Zen Cart Easy Giftwrapping

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Relevance: Zen Cart™ 1.3.0 - 1.3.9, 1.5.x

Adding a gift wrapping service to your store is very straightforward. The following instructions show how to do it with the least number of steps. If you want more options than a simple yes/no choice on gift wrapping, of if your gift wrap pricing is complex (minimum, maximum, quantity discount, etc.), you may wish to consider using my Gift Wrapping Contribution.

Make a backup of your database first so that you can easily roll back this change if you're not pleased with the results.

In your admin screen, do the following:

Go to Catalog > Option Name Manager. Add the option name "Gift Wrapping" as a checkbox.
Press the Option Values button. In the dropdown box, select option name "Gift Wrapping," which you just added. Use the value "Yes."
Go to Catalog > Attributes Controller, and pull up the category you wish to do gift wrapping for. For each product in that category for which you wish to allow gift wrapping, scroll down to "Adding New Attributes" and select Option Name "Gift Wrapping" and Option Value "Yes." Then below on the left under "Price", enter the price of your wrapping (say 2.00 for two dollars).
Repeat the previous step for every category for which gift wrapping is offered.

Some Notes:

The strings "Gift Wrapping" and "Yes" have no particular significance; use other verbiage if you prefer.
"Gift Wrapping" was specified as a checkbox rather than two radio buttons to save time. If you use a pair of radio buttons, then additional actions must be performed in step three.
It would seem that using one of the "Add ALL Option Values" commands in the Option Name Manager screen would be a timesaver - but it's not unless your giftwrapping is free. If it's not free, you will still need to go into the Attributes Controller and set the price for the attribute for every product which uses it. And remember that the "Add Option Values" functions only work with products that already have one option value.
Another common approach is to have a "Gift Wrap" product that can be added to the cart, with a text box in which the user specifies which items from the cart should be wrapped. While this is faster than the attribute approach, it suffers from two drawbacks. Firstly, instructions typed into a text field are often ambiguous or confusing. Secondly, this approach does not allow pricing to reflect the number of wrapped items. However, it does avoid the one disadvantage of the attribute solution, which is that customers must drill down to the product info page to add the item to the cart; items with attributes may not be added from the listing pages.
An even simpler methodology would be to customize the file includes/languages/english/checkout_shipping.php and modify the TABLE_HEADING_COMMENTS constant to say something like,
```
define('TABLE_HEADING_COMMENTS', 'Want gift wrap?  Just ask for it; it's always free at ' . STORE_NAME);
```
If you want more options than a simple yes/no choice on gift wrapping, of if your gift wrap pricing is complex (minimum, maximum, quantity discount, etc.), you may wish to consider using my Gift Wrapping Contribution.

This tip was first submitted to the Zen Cart Support Forum in this thread on December 3, 2006. Merry Christmas!