reach me on my Email- Trish@cisinlabs.com
Regards,
Trish

You mean like raffle? People buy tickets with random numbers and then you define the winner? I had a similar project recently, can take yours as well.

Hi there,

We should be able to help with this, would you be able to drop us an email to get an estimate?
info@antropy.co.uk

Kind regards,
Alex
www.antropy.co.uk

CobraTS wrote: ↑

Sat Nov 07, 2020 7:38 am

Hey,

i've been searching but can't find anything. I'm looking for a module/solution for the points below. Anybody that can guide me in the correct direction?

• The competition system is capable of running multiple competitions at once;

• Competitions are date enabled and customers can't enter after the given date;

• You can set an optional question/answer for the customer to complete;

• They are obligated to create a login requirement (ie. have to create account first);

• You can optionally force newsletter sign-up (Terms and Conditions Required)

• Optional (though recommended) terms and conditions tick box;

• Old competition details are still viewable so customers can see what they may have missed out on and perhaps revisit your site to see if there are any new competitions to enter (and hopefully buy something);

• Entrants can only enter the competion a set time, once,..., 10 by buying tickets

• I can set the number of tickets to be sold to end the competition, for instance 100 tickets

• Tickets can be free of payable

• SEO, mutli-store and multi-language enabled;

• One winners per competition.

• Competition Newsletter 'Unsubscribe' Page.

Version opencart 2.1.0.2
budget is available
example of what i want https://luckypew.co.uk/product/bbs-bangs-smokes/

What you're looking for can't be done properly or easily on OpenCart. I'm over £5,000 and 8+ months into this and still don't have something working yet. Every developer here will tell you the same thing, "I have 10 years experience on OpenCart blah blah blah"

Every one will tell you the last developer didn't know what they were doing, and they can do it better. They can't!

My site does exactly what you're asking for, and like you is based in the UK. You're going to learn the hard way like I did that using OpenCart as a platform for this type of business won't work. First of all you do know that there is only one payment gateway that will allow competitions? Every expert here will say it's fine you can use loads. UK law says there is 1, and when you speak to other gateways and ask they'll tell you the same thing. The developers here do this as a hobby, they all have day jobs so won't be nearly as invested as you will.

As I say, I kept thinking I was almost there, but it's futile with OpenCart I'm afraid. Would you believe that after spending over £5,000 I can't even get my site to give a random and unique ticket number? Yep that's my current problem?!! I sold only 60 tickets to a competition and had 8 duplicate numbers issued. To make matters worse one of the duplicate numbers won the prize. So I had to give the cash prize twice!

I'm giving away a £20,000 car in 2 weeks and I don't know what I'll do if another duplicate number gets drawn then. I'm not giving away 2 cars!

My advice to you is this...... run!

Run as fast as you can from OpenCart and build your site on a platform that EVERY other competition/raffle site in the UK uses. I had a quote of £2,000 from a company that has built probably one of the biggest UK competition sites, and it included everything! Payment gateway integration, hosting the lot.

It's exactly what I'll be doing in 2 weeks time. I'm letting my current competitions expire and then closing the site. I'll need to rebrand and move over to WooCommerce. Don't get me wrong, it's not pretty or elegant but it works. They even have templates specifically for competition sites.

You haven't been here long enough but every time you post in this section you'll get the same 4 people give you the exact same response. Then you get the exact same 4 people send you PM's again with the exact same message. Stop and ask why that is.

Sorry to be the one to burst your bubble on this, but I'll bet my shirt that if you do decide to do this with OpenCart, that in 6 months time you'll be £5,000 and no closer to a working competition website than you are now. Just saying.

Good luck either way. If you need any advice send me PM and I'll help where I can.
Gordon

(PS if some £$£hole tells you to get a template called Journal DON'T - Covid is more acceptable on this forum than that template)

Gordo111 wrote: ↑

Tue Nov 17, 2020 9:16 pm

My advice to you is this...... run!

Run as fast as you can from OpenCart and build your site on a platform that EVERY other competition/raffle site in the UK uses. I had a quote of £2,000 from a company that has built probably one of the biggest UK competition sites, and it included everything! Payment gateway integration, hosting the lot.

It's exactly what I'll be doing in 2 weeks time. I'm letting my current competitions expire and then closing the site. I'll need to rebrand and move over to WooCommerce. Don't get me wrong, it's not pretty or elegant but it works. They even have templates specifically for competition sites.

If you had some bad experience with this, doesn't mean that OpenCart is not suitable for this task. It does as well as any other e-commerce framework. WooCommerce is just a WP extension, which works the same way, just different coding. The only difference is that WP extensions utilize rich hook/action system and OpenCart uses OCMod. Both frameworks are good in their own way, both can be used for the lottery. It solely depends on developer, his experience and your description of the task. That's it.

So once again, you just had a bad experience, worked with bad developers, nothing more.

thekrotek wrote: ↑

Tue Nov 17, 2020 9:27 pm

Gordo111 wrote: ↑

Tue Nov 17, 2020 9:16 pm

My advice to you is this...... run!

Run as fast as you can from OpenCart and build your site on a platform that EVERY other competition/raffle site in the UK uses. I had a quote of £2,000 from a company that has built probably one of the biggest UK competition sites, and it included everything! Payment gateway integration, hosting the lot.

It's exactly what I'll be doing in 2 weeks time. I'm letting my current competitions expire and then closing the site. I'll need to rebrand and move over to WooCommerce. Don't get me wrong, it's not pretty or elegant but it works. They even have templates specifically for competition sites.

If you had some bad experience with this, doesn't mean that OpenCart is not suitable for this task. It does as well as any other e-commerce framework. WooCommerce is just a WP extension, which works the same way, just different coding. The only difference is that WP extensions utilize rich hook/action system and OpenCart uses OCMod. Both frameworks are good in their own way, both can be used for the lottery. It solely depends on developer, his experience and your description of the task. That's it.

So once again, you just had a bad experience, worked with bad developers, nothing more.

Show me one UK based competition site that uses OpenCart then. You can't because it doesn't exist, and I know that for a fact because I've been told that directly by the only payment gateway that we're allowed to use in the UK.

It's not just 1 bad experience either. I've had to use 3 developers now. Each with over 10 years on OpenCart. How much more experience do they need?

I'm not saying OpenCart is bad, it's very capable for most shops and stores. It isn't however suited to competition/raffle websites (at least not in the UK). Because WooCommerce is used by EVERY one of these sites, with ready made plugins exist that work straight off the bat. Nothing exists on OpenCart Marketplace because nobody using OpenCart ever needed it. Same way some payment gateways don't exist on the OpenCart marketplace.

As someone who doesn't know enough about developing it's been a nightmare. I've become the "test" site for developers to play on. I've also been extremely clear on what I wanted. I had/have the layout exactly as it should be. For me my website/business is like a F1 car with a engine..... it's looks great but doesn't work.

Ultimately if you throw enough money and time at something it'll work eventually, but why reinvent the wheel when other platforms already have a robust and working system? Could someone get OpenCart to actually work.... probably. But it'll cost double the £5k I've spent and take twice as long.

Mark my words the OP will start looking into OpenCart, realise the headache he's in for with setting a UK competition site up and regret using OpenCart. For me personally I'll use OpenCart for my other site that sells normal products. For that purpose OpenCart is perfect and really performs well.

OpenCart developers are missing out though. According to the payment gateway they have over 1200 competitions that they provide services for in the UK. (It's an extremely saturated market), and according to them 90% use WooCommerce and 10% Magento (which really is awful). I was the lone ranger trying to use OpenCart.

Now if there was a good reliable product on the Marketplace you could sell loads there, you could charge quite a bit for it too. As I say I'm £5k in and still not running properly. I would happily have paid a couple hundred £'s for something that worked on the Marketplace. If you think I'm making it up go to google, type in "Wordpress competition theme" and hey presto there it is. Over a dozen available, some free, most paid and even some on subscription.

Let me leave you with a final thought. I'm walking away from something I've invested over £5k into because spending even another penny would be throwing good money after bad. I could have bought 2 sites that do what they need to from a developer on Wordpress. Let that sink in.

By now the OP would have been given a couple of quotes to do this. If he's smart he'll look at what works already, if he's not he'll be back in 6 months time just like me wondering why he didn't.

I'm sorry, but all I see here is an attempt to blame everybody around, when this is YOU who made a wrong choice, nobody else. As you said yourself, you don't know much about development, which is the reason you were mistaken. You chose wrong developers, that's all. OpenCart is not here to blame.

Once again, OC and WP both fit to this task. If a plugin for particular payment gateway exists for WP, then it can be easily created for OC as well. And no, it won't cost you 5K quid. Even combined cost of payment method and lottery extension would cost much less. You greatly overpaid, my friend. For 5K I'd created you a coding masterpiece, which would also bake you cookies.

All this doesn't mean that OP will do the same mistakes. With a decent developer he can easily achieve what he wants. By the way, I talked to the guy and he doesn't want anything crazy complex, which would cost him THAT much.

thekrotek wrote: ↑

Wed Nov 18, 2020 12:55 am

I'm sorry, but all I see here is an attempt to blame everybody around, when this is YOU who made a wrong choice, nobody else. As you said yourself, you don't know much about development, which is the reason you were mistaken. You chose wrong developers, that's all. OpenCart is not here to blame.

Once again, OC and WP both fit to this task. If a plugin for particular payment gateway exists for WP, then it can be easily created for OC as well. And no, it won't cost you 5K quid. Even combined cost of payment method and lottery extension would cost much less. You greatly overpaid, my friend. For 5K I'd created you a coding masterpiece, which would also bake you cookies.

All this doesn't mean that OP will do the same mistakes. With a decent developer he can easily achieve what he wants. By the way, I talked to the guy and he doesn't want anything crazy complex, which would cost him THAT much.

Let's see how that works out for him

thekrotek wrote: ↑

Wed Nov 18, 2020 12:55 am

I'm sorry, but all I see here is an attempt to blame everybody around, when this is YOU who made a wrong choice, nobody else. As you said yourself, you don't know much about development, which is the reason you were mistaken. You chose wrong developers, that's all. OpenCart is not here to blame.

Once again, OC and WP both fit to this task. If a plugin for particular payment gateway exists for WP, then it can be easily created for OC as well. And no, it won't cost you 5K quid. Even combined cost of payment method and lottery extension would cost much less. You greatly overpaid, my friend. For 5K I'd created you a coding masterpiece, which would also bake you cookies.

All this doesn't mean that OP will do the same mistakes. With a decent developer he can easily achieve what he wants. By the way, I talked to the guy and he doesn't want anything crazy complex, which would cost him THAT much.

All you see? Where have I blamed anyone?

I know I've overpaid. Mine isn't crazy complex, but even the API for payment gateway was 600 Euros from you! That same integration is FREE on WooCommerce, and was written by the payment gateway themselves. I know you think I'm making this up, and I'm not saying OpenCart isn't any good. Just not for this.

This is one time I'd love to be proven wrong. But I'm 100% sure I won't be.

Gordo111 wrote: ↑

Wed Nov 18, 2020 1:24 am

I know I've overpaid. Mine isn't crazy complex, but even the API for payment gateway was 600 Euros from you! That same integration is FREE on WooCommerce, and was written by the payment gateway themselves. I know you think I'm making this up, and I'm not saying OpenCart isn't any good. Just not for this.

600 EUR for payment gateway extension is not 5K quid. I'm pretty sure you can do the math. Doesn't matter who created the extension - a developer or payment gateway. Moreover, in terms of support private developers usually much better than payment gateways. I had a lot of customers who contacted me just because some other huge corporation refused to provide support for their own product by some stupid reason.

Gordo111 wrote: ↑

Wed Nov 18, 2020 1:24 am

This is one time I'd love to be proven wrong. But I'm 100% sure I won't be.

I could easily prove you're wrong, but you definitely not willing to invest more. So don't be THAT sure. WP has its own cons and one of them comes from that "free" vibe. Trust me on this, because I'm a WP developer as well.