« Usage

Custom Fields is a distinctive and very flexible feature of the WordPress Shopping Cart.

Custom Fields allows you to define different types of additional fields that can capture user input from products and the shopping cart as a whole.

The applications are endless and is only limited by your needs and imagination. For example if you were printing T-Shirts  you could create fields that said “Front Text”, “Back Text” as textboxes, or radio buttons that gave the user the option to “Gift Wrap” or a select drop down menu for sizes “Small”, “Medium”, “Large”.

Custom fields can be required or optional and can include an additional charge. For example if you wanted to charge additional cost for printing or engraving.

At the moment the following field types are supported: Text Input, Text Area, Checkbox list, Dropdown List, Radio Buttons. The checkboxes, dropdown list and radio buttons take multiple options that a user can choose from.

Start by adding a custom field.

Related Links

« Shipping Methods

click to enlarge

1. Name

This title/name will be shown throughout the shop to both yourself as administrator and to the customers viewing the front of your shop. Choose this title carefully in order for it to be understandable by your customers viewing your products. Keep the title below 150 characters.

2.  Fixed Price

This is the amount that will be added for this particular shipping method when fixed shipping prices are used.

You can go to Checkout > Configuration > Global Shipping Configuration to change the shipping type (fixed or tiers) and also change the values according to your needs.

3. Use API

This is set to ‘No’ by default. At present this is a specific feature for Australian Post DRC. select the appropriate API for your shipping provider. if not in the list, choose NO. The Australian Post DRC API returns shipping based on weight in Australian Dollars. Be sure to set your currency to Australian Dollars. Also be sure to set your shipping tiers type to “Based on Total Weigth” in the “Configuration” section.

4. Pickup

This is where you would enter the postal code from where order is picked up from. This option only appears on the administration screen if the API is selected

5. Service type

This will displayed as an option if you set API to ‘Australian Post DRC’. The options available are: Standard, Sea, Air, Express and Economy

6. Saving

When you are done filling in the Name, Fixed Price etc and you are satisfied with the details you have entered, click the save button at the bottom of the screen. If you want to make changes or have made a mistake you can always come back later and make alterations

What’s next?

Once you have created a shipping method you can continue to add more methods. Use Manage Shipping methods to keep track of your progress.

Remember to configure your global shipping charge under Checkout > Configuration > Global Shipping Configuration to take control of all global shipping in your shop.

« Usage

Shipping methods is another feature which makes the WordPress Shopping Cart unique and flexible. This allows the administrator to create and define an unlimited number of shipping methods.

This gives you the functionality to customise each shipping method to suite your business. For example, you may have shipping methods named “Delivery” and “Pick up from store” which each has their purpose and different pricing.

With shipping calculation turned on and tangible products in the customer’s shopping cart the shipping methods will appear on the Shipping step of the checkout procedure so that the customer can choose which shipping is needed.

Once the shipping methods are defined, you can go to the Checkout > Configuration > Global Shipping Configuration section to configure your global shipping on these methods.

Start by adding a shipping method.

Related Links

« Products

click to enlarge

1. Add New Product

Clicking this button will take you to ‘Save a Product’ where you can create a new product Product for your shop. New Products added will show up on this ‘Manage Products’ screen after they are added.

2. Bulk Actions

These bulk actions allow you to select multiple Product records from the table using the checkboxes and then apply a bulk action on the selected records.

The bulk actions currently available are ‘Delete’ which will permanently remove the selected Products records in the table, ‘Items in the Inventory…’ which will allow you to change the vale, ‘Set Supplier’ which allows you to change the supplier, ‘Add Style’ which will append a new style, ‘Set Style’ which will overwrite the existing styles, ‘Add Categories’ which will overwrite the existing Category a product is associated with, ‘Set Categories’ which will overwrite a products existing category with a new one, ‘Change Type to Digital/Tangible’ which will change the product type, ‘Price increase’ and ‘Price Decrease’ which will allow you to change the price and ‘Clear Retail/Suggested Price.

3. Per Page

This is a quick way of choosing how many Products/records to show per page. The drop down has several values in it to choose from. When the total number of Products in the database exceeds this per page number chosen, you will notice page numbers appearing above and below the table to the right.

4. Search Products

Quickly search the database for Products by typing a word or phrase and then clicking the ‘Search Products’ button.

5. Product Row Actions

Products are the number of products belonging to a category page. When you hover a Product row, action links will appear below it which are applicable to the row that you are hovering.

The links include ‘Edit’ which allows you to edit the Product, ‘Delete’ which will remove the Delete permanently and ‘View’ which will show you detailed information of the Product and ‘View on Front’ which will show you how the Product will be seen on the site by the user.

« Products

Title and Description

click to enlarge

1. Title

This title/name will be shown throughout the shop to both yourself as administrator and to the customers viewing the front of your shop. Choose this title carefully in order for it to be understandable by your customers viewing your products. Keep the title below 150 characters.

2. Description

This is the description of the Product and Checkout uses the TinyMCE editor which is the same as the editor used for WordPress Posts

Product Image

1. Existing Image when an existing product is being edited

This displays a “Thumbnail” of the product image. The image may appear distorted or show only partially in this view. It’s nothing to worry about and the image should display properly on the product page. This will be blank when a Product is first created.

2. Image File

You can browse here for an image to upload to the product. It will overwrite the existing image if any available.

Please ensure that the dimensions of the image you are uploading is larger in both width and height than the dimensions shown in the “larger than ***px by ***px” otherwise the plugin may have trouble cropping and it will result in a “No Image Available” placeholder.

Categories

1. Choose categories for this product.

Use this to select which Categories your Product will be associated with/displayed in to the user. Check all will check all the boxes and inverse will check the unchecked boxes and uncheck the checked boxes.

2. Save Product

Once you have selected the category/categories the save button should be clicked to save the product. This should be done even if you will continue to fill in information on other sections of the page.

Custom Fields

These are the custom fields from the Checkout > Custom Fields section and ticking them will make them display on the product page. If you have not created any custom fields the selection will be empty. You can always create new custom fields and come back and edit the Product at a later stage.

Additional Descriptions

click to enlarge

1. Remove this additional description

Clicking this will remove an additional description.

2. Title of additional description

This is the Title/Name of the additional description. Choose this title carefully in order for it to be understandable by your customers viewing your products. Keep the title below 150 characters.

3. Content of additional description

This is the additional description that will be used to provide more information to your users on the front end. You should try and make this concise and to the point.

4. Add another additional description

This option allows you to create additional descriptions for the same product. Remember to click save before adding another additional description.

Product Styles and Options

click to enlarge

1. Price type

This sets the type of pricing used. There are two options. Fixed pricing and Price Tiers. Tiers allow you to determine the price per unit based on how many units a customer is buying.

2. Fixed Price/Price Tiers

This is the amount in Currency i.e. $199 for fixed pricing. Alternatively if you are using Price Tiers you can specify the number of units to sell at a certain price i.e. 1 to 5 = $199. Then click the Add Tier button and make the next tier price a different range i.e. 6 to 10 = $150 and so on.  The last tier automatically goes to infinite unit count

3. Retail/Suggested Price

This is the suggested retail Price. if you use this option and set it higher than the selling price it has the effect of showing the item as being discounted to the user. A line will be drawn the suggested price i.e. $199.

4. Product Type

There are two type of products: Tangible and Digital. Tangible is used when you want to display Units, Weight, Shipping costs etc. Physical products are tangible.

Digital is used for products that are downloadable from you website i.e. songs, e-books etc.

5. Unit Weight

This is the weight of a single product item. kg, lbs, etc will be displayed after the textbox depending on the unit of measurement chosen. See Checkout > Configuration. The global shipping calculation will be exclude the product from the global shipping calculation when the check-box is ticked.

6. Additional Shipping Cost

This allows you to add/select specific additional shipping costs for a particular product and specify whether such additional costs will be fixed or tier based. Additional shipping will be added on top of global shipping.

Product Styles and Options

click to enlarge

These are the styles from the Checkout > Styles section and ticking them will make them display on the product page. If you have not created any styles the selection will be empty. You can always create new styles and come back and edit the Product at a later stage.

Additional Fields

click to enlarge

1. Page Template

This is the template that you want to use for this product. Different product may be set to use different page templates to create a different look and feel on the front end page that is viewed by the user. By default the default template will be used which will be the same as your site theme.

2. Supplier

This allows you to set the supplier for the product. These are the suppliers from the Checkout > Suppliers section and ticking them will make them display on the product page unless hidden from the Checkout > Configuration section. If you have not created any Suppliers the selection will be empty. You can always create new Supplier and come back and edit the Product at a later stage.

3. Affiliate/External Product

When this option is selected it allows you to type in an external URL link to which the customer will be redirected when adding this product. This is a good way to make commission from affiliate products.

4. Measurement

This is the unit of measurement for the product. e.g. Unit(s), Bottle(s), Box(es), Bag(s), Liter(s).

5. Minimum Order

This is the minimum order which is set to -1 which will and a single unit at checkout time. If you require a customer to buy a minimum number of a particular product then set this to the required value e.g. 2,3,4….20 etc.

6. Items in Inventory

This will indicate the number of items in the inventory. To display an unlimited number of items set this to -1. Setting this to a positive number will reduce the stock level each time an item is sold.

7. Keywords

These are keywords that will be used by search engines for SEO purposes and also be used when the user searches your site. Keywords are separated by commas (,) i.e. Pen, blue, ink, Parker

8. WordPress Categories

This will display a list of categories that you can associate the product to. These are the WordPress categories in your blog and not the shopping cart categories.

9. Code

This is essential a stock code and allows you to identify the product. i.e. P001 or SN123-1929 etc.