Zen Cart Combination Discounts Admin Panel

Combination Discounts Admin simplifies the process of adding discounts to Combination Discounts.

Background: See the Zen Cart Matrix-o-discounts for a perspective on Combination Discounts.

Relevance: Zen Cart™ 1.3.5 - 1.3.9, 1.5.0. You must have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Current Version: 1.0.1

Cost: $60. This is a separate fee from the fee for Combination Discounts. Buy Now! (Note: this low price covers software only for self-installation)

Installed Cost: $120.00 (Professional installation by That Software Guy)

Installation Difficulty: Moderate

Installation Instructions: click here

Common Installation Issues: click here

Support Thread: My commercial software is not supported on the Zen Cart forum. Please email me questions instead.

FAQ: click here

Bugs: click here

Incompatibilities: This software is believed to be incompatible with Simple SEO URL by Numinix. Please do not order this software if you are using this mod.

Overview:

This pages assumes a basic familiarity with Combination Discounts.

Combination Discounts is a very popular module, but many people have told me they dislike need to edit a file in order to add "linkages" (the term I used to describe associating one product with another for the purpose of discounting). So I created an admin panel which allows you to add linkages in a way which will be familiar to users of the Zen Cart admin system.

Combination Discounts Admin Panel

The page is broken into two areas: on the top, a list of existing discounts, and on the bottom, a form to allow you to add new linkages to create new discounts.

Discounts are listed in the order they were created. Discounts can currenly be deleted but not edited directly; instead, to edit a discount, delete the existing one and create a new one.

Creating discounts is done in two steps. First, you specify the product to be discounted: the selector PROD, CAT or PRICE, the category id, product id or price to be discounted, and the count of items which may be discounted. Then you specify the number of conditions, i.e. the number of other things which must be done in order to get this discount. For instance, the example from the Combination Discounts help page is

$this->add_linkage(PROD,26,1,PROD,25,1,PROD,27,1,"$", 30);

This is read, "get $30 off one product 27 if you buy one product 25 and one product 26." There are two conditions to this discount; a product 26 purchase (quantity one), and a product 25 purchase (quantity one).

Combination Discounts Admin - Add a new linkage - step 1

Once you select a selector type, the appropriate fields are filled in for the discounted product, category or price.

When selector is set to "Product," the "Buy" dropdown is automatically populated with a complete list of categories, with a list of products for the selected category. Select the category you wish to use and then the product under it.
When selector is set to "Category," the "Buy" dropdown is automatically populated with a complete list of categories. Select the category you wish to use and then the product under it.
When selector is set to "Price," a text entry box is presented; enter the price you wish to match against.

For instance, in this example, selector type "Product" is used. Category 5 products include product 27, the product to be discounted.

You then select the discount units (% or $ off), fill in the amount, and set the number of conditions. Then press "Add Conditions."

Combination Discounts Admin - Add a new linkage - step 2

This takes you to the next page. We selected 2 conditions, so we have two places to specify the product, category or price we need to match in order to get the discount.

Combination Discounts Admin - Add a new linkage - step 2

We will select products 25 and 26, with quantity one for each. To create this discount, press the "Create Discount button.

Combination Discounts Admin - Add a new linkage - complete

The page refreshes, and you see your new linkage at the top of the list.

If you decide you don't want to offer one of your discounts, you have two options: you may permanently delete the discount with the "Delete" button, or you may temporarily suspend the discount with the "Set Inactive" button. When you set a discount inactive, the notation "INACTIVE" is painted next to the discount in red letters. This discount will not be applied at checkout, nor will it show up in the Combination Discounts marketing text, on the Combination Discounts Promotional Page, or in Checkout Candy for Combination Discounts on your shopping cart and shipping page.

Combination Discounts Admin - set linkage inactive

When you inactivate a discount, the "Set Inactive" button changes to say "Set Active." To reactivate this discount, simply press the "Set Active" button.

Installation Instructions:

Prior to Installation:

Go into Admin -> Tools -> Store Manager, and click on "Reset ALL Products Master Categories ID".

Installation

Back up everything! Try this in a test environment prior to installing it on a live shop.
Two zip files are provided. Unzip both, and copy the contents of the two unzipped folders to the root directory of your shop. Note that the zip file "cd_admin_xajax.zip" is identical to the file "bt_admin_xajax.zip" from Better Together Admin; there is no need to reinstall it if you have Better Together Admin.
Run the cd_admin.sql file against your database. You can do this in phpMyAdmin or you can use your Zen Cart admin panel under Tools->Install SQL patches.

If you are using phpMyAdmin and have used a prefix in your database, modify cd_admin.sql to reflect this (i.e. change "combination_discounts_purchase" to "zen_combination_discounts_purchase" if your prefix is "zen_", and make the same change for "combination_discounts_required").
Edit the file
```
includes/modules/order_total/ot_combination_discounts.php
```
Go to the bottom of file to the setup() function. Change it so it looks like this:
```
   function setup() { 
         if (!IS_ADMIN_FLAG) { 
            require(DIR_WS_MODULES . 'combination_discounts_admin.php'); 
         }
   }
}
?>
```
The last 2 lines are the end of the file.

You should delete all manually entered discounts here so that all your discounts will be visible through the admin panel.
Combination Discounts Admin will now be available in the admin panel under Tools.

Installation Problems:

The most common installation problems for this module are as follows:

Unfamiliarity with installing mods. Please review my Guide to Mod Installation on Zen Cart.
Forgetting to modify includes/modules/order_total/ot_combination_discounts.php as described above.
Installing Buy The Set, which changes includes/modules/order_total/ot_combination_discounts.php and forgetting to reapply the modification noted above.
Some hosts require scripts which are run from a URL - for example,
```
http://your-store.com/your-admin/better_together_admin.php
```
to have permissions 644. You may see a message like
```
Internal Server Error

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.
```
when running Better Together Admin if this is the case with your host. Simply set the permissions of admin/better_together_admin.php to 644 using your FTP client (or perhaps your CPanel File Manager).
One European IE6 user reported that the linkage type dropdown was not responding. The fix was to match the XAJAX encoding type with what was actually being received from the server. At the top of the file admin/combination_discounts_consts.php, under the version number, insert the line
```
define ('XAJAX_DEFAULT_CHAR_ENCODING', 'iso-8859-1');
```
(or whatever your encoding is). You can tell you have 8859-1 encoding if you look at your web pages and see a line like this close to the top:

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />

If so, and your dropdowns are not responding, try this fix.

Some people who use ISO 8859 encoding also have reported getting errors like this:

PHP Warning:  htmlspecialchars() [function.htmlspecialchars]: Invalid multibyte sequence in argument in 
... admin\includes\xajax\xajax_core\xajaxResponse.inc.php on line 1575

If this is happening to you, edit the file admin/combination_discounts_admin.php and delete the function addCreateOptions (around line 20-30). Insert this in its place:

  function addCreateOptions($sSelectId, $options) {
    $this->script("document.getElementById('".$sSelectId."').length=0");
    if (sizeof($options) >0) {
       foreach ($options as $option) {
         $optval = $option['val']; 
         $text = htmlentities($optval); 
         $text = html_entity_decode( $text, ENT_NOQUOTES, "UTF-8" );
         $this->script("addOption('".$sSelectId."','".  $option['id']."','".$text ."');");
       }
     }
  }

Then, edit the file admin/combination_discounts_step2.php and delete the function addCreateOptions (around line 21-31), and paste in the version shown above in its place.

If try to run the Admin Panel and get an error like
```
1146 Table 'yourdb.zen_combination_discounts_purchase' doesn't exist
in:
[SELECT * FROM zen_combination_discounts_purchase ORDER BY id DESC ]
If you were entering information, press the BACK button in your browser and re-check the information you had entered to be sure you left no blank fields.
```
this means you ran the sql script in phpMyAdmin without adding the prefix manually. Delete the tables combination_discounts_purchase and combination_discounts_required and edit cd_admin.sql file and add your prefix (e.g. change combination_discounts_purchase to zen_combination_discounts_purchase and combination_discounts_required to zen_combination_discounts_required if your prefix is "zen_".)
Are you sure you have Combination Discounts installed? The basic package and the admin panel are sold separately.

If you are having trouble installing this module, you should also refer to my Guide to Mod Installation on Zen Cart. I'm also happy to install most of my mods for a fee.

Major Versions

1.0.1 11/06/11 - Update to 1.5.0rc1
1.0.1 10/02/09 - Fix for mistaken title on admin->modules->order total
1.0 12/26/08 - First release

Bugs

The title displayed on the page Admin->Modules->Order Total mistakenly displayed "Commbination Discounts" instead of "Order Total Modules." This bug has been fixed in version 1.0.1.
Some users have reported issues in handling product and category names which have non-English characters in them. This bug has been fixed in version 1.0.1.

FAQ

Q: Why do all my categories not show up?
A: The definition of a "category" in Combination Discounts is "the parent category of a product." See the Category Issues page for a discussion of the treatment of categories in my mods.

Q: Why do I have to enable Javascript to run the Combination Discounts Admin Panel?
A: Because it uses AJAX, a Javascript based technology. This creates a faster, more responsive user interface. If you do not enable Javascript in your browser, you will see a flashing red error message at the top of the page, and the Combination Discounts Admin Panel will not operate.

Q: I would like to make it more obvious that a discount is inactive. How can I do this?
A: Edit the file admin/includes/cd_stylesheet.css and add

.inactive {
   color:#FF0000;
}

Now the entire line for an inactive discount will be red. Lines for active discounts use the ".active" class if you would prefer to do it the other way around.

I charge a fee of $60 for the Combination Discounts Admin Panel. You must have Combination Discounts (sold separately) to use the Combination Discounts Admin Panel. The fee covers software only; installation is extra if you require help.

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