[ic] affliates, shipping options and learning interchange

[Caleb Phillips]

> New to the interchange mailing list, could use some help . . .
> 
> 2) I would like to set up some of the items in my store to have "Free 
> Shipping" - but I cannot seem to setup anything to do that. Can someone 
> please point me in the right direction for a possible solution?

There are essentially two ways you can get free shipping. Either free
shipping can be a result of a certain weight/quantity/subtotal on an
already implemented shipping mode, or it can be a shipmode itself.
Either way, you will end up modifying <catalog>/products/shipping.asc.
The tweaking of this file seems to cause more pains to developers than
anything: be careful, especially with the tab delimiters(there are some
empty fields). Here is an example of one way to do free shipping:

note: I am too lazy to take the [if][else] dealer stuff out...that is
specific to a couple of my hacks; just ignore them. What this does is:
notify the user if nothing is selected; charge them 1.95 for the first 9
dollars, 4.00 for 9-24.95 and give them free shipping above 24.95

STD     Standard        [subtotal noformat=1]   0       0       e
Nothing to ship!              {'PriceDivide' => "1",}
STD     Standard        [subtotal noformat=1]   0       9       f [if
scratch dealer][perl]return
0;[/perl][else]1.95[/else][/if]               {'PriceDivide' => "1",}
STD     Standard        [subtotal noformat=1]   9       24.95   f [if
scratch dealer][perl]return
0;[/perl][else]4.00[/else][/if]               {'PriceDivide' => "1",}
STD     Standard        [subtotal noformat=1]   24.95   9999    f [if
scratch dealer][perl]return
0;[/perl][else]0.00[/else][/if]               { free => 'Free!' }

Another useful hack I did was to change the line in the totals table in
shipping.asc that said [shipping] (which displays the shipping total)
to:

                <script language="javascript1.2">
                <!--
                if([shipping noformat=1] == 0) document.write('<b><font
color="#FF0000">FREE!</font></b>');
                else document.write("[shipping]");
                // -->
                </script>

This prints free if the shipping is 0. Kind of useful. However, it
doesn't quite adjust if the basket is empty. I am not that ambitious.

> 3) Finally, I have found the documentation and information archives to 
> be lacking.  I cannot find most of what I am looking for, and what I do 
> find seems to be disorganized and convoluted.

You are quite right on this one, but the fact that you paired this
complaint with your question is why you didn't get a response to your
other question...The interchange advocates get quite disgruntled over
complaints about documentation. Because no one is quite willing to solve
this problem, the lack of lucid documentation continues to be one of the
largest hurdles in learning to use interchange. A couple sites not
easily found that very helpful are:

http://interchangeville.com/forum/index.php
http://www.interchange.rtfm.info/

> Is there somewhere I 
> should go for superior documentation?  Are there companies who offer 
> training on Interchange? 

Not really. And before you ask, the last formal(read: dead-tree)
publication is years outdated.

Good Luck.

-- 
-------------------------------------------
| Caleb Phillips                          |
| The Studio Resource                     |
| IT Specialist                           |
|                                         |
| Handcrafted for you in Ximian Evolution |
-------------------------------------------