Current Zen Cart and osCommerce Work

Save for Later in the Product Info page

(05/2013) Save for Later now supports saving for later from the product info page.

Final Release - Free Gift Chooser Mega Module

(05/2013) The Zen Cart Free Gift Chooser Mega Module gives you the most important parts of the Big Chooser discounting module, along with a built-in admin panel. It is now ready for general release!

Manufacturer Discount Promotional Page

(05/2013) Zen Cart Manufacturer Discount now has a promotional page. It's a free download for people who have bought Manufacturer Discount! Not sure what a promotional page is or how to use it? Take a look at my documentation on Zen Cart Promotional Pages.

Beta Release - Free Gift Chooser Mega Module

(04/2013) The Zen Cart Free Gift Chooser Mega Module discounting module gives you the most important parts of Big Chooser with a built-in admin panel. It's ready as a pre-release now and will be complete by the end of the month.

Live Demos of Admin Page Mods

(04/2013) On my Admin Demo Shop site, you can login (userid: test / password: test) and test the following admin mods:

• Zen Cart Better Together Admin Panel
• Zen Cart Combination Discounts Admin Panel
• Zen Cart Free Gift Chooser Mega Module

Login here using test/test

osCommerce user? Don't worry - the osCommerce version of the Better Together Admin panel has the same look and feel as the Zen Cart version.

Better Together Admin for osCommerce 2.2 and 2.3

(04/2013) At long last, I have ported Better Together Admin for osCommerce from the Zen Cart version of the mod.

Recalculating Tax in Zen Cart when different taxes apply to shipping than to products

(04/2013) British Columbia, Canada has a tax regime under which shipping attracts only federal sales tax, whereas products attract federal and provincial sales taxes. Yikes. Who thinks this stuff up?

Anyway, if this applies to you, and you're using my discounting mods, you will need to make some changes. I have documented Handling Zen Cart tax recalculation when shipping and product taxes differ . The changes for osCommerce should be the same as well.

Discount Preview

(04/2013) I just love seeing people use Zen Cart Discount Preview! Take a look at these screenshots of people using Discount Preview to show off their Zen Cart Discounts.

Case Discounts

(04/2013) Zen Cart Case Discounts is a new module which permits you to set a per product case size and associated discount. It's like tiered pricing in Zen Cart Table Discounts, with an admin panel.

Manufacturer Discount

(04/2013) Zen Cart Manufacturer Discount now supports the user exits exclude_category() and exclude_product(), making it easy for you to have a manufacturer discounting policy, but also have specific exclusions.

Creating Kit Discounts using Big Chooser

(04/2013) Here are a couple of examples of how to Build Kit Discounts using Zen Cart Big Chooser.

osCommerce 2.3.x and Paypal

(03/2013) It looks as though Paypal (Website Payments Standard) can now handle osCommerce 2.3.x style discounting modules, although it does so in a very odd way. You can see osCommerce Big Chooser for an example.

Paypal Express still seems to have a problem.

Configuring Big Spender/Big Chooser from Admin

(03/2013) I'm always looking for ways to improve my list of Advanced Configuration techniques for That Software Guy's Zen Cart Discount Modules.

Here's how I set up Zen Cart Big Spender to be configured from an admin setting.

BOGO module update

(03/2013) A bug was found in BOGO Discount for Zen Cart, which will affect configurations using Discount Basis other than "No Restriction."

Big Buy Now - a buy now button for Big Spender and Big Chooser

(03/2013) The marketing text for Zen Cart Big Spender and Zen Cart Big Chooser can be shown on the Product Info page of your Zen Cart; it may also be shown on the Shopping Cart (and Checkout Shipping) page by Big Upsell. And using the new set_support_prod() method of these discounting modules, a direct link to a product can be provided. (This was possible before set_support_prod of course; it just required more coding.)

But if we have a link to a product, and the product does not have attributes, why not add a buy now button? Big Buy Now allows you to do just that! It displays a Buy Now button next to any set_support_prod link, as long as the product does not have attributes and may be added from a listing page.

Read more about

• set_support_prod in Zen Cart Big Spender
• set_support_prod in Zen Cart Big Chooser
• Big Buy Now

Cross Selling with a Zen Cart

(03/2013) Are you aware of all the Cross Selling options for Zen Cart? I have now listed all of the cross selling methods that can be used with my mods in one place. Hope it helps!

Automatically adding items to a Zen Cart

(02/2013) Most of my mods don't update the cart contents - there are only two exceptions. Auto Add, which has the ability to add an item when another item is added using the product info page. It is sometimes used for free items or items discounted using one of my other Zen Cart discounting mods.

Recently a customer asked if he could do a one-time-only auto add for a product which was commonly paired with another product, so I updated the API to permit this behavior.

(Can you guess the other exception? It's Coupon Auto Add!)

Coupon Restrictions in Zen Cart

(02/2013) Zen Cart already has a mechanism to restrict coupons to certain specific items. But what if you want more complex conditions - for example, two specific items (A and B) must be in the cart? The coupon is only applicable to a certain group?

Zen Cart Coupon Restrictions - Big Chooser Style allows you to add Zen Cart Big Chooser style restrictions to specific coupons. Take a look at the examples of restricting Zen Cart Coupons for some ideas of how you can use it to create more targeted coupons for your business.

Checkbox Cross Sell for Zen Cart

(01/2013) Zen Cart Checkbox Cross Sell allows your customers to add additional items (cross sells) to their cart when buying another item. It uses the configuration from Better Together to make suggestions from a list of items without attributes. It's a great way to increase the value of each customer order.

Checkbox Cross Sell is the latest addition to the Better Together World for Zen Cart.

Display price with VAT/TAX and Ex VAT/TAX Zen Cart updated for ZenCart 1.5

(12/2012) The Zen Cart mod Include and Exclude Tax in Prices (Net/Gross) has been updated to 1.5.0 with several new features:

• Include/Exclude feature available on Shopping Cart page
• Include/Exclude feature available during checkout

Updates to Big Chooser for Zen Cart

(12/2012) Most people, when doing an item-count based discount, just want the least expensive item to be discounted. This kind of discount - "Buy 3, get a 4th item free" can be done with Zen Cart Big Chooser. But sometimes people want to specify a particular item: "Buy 3, get product 768 free." This will work as long as product 768 is less expensive than the other 3 items in the cart - because Big Chooser selects items to meet the condition from most expensive to least expensive, and selects items to be discounted from least expensive to most expensive.

One customer had a high-priced item that was old stock that they wanted to clear out, so Big Chooser changes were required. So to allow I modified the behavior of set_negative_constraint in Big Chooser to make it work the way Big Spender does - simply eliminating the item from the decision about whether or not the constraint is met, but keeping it as a possibly discountable item. So you can say

   $this->add_condition("Buy any 3 items, get item 768 free", false); 
      $this->set_constraint(MINPRICE, 0.01, 3);
      $this->set_negative_constraint(PROD, 768);
      $this->set_discount(PROD, 768, 1, "%", 100);

and product 768 will be discounted even if it's the most expensive item in the cart.

Updates to Sale Ending/Special Ending for Zen Cart

(12/2012) Zen Cart Sale Ending/Special Ending has a new extension: display of Sale Ending/Special Ending text on Centerboxes. You can display this text in the centerboxes for new products, featured products and specials, which appear on your home page and other pages as configured in Admin -> Configuration. Sale Ending/Special Ending on Centerboxes is only $20.

Updates to Zen Cart Better Together Checkout Candy

(11/2012) The Checkout Candy addition to Zen Cart Better Together has had a help update to show how to tweak the Checkout Candy display on the Shopping Cart page. You can

• Reduce the total number of items shown
• Reduce the number of items shown for each product (if a product is linked to many possible discounts).
• Randomize the order of results

See Checkout Candy Installation Tweaks.

Updates to Zen Cart Big Chooser for Attribute Based Discounts

(10/2012) A bug was discovered which affects the creation of attribute based discounts in Zen Cart using Zen Cart Big Chooser. Thanks to Doc Mile fine paper store for the bug report and helping me track it down. Big Chooser 1.2.15 fixes this issue.

Why are BOGO Discounts better for your Zen Cart than Percent-off Sales?

(10/2012) I wrote a background article explaining the superiority of BOGO Discounts to Percent off Sales for your Zen Cart.

Re-sorting Discount Modules for Zen Cart

(10/2012) Users wishing to sort native discounts (such as Coupons or Group Discounts) after my Zen Cart discounts, with tax recalculation, should look at this page. (An example of this would be doing a Big Chooser discount, then applying a percent off coupon.)

Coupon Auto Add for Zen Cart

(10/2012) I have created a new mod which automatically adds a specified item to the cart when a specified coupon code is entered. It's called Coupon Auto Add. It works with Zen Cart 1.3.9 and 1.5.x.

Updates for Zen Cart 1.5.1

(09/2012) The following mods have been updated to support Zen Cart 1.5.1:

• Gift Wrap at Checkout for Zen Cart
• Customer Password Edit
• Order Copy
• Auto Add

All other mods work at their last updated version with no change.

Contribution Updates for Zen Cart

(09/2012) I have updated the Dual Pricing - Wholesale Pricing plugin for Zen Cart and the Shipping Estimator Sidebox for plugin Zen Cart .

BOGO Discounts across the whole cart for Zen Cart

(09/2012) A surprising number of people have asked for Buy One Get One Free or Buy Two Get One Free style discounts for all products in their cart (either for the same product or for products of lesser or equal value). You can do this with Big Chooser (see examples 7 and 8 in Advanced Configuration of That Software Guy's Zen Cart Discount Modules), but it requires writing a specific customization that makes it hard to easily switch to a different policy (say, Buy One, Get One half off) the next month. So I created BOGO Discount for Zen Cart, a module that lets you easily create "Buy some-number-of-X, get some-number-of X at a reduced price" style discounts - for identical items, items in the same category, or items without restriction.

And yes, Discount Preview supports BOGO Discount too!

Updates to using Coupons with Zen Cart Big Spender and Big Chooser

(08/2012) I had not updated the Zen Cart Coupon Extensions Help Page in a number of years; I just updated the changes required to 1.3.9 and 1.5.0 to make my coupon tricks work. This allows you to offer a complex discount (such as can be done with Zen Cart Big Spender or Zen Cart Big Chooser) but also make the discount dependant on a coupon code.

Updates to EZ-Pages Meta Tag Fields Contribution

(08/2012) The EZ-Pages Meta Tag Fields contribution has been updated to support Zen Cart 1.3.9.

osCommerce 2.3.1 - Promotional Pages for Big Chooser and Big Spender

(07/2012) osCommerce Big Chooser and osCommerce Big Spender now have promotional pages for osCommerce 2.3.1.

Zen Cart and osCommerce - Package Discounts using Big Chooser

(06/2012) Zen Cart Big Chooser and osCommerce Big Chooser both now offer the ability to discount a group of items on a percentage basis, so you can create a "package discount," such as "Buy items A, B and C, save 25% on the group."

Zen Cart - MailChimp Integration Updated

(05/2012) Those crazy chimps are hard workers! Their API has been updated to version 1.3, so my Zen Cart MailChimp Integration and Zen Cart Newsletter Discount modules have been updated. Please use the new versions of the contributions for any future installations you are doing.

Zen Cart - Free and Discounted Shipping now in Big Chooser

(05/2012) Last year I added this feature to Big Spender - free or discounted shipping after orders reached certain dollar thresholds. Now it's in Zen Cart Big Chooser. So shopowners have a mechanism to offer free or discounted shipping on orders which contain certain products, categories or manufacturers.

Fixes to Save for Later for products with attributes

(04/2012) Ajeh noticed that some attribute combinations were not well handled by Save for Later, so I submitted fixes to resolve this problem. Please update to Save for Later 1.3 if you are using Save for Later in your cart.

Fixes to Sales Report for my Zen Cart Discounting mods

(04/2012) All my discounting mods and the Zen Cart Sales Report mod have an interoperability issue described in this blog post.

Updates to Checkout Candy for Better Together

(04/2012) The Buy Now button on Checkout Candy now works on Cross Sells. And Cross Sells are now checked against the cart to ensure that no already purchased items are displayed.

Updates for Zen Cart 1.5.0

(03/2012) The following extensions to Better Together and Combination Discounts have been updated for Zen Cart 1.5.0:

• Better Together Promotional Page with Add both to Cart
• Better Together Marketing Text with Buy Both Now
• Better Together Centerbox with I Want Both
• Buy The Set for Combination Discounts
• Add All to Cart for Combination Discounts

See Better Together World and Combination Discounts World for a complete listing of all components for both discounting modules.

Zen Cart Combination Discounts - Add All to Cart

(03/2012) Combination Discounts now has a single button add for all items in a discount from the Promotional Page. It's called Add All to Cart. This extension is a new addition to the Combination Discounts World.

Zen Cart 1.5.0 Tricks and Tips

(03/2012) If you're using Zen Cart 1.5.0 on some test carts on your own PC or in an environment that doesn't require PCI compliance, take a look at my tips and tricks page for some commonly requested tweaks, including increasing the admin page timeout and turning off (or reducing the frequency of) mandatory password changes.

VAT tax recalculation method added to Big Chooser, Big Spender

(02/2012) Zen Cart Big Chooser and Zen Cart Big Spender have now been updated to do "VAT" style recalculation, which is preferred by some vendors who use embedded taxes in their product prices.

Using Big Chooser to Filter on Attributes for Discounting

(01/2012) Zen Cart Big Chooser has been enhanced to allow you to discount on the basis of attribute settings. See the set_constraint_attrfilter and set_discount_attrfilter functions.

Advanced Discount Configuration

(01/2012) I wrote an article that demonstrates some ways you can configure my discounting modules by using PHP in the setup() function. A few interesting examples are contained for people who'd like to do Advanced Configuration of That Software Guy's Zen Cart Discount Modules.