New Products

[metalman923]

I would like to offer special but only to specific groups I have setup, but when a user logs in, in the account info box under new product the product is there which I only want certain groups to see, so even when I setup a special it show up there? is there a way of having it not show in the new products box when a user logs in? any help would be greatly appreciated
Thanks in advance for any help or direction with this

[michael_s]

Try setting the date available to last year. See if that works.

[met00]

get rid of new products and move to featured products.

1) There is a bug in new products that doesn't take the year into account (this has been pointed out elsewhere)
2) you have finer control with featured products

As for "specials" the whole idea of it being offset from the categories/products has always bothered me. If I can edit a product, I should be able to set special prices from that screen. I should be able to set special prices on a category or sub-category as well. This would allow you to create a category called "Clearance" and everything that gets put in there gets a flat % off the price. This is especially true if working with say a store with 10,000 or more products (loading and managing the specials page is painful!). Ah, but that is another thread

[metalman923]

maybe you don't understand what I mean, although I really appreciate you answering my post, now I feel really lost what I'd like to do is have only certain groups see certain products, or allow only certain groups to have access to download pdf's see I sell wholesale and retail I'd like to offer two different catalogs to each group and allow them to downlaod it when they login, is that even possible or should I find some other software and somehow link it to my cart? so that's my dilemma, But Thank you so much for your efforts not to mention your time and consideration I guess I'll have to keep on lookin

[met00]

okay, I'm at a loss. Let me see if I understand...

You have
1) Retail
2) Wholesale

Wholesale gets a set of product offerings af A B C and D
Retail gets a set of product offerings of 1 2 3 and 4

There is no overlap between the two groups

Is that the basic set up?

[metalman923]

right! well actually I have more than two groups but I don't know what you mean by overlap, what I have is two versions of a catalog in pdf format one for whole sale and one for retail but I don't want retail to see the wholesale one, and visa versa I hope this makes sense and THANK YOU so much for your help, I can't begin to tell you how much I really appreciate you taking the time

[met00]

I've given this a great deal of thought. The best way I can suggest doing it is to create a side box that has two states...

In the un-logged in state it plugs "create an account and get our downloadable catalog"

In the logged in state it will display the right catalog for the right customer type (based on group membership). So the box logic will check for the group type and display the product for the right group type. Since all accounts are originally created at "retail" you may want to make sure that it clearly states that it's the retail catalog so that wholesale customer won't download it. When you move the customer to the wholesale group the e-mail message you send should tell them that the wholesale catalog is available to them after they log in.

To see how to create a sidebox that displays differently before and after login look at the loginbox (/includes/boxes/loginbox.php). The logic for the display is to check the customer group and in an if statement create the hardcode for the two separate products.

Since you are making hardcoded calls to the two catalogs there should be no other issues (as they are downloadable and are not actual products that would live in the database).

While this won't stop the wholesale from seeing the retail (when someone creates an account they will be retail unless you set them as wholesale, so they will be able to see and download the retail version at account creation), it will effectively hide the wholesale catalog.

[metalman923]

Wow! That's great than you so much, I will looking into doing that right away ,the only think I don't have a clue about is how to do the logic and the if statement, if you could help me I would really appreciate it, I will try and research it too, but I haven't gone that deep into this cart yet to know the logic, but really I must say you've been a great help, I really can't thank you enough, if you should need a fee for helping me I would gladly pay for your continued support, I just want you to know how valuable you are to me and how much I appreciate it

[met00]

1) no one gets paid to help on this board
2) you can thank people by using the "thanks" button on their post when you find it helpful
3) you can also "thank" people by clicking on the scale on their post (increases their reputation)
4) the if statement (in psudocode) is:

// wholesale customer group is 2, anything else is retail
if (customer['group'] == "2") {
// display whole catalog image and downloadlink
?>
<center><a href=/downloadfile/wholesalecat.pdf><img src=/images/wholesalecat.jpg width=150><br><img src=/images/downloadbutton.jpg></a>
<? } else { 
// enyone but wholesale get retail catalog
?>
<center><a href=/downloadfile/retailcat.pdf><img src=/images/retailcat.jpg width=150><br><img src=/images/downloadbutton.jpg></a>
<? } ?>

Now, in the above the links are bogus (you will have to create the paths, the pdf filenames have to match your PDF files, the images have to be created and placed in the images directory, etc). Also, you will need to make sure that you have grabbed the customer group information from the database BEFORE you do this check, and you will have to verify the group id for wholesale in your database so that the number matches the one in the if statement (and make sure that the array name is correct).

[MindTwist]

There is actually a mod for SPPC that allows you to show a product to a different customer group. Since SPPC is already integrated on OSCMAX, it should be fairly easy to integrate that other mod (which I do not even know how it is called, but I know it is in the official oscommerce web site amongst all other contributions).

With that contribution you should be able to select what products are viewable for what customer groups.