And here's me again....
When checking 'both allowed' in checkout methoud, I only get the guest login.
When I check 'log in required' I get an error when proceeding to chekout:
This page has led to too many redirects.
Am I forgetting something?
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And here's me again....
When checking 'both allowed' in checkout methoud, I only get the guest login.
When I check 'log in required' I get an error when proceeding to chekout:
This page has led to too many redirects.
Am I forgetting something?
And me again,
Isotope does not include a "new customer"/"existing customer" screen on checkout.
It uses the standard way of using members.
Have you downloaded and installed the demo (shoe) store?
There you'll see a "My Account" link all at the top where you can log in. If you want a selection page to let customers login during checkout, you could create your own pre-checkout page where you refer to a login screen or the checkout page(remember to create a custom login screen that redirects to the checkout page after successful login).
You will have to create your own user registration form if you want users to be able to create a new account but that's plain old TYPO.... Ehhh.. Contao functionality ;)
I am currently still in testing mode and my first real shop will be for a closed group (dealers who have to register offline with me) so I have not yet looked at this part of the process. Feel free to share anything you find useful :mrgreen:
Regards, Rob
Hmmm... the redirect problem seems to be a bug. It should just throw an error in that case. Rob is right, though, you should place your own login page before the checkout that either allows someone to log in, or continue as a guest in that case.
I will look into that...
I agree with the first post. This seems to be a fairly significant oversight in the isotope ecommerce extension.
I'm trying to create my first store in isotope. It looks as if I'm going to have to manually create the form to "Create Account" since isotope in its current iteration does NOT appear to do that. You can allow a guest to "checkout", but if they are required to "Create an Account", you are brought to a the "login" form without any ability to create the account, and since they don't have an account, they can't login.
Not good.
If the guest checks out, no account is created in the back end. This seems to be a logic error in the progression of steps in the checkout process and probably should be addressed in a future release.
1. Do you have a sample "Create Account" form that could be copied for the Contao Member module that will interface with the isotope account modules so we can allow a customer to create their account on the front end instead of admin having to do this after the fact?
2. Is there a list of the fields being used in the checkout process so that we can manually create this form? If so where can I find these other than reading them off page source?
3. If someone adds something to the cart, is there a way to bypass going to "Checkout" and allowing them to stay on the same page that they are on, and add the product to the cart? Right now, if you add one item to the cart, it immediately takes you to checkout.
4. Any suggestions from other isotope users as to how to work this would be appreciated.
Ernest McDermon
Snellville, GA
Nope, not an error at all.Quote:
Originally Posted by ernestmcd
Highly appreciated by guys like me who don't like to have an account at each webshop where I ordered just once.
Suppose that all regular shops where you buy stuff automatically create a customer account with all your details as soon as you buy an item in that shop ...
I manage a shop for which we have ~600 regular (business) customers who buy from that shop 1-4 times each month.
There are also lots of customers who only place a single order and they keep asking us if they do need to create an account.
An no - they don't since we use Contao :mrgreen:
Regards, Rob
The idea here is to make things flexible and adhere to the Contao framework. So if you want people to be able to create an account, you set up a redirect to a registration page where you can place the Contao registration module. This can be configured with a variety of other extensions to auto-create an account for the user and also auto-log them back in. All of these extensions exist in the repository and can be brought in to your existing installation.
Then you can redirect the customer back to the checkout screen where they will be auto logged in.
There is also an extension we wrote called isotope_createmember that allows you to create members on checkout for a variety of purposes. They can even be tied to certain member groups on a per-product basis (so that you can unlock purchasable content). I am not sure at the moment if this is available in the ER or if we are waiting for Isotope 1.3 in order to release it, but I am currently using it on a few customer shops for that purpose.
Isotope is not a typical eCommerce shop. It is not configured to do everything you want right out of the box. What it is designed to do is be flexible, work into any existing Contao site, and provide developers plenty of options with which to setup and customize a site.
Thanks! This was very helpful to get the account login set up. I installed the registration module and worked through getting the pages setup and I'm finishing styling the checkout steps and the user account areas (order history, account details, etc.).Quote:
Originally Posted by winanscreative
I've been working with client ecommerce sites (with primarily Squirrelcart) for the last six years for clients with several hundred products to tens of thousands of line items. I well understand and appreciate the hard work that has gone into developing isotope and I think it will be a good fit for my clients who need a reasonably simple and easy-to-use cart that can be managed from the backend of Contao.
A couple of thoughts:
1. I recommend that the registration extension be installed concurrently with the isotope extension as a dependency. It seems to me that having the ability to create an account for a customer as an option is today, a standard feature of any shopping cart on the market. Without this module, and your expert advice, I would still be stumbling around trying to get the login to work. I look forward to the release of the extension that separates out the checkout steps.
2. I don't know if you are involved in the development of isotope, but I suggest that the tutorial on the isotope website include how to setup a registration page and allow members to create and activate an account if they so desire. The turtorial overlooks this step which I believe should be addressed up front during configuration rather than looking for answers days later in the forums.
3. I think I'm getting a handle on the isotope cart now, and see good potential with it. There are still some quirky behavior issues with this cart (redirect on logout not working, for me anyway), but time should bring issues like this in line in the future.
4. The limited pdf documentation should be replaced with an online "wiki" to allow continual additions to the user guide. In my experience, shopping carts are VERY complex to setup and style, load products into, and get clients trained on them. A detailed users guide wiki with code and syntax examples and screenshots will save the isotope development team a lot of time answering the same questions over and over.
Thanks for the information, it was very helpful!
Ernest McDermon
Snellville, GA
Yeah, but you're not "buying" the products in the shop you maintain, your owner's "customers" are.Quote:
Nope, not an error at all.
Highly appreciated by guys like me who don't like to have an account at each webshop where I ordered just once.
Suppose that all regular shops where you buy stuff automatically create a customer account with all your details as soon as you buy an item in that shop ...
I manage a shop for which we have ~600 regular (business) customers who buy from that shop 1-4 times each month.
There are also lots of customers who only place a single order and they keep asking us if they do need to create an account.
An no - they don't since we use Contao.
I come from a background of working with computers since college in the 70's, web design for over 13 years now, and 20 years sales experience. I look at online cart accounts as a way for the store to get paid not just in funds, but also in information about their clients that can be used to generate repeat orders, and "upsell" sales.
I suspect your shop's clients are used to having online shopping cart accounts that let them look at their order history, track shipping status, setup address books to send gifts to friends, and learn about featured sale items offered to the store's customers before they go out to the general public. I'm given to understand that all of these are features that can be dialed in with isotope to increase sales and customer satisfaction, right?
I don't know about you, but in order to sell my clients an ecommerce website I have to show them lots of benefits to the shopping cart that would let the client increase their income before they'll buy my product. The more ways that they can communicate to their customers, offer sale items, even do newsletters to the client base, the happier they are!
Just a thought, but if your shop's customers are asking for online accounts with your online store, why not offer that to them as a new feature you're introducing due to "popular demand"? That new feature would be a good reason for a gang email to all 600 customers along with a new account creation discount coupon to test out the new account area!
Call me crazy...anyway, thanks for the reply!
Ernest McDermon
Snellville, GA
Hi Ernest-
Thanks for the input... The registration module comes installed with the Contao core, so it is already there. The other extensions I mentioned are not necessarily required but rather are for various sub-configurations of your store's registration, so I don't see them as dependencies of Isotope. Your redirect on logout problem sounds like it has to do with the Login/Logout module configuration as well, not Isotope.
We're working on improving things as best we can and documenting as much as possible. However, the core Isotope team is stretched pretty thin as we all have our own businesses and those take up a lot of our attention. Our hope is that people will contribute back to the project in one way shape or form (donations, tracking bugs, coding extensions) so that we can alleviate as much pressure off of us as possible and be able to pay for things we would like to develop, like the documentation.
I'm not convinced that a Wiki is the way to go for documentation right now since things are very much in flux especially with the new 1.3 version coming out soon. However, I'll keep that in mind as things start getting stabilized. We're getting to a very solid point now with the framework after a lot of re-working in the past year, so I'm very excited as to how the project has grown.
Thanks again for the suggestions.
Hi Ernest,
while trying to make my answer more readable I deleted some text ... too much text ...
Our business customers do have an account (of course) and yes, we do send them regular newsletters with items that are surely of interest to them. Account are created by us, not the customer, since only registered business customers are allowed access to the full product range with low prices.
I've set thing up such that there is a smaller shop with a limited number of items that regular consumers can buy.
This system works fairly well for us (my customer).
We are the local agent for a brand of cycling parts. Cycling shops, our registered customers, can order via the webshop but we also handle email orders and orders by phone. It is amazing how many cycling shop owners are computer illiterate...
We also allow consumers to order directly from us but since we do not want to spoil the market for our business customers we only offer a very limited number of spare parts and therefor we also do not want them to have an account.
This shop exists for about 3 years now using OSCommerce. Layout, maintainability, security .... all reasons why I started to convert the shop into an Isotope store :)
I also installed an Isotope store for a cycling shop where consumers can buy things. There customers do have the option to create an account but when they just proceed without an account in the end the get the selection to buy as a guest, not creating an account. That shop wants customers to create an account - it is clear why - but there are some customers who abort their order and call the shop to order by phone because they don't want to create an account ...
The shop owner now even asked me to promote this on the front page (as I have seen in more shops). In the Netherlands having the option, and promoting it, to order from a webshop without creating an account is becoming a way to attract customers who otherwise would have gone to a local shop to have them order the items for them (maybe from another distributor ...)
Thanks for your remarks about the documentation.
I am not a part of the development team, winanscreative is the development team's voice, and I also found that documentation could be improved. So some time ago I decided to try to do something about this and document how to do things. I had a fairly simple manual (in Dutch) on how to add and configure products for my customer but I was still learning Contao when I started that so it is not complete, nor correct.
Winanscreative is doing a great job in supporting us, meanwhile there are also some other developers who start to discover how to configure the system and create modules.
Documentation is always a pain ... I prefer a (PDF) document, or a collection of, where i can read sequentially what options I have. A wiki is great when you know what you are looking for but from using different products that have a Wiki I found it is hard to learn how to use a system since a Wiki is not meant to be a document one can read front to back.
Maybe it is an idea to just start a Contao site and start to add the bits I know.
O - also thanks for the tips about order history and other ideas. I am not sure it is currently available, in the Isotope core or as an extension, but if it is not ... I know that some developers are eagerly reading up on this community board to get good ideas for new modules. :mrgreen:
Rob