charles

Hi, We would like to see an example of the master / Slave contribution on an active store before we install it. Can someone give us the name of a store and how to get there? Please don't double post. Answer is in your forum thread. Your Thread Charles

As well as the Contribution Announcement Forum. Charles

Ooooh, I'm all goosebumpy! My subterranean water canon idea must have been a good one. :lol: Plane got cancelled for weather so I got a free day to get ahead. Let me know if you need someone 'opalized'. B) charles

ecartz Does this mean that with v1.1.4 slaves can now have attributes of their own or at present do they only have the attributes of the master? Thanks, Charles

Kvasir and iveo, I think you are missing something. If I remember correctly, the ability to turn off the stock level requirement so that an 'out of stock' item can be ordered is a OSC option you can set in Admin and has nothing to do with MasterProducts. If I am wrong then I apologize. Everyone, please, Remember, this is a freeware contribution and Matti has a business he is setting up an running. One should take care of self first, family second and community third. I personally need in the worst kind of way the version 2 he is working on but respect his need to do for himself first so I don't press him with ANY questions. If I had the time myself I would certainly do so despite my limited php knowledge, but I too have a business and family to support. We all got there by hacking the code to learn and you can too given the right amount of time. No one is required to use any contributions, it is a personal choice, so please be patient. Your clients need to understand that or you should not offer them something that you know is not 100% available and then press Matti for results. He will never get finished if he has to keep troubleshooting everyone else' problems. There is a legend of a old opal miner who had a favorite cat. The cat died, so he wrapped it in his favorite hat, buried it in his opal mine and abandoned the claim. About sixty years later, two young fellows took over the claim and in their exploration they found an opalized cat wrapped in a hat. Be nice to Matti. He is an opal miner with international connections and friends in the Outback who often have an unusal sense of justice. I personally would love to have a black market company rivaling deBeers and specializing in top quality opal rough in shades of 'Soylent Green'! :lol: Best of luck, Charles

This has already been dealt with on page 5 with code fixes on page 6 Limit product quantities The 'in stock' number is the default in version 1. You also might look at the code fixes on pages 3 and 4. They display 'Sorry, temporarily out of stock." Good luck, Charles

It seems to me there was a problem with double buttons in admin dicussed farther back in the thread. This is not in admin but the source of that problem may help you with locating the source of this one. I'm not sure but I think it had to do with identical code from two different mods which both got cut and pasted into the same file. However, in the case of a total file replacement it may be a loopback problem caused by another mod which doesn't recognise slaves as being individual products with their own product numbers. Hope that helps, Charles

Veral, I believe those quantities can be set in Admin after the products are loaded. However, I think you should be able to load those quantities at the same time as the products are loaded, possibly by manual adjustment to the text upload file before your script uploads it. Maybe your script can be modified to read the inventory and load that info into a spreadsheet program like Excel, modified by you by adding the appropriate column and loading it with the inventory amounts, and then uploaded by Easypopulate? Charles

Matti I tried to respond this afternoon but the forum was down. So, if Veral uses identical individual slave names per master, like 'mint condition', my suggestion of including the initials of the master in the slave name would be a good one to keep from getting confused. I can see the overlap of stones and books, except, stones are truly individual, case in point, opal. Absolutely NO stone has the same flash/combination of color, carat weight can vary by .01 (with the right scale :P ), some mines produce less stable rough than others and so the stones may tend to craze over time unless they are put on the roof of the minig shed for a year or two to 'proof' them, etc. and then you have to be sharp enough to do business with dealers like Dag Johnson :lol:. Each stone is truly it's own inventory item. But books, while they get very detailed, can still exist in inventory in multiples, 2 'mint condition', 4 'good condition', and '0' bad condition (if your a wise dealer ;) ) Remember my thoughts from page 17? It seems to me that slaves of slaves, with attributes, with the ability to set the inventory to '0' for 'parent' slaves might work fairly well for Veral, allowing him to manage his inventory and keep it straight? Oh yes, and what do you think about entering the masters now while I wait for v2? Charles

Veral As for the master and slaves part of the question, I get the impression from your post that you have made the book in 'mint condition' to be the master and all other quality conditions to be the slaves. I would make the book title and description itself the master and let 'mint condition' be just another slave. For example... Master: Uncle Tom's Cabin - Harriet Beecher Stowe's classic remarkable tale of masters and slaves in the old south. Copyright 1226 Slave: Mint condition Slave: Good condition Slave: Poor condition Sorry folks, but, as an extraordinary coincidence, this is the only antiquarian book I personally own. It was my fathers copy, April 1930 (3rd?) printing, and is in only good condition due to his signature and very slight dog-ear of about 10 pages due to prior poor handling. As you will see below, it is also an excellent example of how a product line can challenge this mod. First, to try and answer your questions. If I remember reading this and the 'announcement' threads correctly, I believe that inventory of slaves is already in place (see the first three pages of the 'announcement' thread.) I think that somewhere in the 'support' thread there are patch(es) presented to control the amount of available inventory presented in the dropdown box (you may have 10 copies but can configure MP to show only 3 in the dropdown to avoid the dropdown being too long, however the dropdown will reduce to, say 2, when your inventory goes to 2) Also, I think the patch(es) presented would state "sorry, out of stock" if a particular slave was not available or not show it at all - your option. Also, around page 29 or 30 in 'support', in version 2 there will be the option of having a slave being associated with 'N' masters - something I think you do NOT want in your case, since 'mint condition' of one book would be a different inventory product than 'mint condition' of a different book. I believe all of this will be configurable in Admin so it should not be a problem. What I am not sure on is how this mod would recognize that the 'mint condition' slave for one book is a different slave than the 'mint condition' slave of a different book. Of course, you could always preceed the slave name (book condition) with the initials of the book. For example... Master: Uncle Tom's Cabin - Harriet Beecher Stowe's classic remarkable tale of masters and slaves in the old south. Slave: UTC Mint condition Slave: UTCGood condition Slave UTC Poor condition Master: Uncle Remus Tales - Joel Chandler Harris tells the adventures of a wily rabbit in traditional Old South ethnic lingo. Slave: URT Mint condition Slave: URT Good condition Slave URT Poor condition I have not actually used MP since I necessarily have to wait for the features offered in version 2 for it to be of use to my particular product lines, however, I believe you are correct in setting inventory of the master to '0'. I belive using the master for one of the inventoried options (mint condition) and slaves for the others (good and bad conditions) will result in an inventory problem. On the other hand, if the book is a new release, New York Times Best Seller, then it would be a stand alone product and set the master inventory quantity to whatever your stock level. But, as in your stated case, if the product is an antiquarian book and you have different inventory levels for all three conditions, then set the master to '0' and individually set the inventory level for each slave. Now, to bring up a point of curiosity, I wonder how this mod will actually work for you because of the nature of your products. You may want to list your slaves by country, copyright, and/or printing year first, then condition? Folks, what follows here is not a socio-political comentary but an example of what this poor guy is going through and whether this mod can help him. The original printing of Uncle Tom's Cabin (after it's presentation as a series of magazine articles in 1851) was in 1852. My copy is copyright 1926, 3rd printing (1930). While still respectable in value, it is no where near the value of one of the original 300,000 printed in 1852 or one of the ~40 editions printed in England in the first eight months. By turn of the century over 1.5 million copies had been sold in England alone and it had been translated into more than 40 languages It was second only to the Bible in it's reach into popular thought. Now, copies are classified by 'condition' for resale. Essentially, any combination of factors would basically make each book it's own stand alone (master) product. The benefit of this mod is in, as I have described above, presenting the title, author,and description and/or brief general history of the book. but it looks to me as if each permutation of printing specifics would be a separate slave, which in this case, could be in the hundreds. does anyone have suggestions as to how he could effectively deploy the mod? In this case, you may want to list only the American printings as slaves and if you have, say, a copy of the Italian version, "Il Zio Tom", make a note under the general description of the master saying that "Some european versions are available, please call for availabled printings", depending on the extent of your inventory? Anyone else have any ideas? Good luck, Charles

When Master Products is installed on an OSC site with an existing database, are the products already in the database considered by the mod to be master products? Specifically, where I'm going is, to save time and get a jump on getting my database loaded, can I go ahead and load my master products and descriptions with $0 pricing into OSC without the mod while I'm waiting for version 2 and then load the slaves with their attributes after I have version 2 installed? OR Maybe I should install version 1 and load my master products and descriptions with $0 pricing while I'm waiting for version 2 and then load the slaves with their attributes after I have version 2 installed? I'm thinking that it would be better to load the products and info without the MPv.1 mod while waiting on MPv.2 because many of the hacks discussd in this thread will already be incorporated and sorted out in the new version, and so be an easier install. Also, along these lines, I see Beyond Compare recommended a lot in these forums. Personally, I have always used CompareIt! Does anyone have experience with both of these programs, and so, can advise if I should migrate to Beyond Compare? Are they equivalent or are there more features in Beyond Compare? Thanks, and waiting patiently, looking forward to this great mod. Charles PS: I'm visualizing a host of sexy cheerleaders cheering Matti on wearing those 'black spandex nurses uniforms', not the XXL's, and the 'super nice red bras', in the XXL's, mentioned earlier in this thread. :lol: (Sorry ladies)

Thanks Matti, along those lines, what do you think of my suggestion which I posted under Weekly Summary, but maybe it should have been under Contributions instead? Charles Link to suggestion

Hello Matti, With OSC development gearing towards the new features in php4, is Master Products being written to play nice in php3 ? That's the version my host is running. Thanks, Charles

Cool B) , Another feature I thought of is the ability to turn off the price prefix in the options. Given my scenario, if I create a 'size' option for the slave which would basically be my base price, the dropdown window shows the parens and the + prefix - to me a very unprofessional presentation for product pricing - but I do want the +/- prefix for the addon options. At present, if I leave the option price prefix blank it reverts to a negative value, making my base price negative - definitely NOT good (hehe). I played around with this in the database a while back by trying to make the prefix NULL but I always got the negative price result so I think it is yet another coding challenge. Just to think-tank here (remember my WIKI tirade?), I'm sure there are other features, like allowing slaves of slaves. For what purpose I couldn't guess, but you know people, someone will want it for some reason. Of course that would come full circle and approach the categories structure. But then to be able to place an abbreviated master/slave window (no pricing or options) in one of the side columns , possibly incorporated into the categories box. This would either replace the need for categories or expand the navigation options of the categories box, freeing up dispay space in the middle for yet more product info immediately visible to the customer without more scrolling. Now... my understanding is that this contribution is not an modular installable but a code hack installable. So since the 'attributes to slaves' feature is intrinsic to what I need, should I wait for your new release to incorporate the mod or should I go ahead and incorporate now and then upgrade via some set of upgrade instructs (if they are to exist)? I use CompareIt! myself. As long as I know which files were changed it would not be a problem. Since it is a hack upgrade vs modular that would be available by default I suppose. My biggest concern is if there are changes to the database such as 'options to slaves'. This is exactly the feature (lack thereof) which has been my greatest stumbing block for so long. To input my data with the options to the masters to get the site up and running would mean re-editing most of the products to make use of the new structure. Unfortunately I do not have a spreadsheet program to make use of easypopulate. Maybe you know the answer to this also. Can I create the appropriate tab delimited file in any text editor, say wordpad, and upload it with easypoplate? Thanks, Charles :lol: P.S. And of course, if we could 'easypopulate' the slaves, there would be no reason for masters, but, that wouldn't work for me. My wife is the master and if I 'easypopulated', I'd go bankrupt from all the little slavelets running around. Or not... I could start the OSCommerce black market slave trade using 'easypopulate' and become rich. Sorry, I was just thinking of the guy on page 1 who took offense to the name. :lol:

Hey Matti, I know this will sound bizarre but, could you also arrange to be able to turn off the pricing for the slaves as well? Case in point. I have an aromatherapy business. I have 80 different blends. Each blend has 3 different concentrations. Therapeutic for medicinal use, Annointment for perfuming use, Lite Essence for massage use. Each concentration comes in a variety of sizes and not all sizes apply to all concentrations. But, the basic blend recipe stays the same. A pricing and data entry nightmare. (I've been working on a similar mod but you beat me to it.) So, by being able to turn off the pricing for both master and slave, I can list the blend as the master, concentration as the slave and, using the attributes to slaves modification, have several options dropdowns which contain pricing and add-ons, such as one for size which would contain the basic price and then others to upsell such as one for fancy bottling choices, one for special tops like spritzers and orifice reducers, etc. Also, as a future admin modification, the ability to choose the order of the options listings would be cool too, instead of always alphabetical, so that my Botling choices don't get listed before the basic price per Size. Thanks for listening, Charles :)