Category: Zen Cart

More options for you to sell a bundle and make a bundle! My new Kitbuilder for Zen Cart module is the latest entry in my series of Zen Cart Bundling options. KitBuilder allows you to build “kits” of related products (without attributes), which are all sold together with a single click. Kitbuilder even comes with a kit marketing plugin that allows you to show off your kits in a centerbox on your home page.

I have provided Edit Orders Integration patches for most of my Zen Cart mods, but for some reason, I just never did Frequency Discounts.  It could be that I just thought it was working properly.

But the good folks at nailessentialz pointed out a problem: if you edit an order placed before today, the lookback period should begin and the point of the order, not at the current date. (This would be relevant for stores that set a lookback period units value of “Days”, “Weeks” or “Months”, rather than “All.”)

For example, if the current day is September 12, and the Lookback Period Units is “Days” and the Period Count is “10”, for an order placed on Aug 27 20:43:50, the lookback window is from Aug 17 20:43:50 to Aug 27 20:43:50.  The old code would have computed the lookback window as September 2 – September 12.

I have had this on my to-do list forever.  Finally I created a Zen Cart integration to Google Shopping I am happy with.

Here’s what you get:

• Installation of the feed file creation on your store
• Adding structured data to your products in json-ld format, as recommended by Google
• Automating the nightly creation and and upload of the file to Google Merchant Center.
• On a fee for service basis, I can also help with the remaining items you’ll need done to get your products into Google Shopping.

Oh and by the way – I’m not just the author of Google Shopping for Zen Cart … I’m also a client. 🙂

Periodically, the question is asked on the Zen Cart forum, “how can I set the Zen Cart Free Shipping threshold based on the Total AFTER all discounts and coupons have been applied?”

This can be done but there are a lot of variables involved.  (If it was a simple mod, I’d package it up as a simple mod!)  So I offer it as a service.  It’s called Free Shipping Recalculation.  It recomputes your free shipping threshold based on the subtotal after discounts.

Free Shipping Recalculation works, whether you are using Admin->Modules->Shipping->Free Shipping Options or Admin->Modules->Order Totals>Shipping to set your free shipping threshold.

This video demonstrates the creation of product packages (groups of individual products) that can be sold as a discounted group with a single click in Zen
Cart, using my mods Discount Chooser and Extended Family.

For a lot of stores, it makes sense to build “product bundles” that can be sold with a single click.  As long as your products don’t have attributes, you can easily do this with Zen Cart Extended Family.

Back in 2013 I extended the one-to-one linkage concept in Zen Cart Better Together with the One-to-Many feature.  This addition of three new radio buttons in the Zen Cart admin panel effectively tripled the number of permutations of computed discounts.  What could go wrong?

Well, as it turned out, a number of things!  Freed from the classic one-to-one constraint, the configuration

add_prod_to_prod(3,3)

would discount a *single* product 3, because it miscounted the number of items in the cart.  You can see this error in the screenshot above.

This bug is fixed in Better Together 2.5.3 for Zen Cart, which is available in the Plugins area.