[ic] Converting from commerce.cgi

[Jim Balcom]

I've been running Rich Carey's commerce.cgi for quite some time. It's a
tremendous set-up, but I've outgrown it. I'm in the process of
converting commerce.cgi to IC. What follows are a few notes along the
way of what I have done and what I have found.

First: I am using the 'Construct Something' demo to build upon. That's
what came with my 'kit' and I started 'renovating' before the next
version came out. While I may upgrade my IC server at a later date to
keep up with the latest and greatest advances and features, I do not
intend to 're-invent' my store from some later demo. I will simply add
whatever tags seem appropriate to deal with a current problem/concern.

OK: 
A friend of mine wrote a 2-line awk script for me that converted the
present store data base into a new 'products.txt'. In this particular
conversion there were many SKU's that were the same. 
Be advised that each SKU must be unique. IC looked at this mess and
deleted all of the duplicate SKU's. I had kept back-up copies of stuff
and went in and cleaned it up. But, it was added work that could have
been avoided had I created unique SKU's.

QUANTITY PRICING:
My vendors supply my products in various quantities. Each one seems to
be trying to be unique as far as bag and case quantity are concerned.
The construct demo is set up to allow dealers to get wholesale prices,
based on quantity. So, I ripped out the dealer code column in
pricing.txt. I added more columns in this file to accomodate the
various quantities that come in various bags and various cases. 
And, in catalog.cfg, I altered the CommonAdjust line to get rid of the
dealer code, and to reflect the current quantity columns.

I set up my codes so that a purchase of 22 individual items would be a
bag and get a better price, and the purchase of 88 individual items
would be a case and would get them an even better price. That worked
great! But, if I purchased 50, it went back to the higher individual
price. I looked back through the archives some more. I found a note
from Mike that EVERY column needs to have an entry. It quickly became
apparent that a blank column causes it to insert the price from the
main file.

Jon Jensen's Table Editor (te) is vital for dealing with this sort  of
thing. With te and mouse clicks I was able to easily populate each of
those columns. (I've got 43 of them!)

I must also add that I have learned that in various fields it wants
comma-delimited variables.
As an example in the size field... You can put in as many sizes as you
want, just put a comma between them:
Small,Medium,Large,X-Large,Elephant
THat will give the customer a drop-down box during check out. I would
like to see this somewhere earlier in the ordering process. For the
moment, I am making it clear in the descriptions that they can make this
selection at check out.
On the e-mail that I get as the vendor, it is very clear what sizes and
colors the customer  wanted.

I've managed to hack through 'Construct Something' and to give it my
own personal perverse philosophy.

I've managed to use the various 'I Gotchas' to slim down my data base
entries and to streamline shopping for my customers, and to (hopefully)
produce more revenue.

If you haven't gotten Jon's te yet, give it a high priority. It's not a
complete Swiss Army Knife, but it's very close.

-------------------

I dunno who built up 'Construct Something'. I owe them a DeLuxe blow
job! It's a tremendous piece of work! It's too bad that nothing has been
documented about it.

--------------------

A couple pieces of advice.... 
1. It's been readily admitted that the documentation is sparse. I
signed on to try to help the documentation team, and quickly left since
the documentation for the tags was so far over my head as to attract
thunder storms! But, plow around in there. Look at what's in the demos. 
Experiment with them a bit. Most of it becomes readily apparent with a
bit of studying.

2. When you get stumped, talk to Akopia.com. They are doing fee-based
Tech Support. I paid $500 for ShopSite, only to learn that to get
zone-based shipping I needed to spend $2,000 for the product. I later
learned that ShopSite grew out of MiniVend, as did Interchange.
I think that paying a Tech Support Fee for free software is not a bad
trade-off. OTOH, I paid $150 for Quicken 2001 and there is NO free Tech
Support. Nor, is there any documentation about how to use the software.
That is all fee based. I tried to reconcile my bank statement and
something stupid happened, and totally wrong. I ended up un-installing
the software, re-installing and re-entering my data. Or, I could have
paid Quicken $40 to tell me how to correct that. And, when the next
glitch comes up, another $40 to tell me how to correct that one. They
should give Quicken away for free with their Tech Support rip-offs!
(It's quite easy to get $1,000 invested in software that would not have
been necessary with a manual!)

Akopia reverses that! Give the software away and then charge when the
going gets tough! 
      
And, finally, that glob of gray matter that resides in Mike Heins brain
pan has simply got to be on a present day par with Einstein!

I'm closing in on getting my store moved from commerce.cgi to IC. IC
is powerful! It's a LOT of work to get it set up, but I still think that
it is well worth the work!

-= Jim =-

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Jim's Linux-Operated Underground Bomb Shelter

Tagline for Monday, June 25, 2001 at 21:20 PM:
Oxymoron: Vacant Dwelling.

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This Linux System has been up 224 hours  

My web page: http://www.idk-enterprises.com
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