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Adding eCommerce to an existing site

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Author	Message
Seth Gottlieb	Wednesday 27 October 2010 6:37:39 am Hello, I am adding eCommerce functionality to an existing eZ Publish site. This site was created using the "plain site" installation. I remember using the "WebShop" installation in the past and that gave me a "Product" class and other ecommerce features. What is the best way to add these features to my site? Is there a reference that I can use to create my own product class? What about the workflows and other features that I will need? Thanks, Seth
Heath	Wednesday 27 October 2010 6:45:33 am Seth, Sounds like you need a plan. I suggest either installing ezwebin enabled default site to use as a reference or importing the eZ Webin packages to borrow from/use. The shop functionality is still available even without ezwebin, just not all of it. Cheers, Heath Brookins Consulting \| http://brookinsconsulting.com/ Certified \| http://auth.ez.no/certification/verify/380350 Solutions \| http://projects.ez.no/users/community/brookins_consulting eZpedia community documentation project \| http://ezpedia.org
kracker (the)	Wednesday 27 October 2010 8:13:12 am Seth, I would not create a new webshop using ezp unless I absolutely had no other choice (and you do have many choices available .. better choices mind you). It's hard to work with and does not have most of the features customers need out of the box. There is a -real- reason it's disabled (in admin tabs) by default in the latest 4.4+ editions //kracker Kottonmouth Kings - New Vision (you need a ...) Member since: 2001.07.13 \|\| http://ezpedia.se7enx.com/
Nicolas Pastorino	Wednesday 27 October 2010 8:59:47 am Hi Seth, All e-commerce features still are here in eZ Publish Fuji - 4.4. The only thing is that the Webshop package is not available from the installation wizard anymore. Instead, you may want to use the Website Interface (ezwebin) package, or even eZ Flow. Those will bring you useful content classes like the "Product" one, handy for testing how this all works. The new administration interface hides, by default, the Webshop tab. This can be fixed by copying settings/siteaccess/<admin-siteaccess-name>/site.ini.append.php into settings/siteaccess/<admin-siteaccess-name>/menu.ini.append.php Emptying the freshly created file, but the PHP tags and PHP comments markers Adding the following content to it : [TopAdminMenu] Tabs[]=shop Clear the caches (from the administration interface, unfold the right column first), and you should be all set. In very short : as soon as a content class contains a "Price" attribute, all content objects, instances of this class, will behave as products, can be placed orders on, etc. An alternative to using the built-in Webshop module is to use this great contribution from XRow : http://projects.ez.no/xrowecommerce Let us know how things go, Cheers, -- Nicolas Pastorino Director Community - eZ Member of the Community Project Board eZ Publish Community on twitter: http://twitter.com/ezcommunity t : http://twitter.com/jeanvoye G+ : http://plus.tl/jeanvoye
Seth Gottlieb	Thursday 28 October 2010 11:20:02 am Thanks! If I don't add ezwebin but just add "price" to another class, what would I have to do to support transactions? Does provide templates for various commerce functions? How much of the eCommerce functionality is built into the core? Also, I looked at XRow, and it doesn't look very easy to install on an existing site: http://projects.ez.no/xrowecommerce/forum/general/install_xrowecommerce_after_ezpublish_install They just point you to the site installer script and tell you reverse engineer what the script does. Not very helpful.
Nicolas Pastorino	Tuesday 02 November 2010 5:16:08 am Hi Seth, Ok, the doc is indeed poor in the xrowecommerce extension :( . I also spotted that it depends on ezwebin. Indeed, adding a Price attribute to any content class turns all instances of this class into purchasable items. Absolutely all business logic (order management, basket handling, wish-list, transactions generally, etc ) is built into the core. About visual usage of the webshop, if i remember correctly the plain_site package proposed all necessary artifacts for shopping thoroughly, from the front-end, from an end-user perspective. STarting from the full view of a purchasable object should display webshop-flavored buttons and links ("Add to basket", ..). It probably looks very ugly, but should give you/your frontend developer re-usable snippets of HTML and template code. What version of eZ Publish are you running by the way ? Cheers, -- Nicolas Pastorino Director Community - eZ Member of the Community Project Board eZ Publish Community on twitter: http://twitter.com/ezcommunity t : http://twitter.com/jeanvoye G+ : http://plus.tl/jeanvoye
Seth Gottlieb	Tuesday 02 November 2010 6:11:37 am Hi Nicolas, Thanks for the information. We are on 4.3.0. I don't think it should be a problem to upgrade to 4.4. Would upgrading to 4.4 make this customization easier or harder? Thanks, Seth
Heath	Tuesday 02 November 2010 9:01:14 am Hello Seth, After working with eZ Publish 4.4 recently I strongly recommend the upgrade to eZ Publish 4.4 That said, I don't think that it (the upgrade) will change your commerce situation (re: easier or harder). Cheers, Heath Brookins Consulting \| http://brookinsconsulting.com/ Certified \| http://auth.ez.no/certification/verify/380350 Solutions \| http://projects.ez.no/users/community/brookins_consulting eZpedia community documentation project \| http://ezpedia.org
Nicolas Pastorino	Tuesday 02 November 2010 5:21:39 pm Hi Seth, As Heath said, upgrading to 4.4 might not change the feasibility of your project. I asked for the version number to double check you were using the 4.x series, which brings a few improvements to the webshop system, and gives the possibility to install ezwebin properly, nice testbed for the webshop features (ezwebin provides useful example of frontend integration of the e-commerce features ). That said, 4.4 brings clear performance and usability improvements, which you may want to give a try to given the smooth upgrade path from 4.3 to 4.4 : http://doc.ez.no/eZ-Publish/Upgrading/Upgrading-to-4.4/Upgrading-from-4.3.x-to-4.4.x Let us know how your project progresses Seth, Cheers, -- Nicolas Pastorino Director Community - eZ Member of the Community Project Board eZ Publish Community on twitter: http://twitter.com/ezcommunity t : http://twitter.com/jeanvoye G+ : http://plus.tl/jeanvoye