Overview:

Zen Cart provides HTML formatted emails for a variety of situations - but customizing them can be time consuming. In particular, customizing the checkout (or "order confirmation") email requires running a new test order to verify each change you make.

Test Checkout Email allows you to resend an order confirmation using the data from the original order, processed again using the same order:send_order_email() function that sent the original email. So you can make changes to the checkout email and quickly test them without needing to create another order.

To run Test Checkout Email, follow the installation instructions below, then in the address bar of your browser, go to the URL

 
YOURSTORE.com/test_checkout_email.php?oID=order-number-to-resend

Limitations

Test Checkout Email is not designed to resend an exact replica of a customer's order confirmation email. (Note: If that's what you need, see Resend Order Confirmation Email in the Zen Cart FAQ.) It's designed to allow you to test styling changes in both the HTML and text emails, without the need to place a new order for each test.

The reason for this is that some actions are performed at checkout time during the creation of the order confirmation email that you would not want repeated, such as:

• Preparing downloadable items
• Interaction with the Payment processing system
• Custom actions defined by the store owner.

But Test Checkout Email will allow you to test modifications to the checkout email quickly and without placing a new order each time.

Installation Instructions:

1. Back up everything! Try this in a test environment prior to installing it on a live shop.
2. Copy the contents of the unzipped folder to the root directory of your shop.
3. By default, emails go to the address specified in Admin > Configuration > Email > Email Address (Displayed to Contact you). You may change this by editing test_checkout_email.php.
4. By default, the order used to create the email is the one passed in using the oID argument in the URL. You may change this by editing test_checkout_email.php.

Related Plugins

• Preview Email
• Email Archive Manager

Resources on Zen Cart Email

• Documentation on Zen Cart Email
• Zen Cart Email Modifications

Major Versions

• 1.0 10/02/2020 - First Release

FAQ

Q: What's the difference between Test Checkout Email and Preview Email ?
A: Preview Email shows you what one of the HTML emails sent by the cart (including the checkout email) will look like after you make changes to the HTML template. Test Checkout Email actually *re-sends* a checkout email for an order to the store owner, so you can verify both the text and HTML emails after making changes.

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