futura

Hello Chris A bit more to add to my last post. I have followed your advice and found one contribution that I think combined with yours will work. Following your advice it has been a very interesting learning experience for me. TY :-) It seems that the original engine of os commerce only allows you to buy or select one attribute at a given time with a particular product and if we we took an album say with say 10 tracks you may like only three of the tracks. Thus it would be nice to buy all three at once. Correct me if I am wrong but I think Attribute Sets Plus Allows me to do this? I have also found a contribution called grid attributes which i think would lay it all out in the way originally mentioned. The last nut to crack is how to avoid the attributes either adding themselves to the listed product or subtracting themselves from the listed product. I did find a contribution that allowed you to multiply and divide but nothing to treat each attribute as an entirely seperate entity. Your work around idea of having the main product set to zero then attributes with an actual ALBUM attribute then track 1, 2, 3, 4 is spot on and for them moment I think that will work. Final question is on installation of your contribution. Here is the quote from your user guide: ***** Step 1: DATABASE 1.1 Use the file Linkmatics_AttributeSetsPlus_lct.sql to create new tables in the database. No existing tables are alterred in the original osC schema and no existing data is effected. When you execute the SQL in the AttributeSets_lct.sql file it will create three new custom tables. products_attributes_sets products_attributes_sets_elements products_attributes_sets_to_products Once the script has completed you must verify that the new tables have been created correctly. ***** Sorry to be so clueless but: How do you execute AttributeSets_lct.sql? How do you verify these these new tables have been created successfully? At a guess I would say you log into PHPmyAdmin and look at the database structure in there but I am not 100% sure. Very much hope you dont mind all the questions. Kind regards Will

Hello Chris Thnaks for your reply.. Thats very helpful information and certainly gives me some avenues to travel down and see what I find. I see your points about looking harder at how osc handles attributes and maybe my answer is already there. I also understand about the value of peoples time and I dont seek a hand holding exercise as i like to learn but the pointers you have given here are a great help thank you :-) Do you think that considering the requirements I have then your contribution Attribute Sets Plus will help me or do you think I should look for answers with what I already have within the standard osc installation? I am assuming YES as this is one of the bullets in the Attributes Set Plus contribution write up: " - Ability to add multiple attribute sets to a single product at a time. " I understand this as - in my case rather than say ie a T SHirt being Orange, Pink and Yellow you have Album as T Shrt and Tracks as T SHirt Colours correct? Whilst reading the forums it seems that the more contributions I add the more posibility of compatibility issues and contribution clashes can arrise. although reading the description of your contribution it would seem Atributes Set Plus could almost assist with this possibilty rather than hinder. I am intending in adding the super downloads plus contribution and possibley with a bit of tweaking to the product display as described in previous post. Hearing your opinion on this would also be very helpful. Kind regards Will

Hello I am trying to install this contrib and just wanting to make things clear before i go tearing into my shop and uploading files and making changes to files etc.. If possible please can someone read through my written translations of the installation instructions and maybe set things correct? The contribution sounds amazing and is exactly what I am looking for so hopefully with a little more guidance results will be achieved. I am also hoping by doing things in this way if anyone else reads this post and is very new to OS commerce it will help them also. I am a newbie to OS Commerce so I have added in there the obstacles I have encountered so far. I hope this helps. As you will see I can only go so far with the instructions at this point but once these points are clear I will add another post with the updated results. Thanks to Alex for coding this contribution it looks ideal for my needs and likely many other people also. My Experiences of the installation of this contribution STEP #1 - Run sql scripts BACKUP YOUR DATABASE NOW! ** This is covered well in some of the basics of os commerce forums you do this through the admin control of OS Commerce. The only thing to watch out for here is to make sure that you have the write permissions correct on your admin/backups folder this confused me for a while as the backup option would not appear if the permissions are set to read only. Once I CHMOD ed the backups folder (chmod changes read/write permissions best to usually do this from your admin control panel on your web host) with write permissions the backup option worked fine. To really be sure I had backed up my database (and shop for that matter) I then copied the entire set of files and folders of OS Commerce off the web server and onto my local drive (including the database backups i just made) (I burnt a DVD copy of it, filed this) I then dropped OS commerce onto another spare domain I had just to be sure that the shop was properly backed up. I am sure someone can correct me here I am not so sure it is very good practice to create another identical live shop on another domain but as soon as i tested it worked i deleted it once again via the admin control panel on my web host. So a few hours later onto part 2 :-) ** Run both sql scripts via phpMyAdmin. ** Once again this was a bit of a struggle getting phpMyAdmin to login to my SQL Database correctly. The problem I encountered here was not having the server option setup correctly in phpMyAdmin. On my phpmyadmin login via my host there is a drop down that selects the server. On my version there was about 14 servers to choose from. If you dont get this right then no login. This was resolved with a call to tech support and they showed me the right server to select before attempting to login. Now 'run both sql scripts via phpMyAdmin'. Please can someone clarify what this exactly means?? The way I read it is I am assuming there are a couple of scripts in this contribution that need to be run using phpmyadmin correct? if so how? if not what does this mean? Perhaps guidance on the exact location and name of the script would help here. ** - Notice - If Downloads Controllers has already been installed before, DO NOT run downloads_controller_english.sql again. ** I am assume this is referring to one of the SQL scripts? I think this means if you have the 'downloads controller' contribution already installed (ie the contribution this one is based on) then dont run this particular file in phpmyadmin. how you actually run an sql file in phpmyadmin would be helpful info at this point.** STEP #2 - Copy all files in new_files/catalog over /catalog/admin/filegroup_db_setup.php /catalog/admin/includes/group_download.php /catalog/admin/includes/languages/english/images/buttons/ic_down.gif /catalog/admin/includes/languages/english/images/buttons/ic_up.gif /catalog/includes/languages/english/images/buttons/button_download.gif ** I have come across this before in various attempts at adding OS templates. I am quite certain this means - Take the following files above that are located in the same positons in the contribution folder you have just unzipped onto your c drive and ftp them across into the same locations in OS commerce. By doing this you are writing over the original files in OS commerce with these modified ones. This will complete this part of the upgrade process. ** STEP #3 - Modify existing files BACKUP THESE FILES NOW! catalog/checkout_process.php catalog/download.php catalog/admin/orders.php catalog/admin/products_attributes.php catalog/admin/includes/configure.php catalog/admin/includes/database_tables.php catalog/admin/includes/languages/english/products_attributes.php catalog/includes/database_tables.php catalog/includes/modules/downloads.php ** I ftped these from the live shop onto my c drive and burnt a cd. In my comments in point 1 about backing up the database by moving the whole shop onto the c drive i already have backups of these files., along with the backed up database files and whole shop and i know they work as i tested the shop on another domain :-) ** - STEP 3.1 - Modified files are in modified_files folder of this package. Please use file comparing tool like WinMerge to make modifications to catalog/checkout_process.php catalog/download.php catalog/includes/modules/downloads.php catalog/admin/orders.php catalog/admin/products_attributes.php ** I think this means there is code in these files that needs to be added to the original files already on the live sersion of oscommerce. I assume winmerge (hence the name) will spot the difference and merge the two files together. Once each file you have seperately merged you then copy over onto the live shop and the upgrade at this stage is then completed ** If you didn't modify these 5 files before, you can upload them and overwrite the existing files. (Only apply to osCommerce 060817 update) ** This is very confusing and I am struggling to make sense of it can someone make this a bit more clear what this means??? ** - STEP 3.2 - And then add new definitions to files list below: (Do NOT overwrite your existing files with the ones came with this package!!) catalog/includes/database_tables.php catalog/admin/includes/configure.php catalog/admin/includes/database_tables.php catalog/admin/includes/languages/english/products_attributes.php ** I am unsure what new definitions means? I dont understand what is meant in brackets either? At this point my upgrade of this contribution has reached a grinding halt... please help!! ** STEP #4 - Run db setup Run catalog/admin/filegroup_db_setup.php in your browser. ** This seems fairly clear. Just type the location of this file into your browser ie www.mysite.com/catalog/admin/filegroup_db_setup.php ** This file will create the initial file group entry in your database for each language you have. ** Assuming this means that the filegroup_db_setup.php file will automate this task. ** - Important! - The file group id #0 must be defined by this file, it's for downloads which are not using file groups (single file per item). ** Dont understand what this means at all. Any clarification here massively appreciated. ** STEP #5 - Modify Payment Modules Some payment modules, such as osCommerce PayPal IPN module, bypass checkout_process.php, which causes the modification skipped and fails this contribution. Modification in checkout_process.php must be manually coded into such payment modules. ** Assume this means that if you install Paypal IPN module (one of the payment module options in the admin control of oscommerce) then it bypasses the standard procedure of check out in oscommerce. During the standard checkout process of oscommerce the file checkout_process.php is utilised and is one of the files that gets modified by this contribution. Therefore in order to maintain this modified code you need to find the relevant modified code and apply it into the relevant payment module you add to your shop.** ** Just a thought but if someone has already made these modifications to these payment module files with success could it be something to add to the next upgrade of this contribution? ** STEP #6 - Setup Super Download Shop Please refer to the Setup Downloads section to setup Super Download Shop That has been my experience of the instructions of this contribution so far. A lot of this will be due to inexperience and not really understanding a lot of these terms. However, if you are like me and new to oscommerce and want to get involved in producing some kind of download shop I think someone adding some clarification to these points would be really helpful. Hope this is possible. Kind regards to everyone working with OS Commerce. Will

Hello Chris Had a basic question about your Atributes Set Plus contribution? I am trying to figure out how to build an OS Commerce site that deals with digital downloads for Albums. The idea is to have an album for sale as one item but also if needed to have all the individual tracks available for purchase individually if required. A great example of this in practice is located at this store http://www.twisteddownloads.com From what I can see of the standard OS commerce attributes settings, it is more geared up to things such as 'Colour' or 'Size' that would share similarities across multiple products. In this case I need effectively a 'Sub Product' option where by the sub product is a part of the main product and can be purchased individually if required. Please can you tell me if your contribution would allow me to achieve this goal? Also this may be a bit off topic but I love the way the tables of products are drawn out on the shop I mentioned do you know how this can be achieved as I think this makes the look of this shop very different to the usual Shopping Cart style designs I see. Hope you can help. Kind regards Will