Feature Requests

well I certainly don't claim to have used every cart, but at least all the big php based carts, and I can't think of a single one that has a saved discount that you can choose from a dropdown.

I'm not saying it wouldn't be nice to have, but in the grand scheme of the overall cart I wouldn't place it at the top of the list of needed items. There are plenty of items left that I think a much larger percentage of people will use. Of course I would have left multi store off too as I see that as a small percentage feature, so you never know.

Yes, you are picky. Yes in some cases you are correct.
It really comes down to who's designing and what people "think" they want.

Example.
In OpenCart. To add a special price to a product, you have to:
1. Goto the Admin
2. Goto the products list
3. Edit the product
4. Switch to the options tab
5. Enter the sale price
6. Save the product
7. Repeat for each

In ChromiumCart, I did things in what I call a "Manager". Instead of making the product the parent of special
I made Specials the parent of products.
1. Goto Admin
2. Goto "Specials Manager"
3. Enter your specials price
4. Multiselect all the products you want to have this price at one time.
5. Save and done.

I found this to be a much more manageable way to handle processes like this. But as I said it comes down to the designer.

I also had a Product batch Edit mod that I have put on the back burner, but basically was meant to mass edit products on one page to allow for quickly making changes to similar products. But I want to make it more dynamic so that all fields can be easily updated.

But in the end, the old "Rome wasn't built in a day" still applies. Most carts have the same singular design. It takes time to improve.

Now there you go, something I would never use. I've been selling from carts since 2001 and don't think I've ever run a special on anything. Everyday Is Sale Day for me.

Mostly all I am asking for is to set defaults in a number of fields where it is possible to do so now.

I'm not asking for massive changes, only the option to set some of the fields that can not be set now, and eliminating a step or so when adding images. All are intended to save time for everyone, other than the discount deal.

I ran into a reply a while ago from Daniel when I think it was simply asking for the main store to be ticked when adding a new product. Like it was such a pittance it wasn't worth the bother of editing the script, even though it would mean possibly hundreds of hours of peoples' time over a month or a year.

None of it is earth shattering, but having to edit the date so the item will show when I go to check the store? What logic does that make? For a programmer / coder who deals in logic 24/7, where is there any benefit in making someone stop and change a date so the item will show.

Where is the logic in not being able to set a default tax class other than "none" which is not on the list of Tax Classes and can't be deleted?

Most of these things are just time consuming details that could easily be eliminated. Maybe not a esoteric as adding Multi-shop or something as dramatic as that, just a few little tweaks that will save hundreds of minutes and hours in the long haul for hundreds of users.

Gerrit wrote:Postal code field must be standard **Required

I agree this would be an awesome addition.

J

peteVA wrote:
7 - Why am I such a whiner?

7a - Because I know it doesn't have to be the way it is. Setting up a cart is a long and tedious chore and eliminating as much repetitive "labor" as possible can save many hours when building a site.

7 - Why you are such a whiner? Because you are spoiled and cannot stand it that OC is in fact NO PeteVA Cart.

7a- Indeed, it has not to be that way, but it is. Get over it!

Stop whining and move on or move away, I'm sick of your childish and constant nagging all the time.

Why is this in General Support as this is clearly a Feature request.

[topic moved and merged]

It was in General Support with the title it had because I wanted it to be answered as it had been until you took it upon yourself to move it.

It was not designed as a features request, I know how to do that.

It was intended as a general discussion thread, but the Stormtrooper of the Forum decided to make a change.

Maybe you ought to stop making decisions for everyone, I see no one else complaining.

Further, I would say the if you have a problem with me and my posts you should contact me by PM, not make an issue of it on the forum. Seems to me you are more interested in strutting in your boots than peacefully moderating a forum.

I know what I am doing, I know I am discussing issues hoping for some to be incorporated FOR THE GOOD OF ALL. I have mentioned many times I have spent quite a bit for specific mods over the years, including some from Q. But I do not feel that most of what I mentioned here were anything that would not benefit anyone entering new items.

When it comes to negativity or rotten attitude you would definitely be the winner, as you seem to love to shut people up and make them look like fools. You don't seem to realize that most forums have a handful of dedicated "pros" and scores, or hundreds, of newbies asking for help who have never had a cart before in their lives.

EASE UP!

As these are not specific Feature Requests, I wish you would rename it and put it back where it was.

peteVA wrote:Now there you go, something I would never use. I've been selling from carts since 2001 and don't think I've ever run a special on anything. Everyday Is Sale Day for me.

Mostly all I am asking for is to set defaults in a number of fields where it is possible to do so now.

I'm not asking for massive changes, only the option to set some of the fields that can not be set now, and eliminating a step or so when adding images. All are intended to save time for everyone, other than the discount deal.

A few changes to the product.php controller in the admin can do this.

None of it is earth shattering, but having to edit the date so the item will show when I go to check the store? What logic does that make? For a programmer / coder who deals in logic 24/7, where is there any benefit in making someone stop and change a date so the item will show.

I've never had this problem. It always puts in the current server date in the date available date automatically so there should be nothing to edit. The server controls the time so the server data stamp should have no affect by default.

Where is the logic in not being able to set a default tax class other than "none" which is not on the list of Tax Classes and can't be deleted?

Again, a simple 1 character change in the controller

You seem very focused on the easy to fix little things. Like for me. I sell software, so by default all my products are "Require Shipping = NO". So I simply changed the '1' to a '0' in the controller. These aren't things that change every day and they are different for different people. We can only err on the side of caution

Look.. I understand you want a way to quickly get products added and get up and running. You are right.. it doesn't make it inherently easy to do that.. But no cart does that I've see. ZenCart and OSC are even more clunky. There are tools like EasyPopulate in ZenCart and Import/Export in OC.. but there should really be a core csv file import tool that lets you do this more dynamically.. and we are working on that. But as I said, it takes time. These are improvements on working fundamentals. But those fundamentals need to work first.

peteVA wrote:1 - Why do I have to set each item at zero on hand ...

It is reasonable and logical to assume that if you are adding an item, that you have at least one of that item to sell. If you want the default to be set at "zero", change it in the controller (admin/controller/catalog/product.php - line 737) change to: Simple!

Qphoria wrote:I've never had this problem. It always puts in the current server date in the date available date automatically so there should be nothing to edit. The server controls the time so the server data stamp should have no affect by default.

Actually, having the server's date inserted as the date available IS a problem, especially if the server hosting your site is in another country in another timezone. The default timezone should be configurable from the administration, you shouldn't have to hack a core file (system/startup.php) to set the correct timezone for your store!

The problem is not the having 1 on hand. Although I have show quantity off and sell when zero on hand, as it is all dropshipping, that is not the point.

The point is that there is a field that does show on the sales pages that says "In Stock" or an out of stock message. In the System/Localization/Stock Settings I can add what I want, but I cannot get them to show unless there is No Stock. So they are not really Stock Settings, they are Out Of Stock Settings. Therefor I must put a zero in the QOH field for each item to get MY message to show, which is much more informational to the buyer - "Usually ships next day" tells more than In Stock and "Usually ships 2nd or 3rd day" does as well. I could also say "Special Order - Allow 1 week" or other actual Stock Settings, which is the name of the field.

All I want to do is to be able to use it. And I would love to show both a quantity and MY MESSAGE, which is the real reason I asked WHY? does it have to be this way? From looking at the Stock Messages in the Localization, most people would assume they were there to be used.

Q, if you nave never had a problem with the date then your server is set to GMT or your server is in the UK or further east. My server is in the Houston area, which means that from 5 or 6PM that field is showing "tomorrow". To me the whole thing is a waste, but that's another discussion. If it must be there, there should be a time zone adjustment as with most forums and some other scripts.

I have been importing files for 20 years, It is not a big deal in many cases, and while I truly appreciate the efforts of JNeuhoff, that product is better suited to editing existing items that have been exported, edited and imported back than it is for entering totally new inventory. The fact that you have to enter a unique number to every product and category makes it confusing for entering hundreds of new items.

It would be much easier to use if it were several stand-alone files to import, rather than everything in one mass.

As far as the ones and zeros and that sort of thing, so much of that could be set up as defaults so that people could set it once and it would stay that way for them. Basically what I'm saying is that rather than 10 or 100 or 1,000 people editing code, if most all of the fields could have a default set one time it would save everyone - except the one guy making the change to the script - hours and hours in the long term.

I must go out for a bit, but I'll address this further before the day is through - unless you are west of GMT .

fido-x wrote: Actually, having the server's date inserted as the date available IS a problem, especially if the server hosting your site is in another country in another timezone. The default timezone should be configurable from the administration, you shouldn't have to hack a core file (system/startup.php) to set the correct timezone for your store!

The server uses its current date from the server. If the server thinks it is May 7th, 2010. Even if you are on May 6th, 2010 at 11:58pm. Your local time means nothing. The server compares against itself. It is may 7th on your server and therefore the product is enabled.

The date would only matter if you were setting up specific future dates and it mattered that it had to be enabled exactly at 12:00:00am in the store owners timezone. But that is an extremely rare case. In this context, there should be no effect if you just want the product enabled right now.

Qphoria wrote:

fido-x wrote: Actually, having the server's date inserted as the date available IS a problem, especially if the server hosting your site is in another country in another timezone. The default timezone should be configurable from the administration, you shouldn't have to hack a core file (system/startup.php) to set the correct timezone for your store!

The server uses its current date from the server. If the server thinks it is May 7th, 2010. Even if you are on May 6th, 2010 at 11:58pm. Your local time means nothing. The server compares against itself. It is may 7th on your server and therefore the product is enabled.

The date would only matter if you were setting up specific future dates and it mattered that it had to be enabled exactly at 12:00:00am in the store owners timezone. But that is an extremely rare case. In this context, there should be no effect if you just want the product enabled right now.

sorry to contradict you there Q, I'm not sure how it's supposed to work or where the bug is, but I have seen this too. You have to modify the date back a day in order for the product to show up. I haven't bother to look into it to see why it happens, because I wasn't doing lots of products just test stuff on those servers, but there is definitely the possibility of a problem there.

I just tried this and you are correct.
My server time is showing in GMT. I am GMT-5. I would expect that the timestamp would be generated by the GMT time. But when I pushed my clock forward to tomorrow, the item showed up on the site. Which is completely stupid. You shouldn't have customers on the east coast able to buy items that people on the west coast can't buy for 2 hours. It should not take the local time into consideration at all. I will look into this.

-EDIT-
It seems the Mysql command for "NOW()" uses the browsers local request time. I can't think of any reason this should be used ever. The server should control all times. I will replace that product check with UTC_TIMESTAMP() instead of now().

As warned, I'm back. I'm going to give you a bit of my history and why I am bringing up some of the things I do.

I'm 71 years old and have been using computers commercially for more years than the age of most members of this forum. Also, since my discharge from the US military at 21 years old in 1960 I have spent at least 40 of the intervening 50 years in business for myself and 7 or the other 10 as a commissioned sales rep where I had to sell to eat. I have literally "never punched a time clock" in my life.

I believe fully in independent businesses and do all I can to help them start, grow and prosper. I have served on a number of state and regional boards of directors relating to my industries, attended more trade shows than I care to recall, both as a vendor and as a buyer. I have held seminars and training sessions for groups sized from a handful in service station and garage work bays to hired halls.

I'm not bragging with this, just laying the groundwork so you will understand "where I'm coming from."

My brother joined me in an auto parts business that I ran through the 70s and 80s. We went from a single store with a dirt parking lot to 4 stores and a regional wholesale distribution business, being factory direct distributors of brands such as Goodyear, Dayco, TRW and SKF, as well as many other brands of auto parts and products.

In the mid 1970s I got our first computer an "Inventron". It was the size of a large refrigerator or soft drink vending machine. All it did was track inventory and calculate purchase orders. No invoices, no accounts receivable, just kept up with inventory. Frankly, it was a waste and we did not keep it long.

But, during my first foray at computerizing I was taught a valuable lesson, one that is core to what I have been talking about from the start of this thread. When we were first entering inventory into the computer I got into a discussion with the sales rep about the use of dashes in part numbers. He told me to think of each keystroke as costing me a dime! (That's 1/10th of a dollar.) Now, I will admit a dime was probably a bit high, but he made the point that every keystroke has a cost. And enough of them can add up to real money. This is a point I try to make here. While many of the people who develop carts may have a shop or two of their own, not many have true "real life" business experience. More on this shortly.

I next ordered from a magazine a DEC mini computer with 2 8 inch floppy drives. That lasted a year and I had to get real. So, $40,000 later I was really computerized. This was in 1975 / 76. It was a system designed specifically for auto parts companies and offered all sorts of information.

For the coders - here is what that 1975 system could do - running UNIX and using dumb terminals.

There were fields for of course, Quantity on Hand, then Minimum, Maximum, Standard Pack (for instance spark plugs may only be bought in certain quantities - depending on what they fit, 4, 6 or 8 per box. and there was also a way to tell the computer if you sold just one from a box of 8 that you had to buy 8 more in order to have a full set for an 8 cylinder car). Then Sales Month to Date and Year to Date, Average monthly sales, 12 additional monthly fields, so you could see what you sold for each month over a 13 month period, then a Last Year to Date sale field. There were also fields for Returned Goods, Defective Goods and for rebuilt parts that required a trade-in of the old part or "core", the quantity of cores on hand. Then there were 5 sales price fields, one with Book Cost and one with Average Landed Cost.

All of that on one dumb terminal screen. Talk about burn-in, you could see those fields on the screen with every off.

Now, even more specific to my post yesterday - the used could go through that screen and set specific fields that they were working on - let's say a price change. They could specify just the cost and retail or dealer price fields - the others we factored - and go just to those chosen fields, using the TAB key to jump to the next part in the product line. Cost -tab-retail-tab-next item cost-tab-retail-tab-next item cost, etc.

This was in 1975. When I ask for something that user friendly now I'm nothing but a pain in the ass. I know it can be done, someone just has to understand that there are way more USERS than CODERS and code for the users.

I ended up with 4 stores and a warehouse, all connected not by the Internet, (bill gates was not quite voting age by then) but by leased telephone lines using multiplexors that took 4 serial lines, put them into one signal and then broke them out again at the other end, all at the blazing speed of 2400 baud.

We closed up in 1990, with $300,000 owned to us by commercial accounts. The fact that within 90 days we had collected all but $1,500 speaks of the relationship we had with our customers. I did set up a small wholesale only parts business right after that, but I got asked by so many auto repair customers about computers and software I moved into that and gave my brother the business.

The next 10 years were spent selling, building and training in the use of auto repair management, Point-of-Sale, GPS based vehicle tracking and dispatch and bar code / asset management packages. I sold several P-O-S software packages and did the same bitching and whining with the developers that I do here. I did so because I knew they could do more than they knew about. Few had been "in the trenches", but were computer geeks who designed a program for their own stores and decided to sell them.

Nothing wrong with that, but selling computers is not like selling shoes, clothing or soft goods where you have let's say bath towels, hand towels, bath mats, wash cloths and maybe more all in the same styles and colors and having 3 wash cloths is going to lose sales for a set of 4 of everything. They never bought bath linens, so they don't know. (Same as here, where I will get "I don't need that, why do you?" kinds of replies.) The thing is there are many types of shops, online and off, all with particular needs. But by offering the ability to set defaults for certain fields makes it much easier to use.

There is one P-O-S developer who truly listened to what I had to say and literally called a version release "the Pete Version." I was awarded a plaque at the annual dealers convention that year. I didn't even use their software. I was not asking for me, I was passing on dozens of "it would be nice's" from customers and prospects. To some like iPaq, that's whining, to others, it's room for improvement.

During this time I imported I can't begin to tell you how many different files and file types. Most from suppliers with main frames. I programmed all sorts of bar code readers, sold systems to the US military, hospitals for bar coding records and specimens, Siemens has a plant that I set up a system in the cafeteria where the employees could come through and charge their lunch to their payroll account. I set up a number of cafeteria systems in schools where the students "charged" their lunches with a debit type card and the parents could get a report on what the kids were having for lunch each day.

During the last few years of the 90s I spent more time with GPS vehicle tracking, installing systems for small - up to 40 vehicles - fleets of tow trucks and contractors. During those years I was a "business partner" with AT&T, Bell Atlantic (now Verizon), Bell South and GTE Wireless (now part of Verizon Wireless). The systems I was selling from Trimble and several "mom and pop" sorts of developers were based on analog and CDPD networks and the wireless guys would line up prospects and schedule seminars for me to address groups of their wireless customers.

I pulled the plug on that at the end of 2000, when my wife had some health problems that meant I could not go out on the road for 4 or 5 days at a time. Started selling online in 2001 and haven't looked back. Except to say from time to time - "it doesn't have to be this way".

Open Cart is a great package and while some think I'm out to get Pete Cart, that is far from the case. It's simply that years of sitting with small business owners at their kitchen and dining room tables doing demos and hearing "What ifs" and passing those what ifs on to the developers and seeing results and seeing how things can be set up to ease the work of the users, saving those "dime a keystrokes", and making the end product both user friendly and productive is possible.

Call it whining all you want, I'm only trying to improve the package. And looking to save myself a few dimes, as well.

well pete here's what I take from your post you're used to using computer system developed at great cost, and that cost a great deal and are all designed for very specific audiences.

That's not to say that many if not most of your points aren't valid, but OpenCart is, and I imagine always will be a general purpose cart. This does make it seem somewhat limited to people in specific businesses. Auto parts as you mentioned for instance is a rather tough area to use a general purpose cart without putting some money into a good coder to customize it. Like I said I agree with many of your points particularly with the defaults. It really should pretty much be to the point that all you "have" to do to add a product is put in a name and price. I personally don't even agree with the model being mandatory though I understand the thought. There are some in the forums that will get very defensive if you make any claims that any portion of the cart is not perfect, but there are several that will work to improve things, but I believe that a slight alteration of the tone would help. Instead of saying "why do I have to keep doing this?" why not just politely ask in the feature requests if it would make sense to allow the user to set these things as defaults. I know you may see them as problems with the cart, but from a developers perspective anything that is actually working the way it was designed and coded is not a bug a change to that would be a feature request.

It's so nice to get a reasoned reply.

Trust me, I do not expect to be selling auto parts from a cart. The point was being able to set defaults and even set just the fields that you need to edit when entering new items. I overlooked, and I will say I did not want to make it too, too long, but most of the point of sale programs also offer the option to just tab to the fields of choice, rather than through everything on the page. And to also set defaults for the other fields.

You are right, they are not bugs, so I would not present them as such. Maybe the date / time thing, but not the others. And they didn't quite seem to me features, as I'm not asking for anything new, simply to allow a bit more choice with the existing fields that are already there, require no database changes, etc.

I guess having the stock message a truly usable field to give stock messages over and above In Stock may be a feature request, but as I sat there entering a few items I simply thought what I asked? Why do I have to do this? With a tweak or two it would save me and countless others time.

Including, I would think those who truly help here. For someone west of GMT who for the first time enters a few items and wonders why they don't show up probably the first thing they will do is come here and ask why not. I know I did when the multi-shop first was out. In my case it was because I had not ticked the box for Main Store, or whatever it is called. Who would have expected you had to assign the item to your only store? That's been fixed, but it's in the same vein as some of what I am asking.

And the other POS programs I'm talking about were not specific to a particular trade, but about as broad as Open Cart is. I sold it to school cafeterias, bowling alley pro shops, military quartermasters, cigar shops, you name it, Broad spectrum of users, but you could still set defaults and set your tab stops for the task at hand. They are all using fields in databases, it's just a matter of making things as easy and quick to use as possible.

while I can certainly agree on the defaults the tab stops are a bit of a different matter. They made sense in old green screen apps for a couple of reasons. First everything was usually on one screen or you completed one screen and then went to the next. With a tabbed interface (the ones across the top of the screen in opencart) everything is actually on one page you just don't see it all at once and how would you go about moving from one tab to the next. I guess you could change onblur of the last element, but then anytime you left that element it would change tabs. Oh and I guess I'll just interject here that yes you can set tab order in html though it is rarely used. Secondly back in that day the system was pretty much always setup by a knowledgeable person who could figure out how to setup the tab stops. I'm fairly certain that very few people who use opencart would understand how to setup the tab stops. There really wouldn't be any way to make it an "easy" process for most.

Even on the Product Data page, if you could jump to just the fields that needed changing, with the others set in the Systems/Setting it would speed things up. I'm not talking near as much about tab stops as I am default fields.

Shipping, Stock status, tax, QOH even for new items, etc. Many of these are already in the system, but unlike say Currency you cannot select a default.

And while the earlier versions were Xenix / Unix types with dumb terminals, then CP/M and DOS for the early POS, the later POS are all Windows and even in the 90s one had POS/online shared inventory capabilities. Even in the Windows versions the screens changed little, if any.

Actually, the first terminals we had were LCD screens in cast metal, which soon became boat anchors. When we upgraded to more traditional dumb terminals, I opted for the white screen Wyse type, rather than the bank teller green.

None of which has to do with OC, other than there are a few tweaks that would make it easier to work with when sitting for an hour or more entering inventory. A couple of tabs here and there, a few clicks elsewhere, being able to set a few defaults and tab right by those fields, and before long you can have some extra time on your hands.

peteVA wrote:
*knip*

Call it whining all you want, I'm only trying to improve the package. And looking to save myself a few dimes, as well.

Impressive story and fun to read. You had a busy and interesting live, a bit like my dad, he's also in his mids 70's.

About the whining; like I've said before in another topic, I agree with you on some, if not most, of your findings.
The problem I have is the tone you use when you mention them, that tone reminds me of people I know that only show up to complain about almost anything, feeling sorry for themselves because things just ain't the way they want it and cannot understand that it is not changed with a snap of their fingers.
My dad sounds like you in some ways, so don't get me wrong, maybe it is related because you are in your 70's.

Again, nothing personal, it's the tone that does it all.

I will do my best to return to my 30s.

Just a note - I guess it was in 1999 that Southern Bell gave me a demo unit of a device they were beginning to introduce. It was called a Blackberry and I thought "what a waste of time." Shows what I know, eh?

The first one was hinged and folded over clam shell fashion. Screen up top, keyboard on the bottom section. About the size of two packs of cigarettes, not slim at all. But, the "long life" battery on my cell phone made it just as thick, so it was not a big deal.