Is there an existing solution for me?

allantiger

Joined: 2006-02-21
Posts: 2
Posted: Wed, 2006-02-22 02:54

Hi there,

I want to begin my online albums and photo print service with Gallery2. I need the following functions:

1. Allow free registration, which is supported by G2
2. Provide 30M storage to any registered users, supported
3. Allow users to select the picture size and add their pictures to shopping cart, I saw a module, which may not work for me.
4. A shopping cart like OSC, provide both front-end, back-end, including payment, shipping, tax modules. This will allow user to purchase other picture related goods, and help me to handling the orders, including real goods and printing services
5. A bonus/point system, which will increase the user quota according to their order amount. (If no existing module, I can do this manually: I create multiple groups with different quota, then I just move the user to higher group)
6. Nice theme/icon, seamless integrated with the shopping cart

I looked at the G2-ZenCart solution; it says, "Items and albums from Gallery are automatically synchronized as products and categories in Zen Cart." which looks not match my requirement. However, I didn't test that solution.

Actually I have a general idea, that is integrating OSC into G2 or vice versa. Creating the services as products in OSC, when user adding their picture to the shopping card, the product name will be modified (add the picture name), meanwhile, the image path will be inserted to a temp table and picture will be copied to a temp dir. After checking out, the pictures will be copied to the working folder.

Unfortunately, I am not a good PHP guy. If anyone knows any existing or similar (which only requires a little change :), solution, please advise.

Thanks in advance.

Allan

 
valiant

Joined: 2003-01-04
Posts: 32509
Posted: Wed, 2006-02-22 08:59

osCommerce is very poorly designed and an integration without modifying a lot of code is not possible. zencart is slightly better, that's why it was chosen to integrate with g2, even if it turned out to be quite a challenge since zencart has alos barely functions and does most of the logic in scripts.

i suggest you either follow the g2+checkout module route and make sure it has all the features you need, maybe pay a 3rd party dev to improve the feature set.
or you try g2+zencart and polish it for your needs.

 
allantiger

Joined: 2006-02-21
Posts: 2
Posted: Wed, 2006-02-22 16:41

Thx a lot Valiant!

OSC is a good e-commerce software, I mean the functions. However, I agree your comment on OSC :-) That's why I am looking for an existing solution. I will look at checkout and zencart. Hope I can handle that.