Hi guys, to let you know I'm currently working on getting the 0.6 beta version of the e-commerce module to work on SilverStripe 2.4. I'll call this the unofficial 0.6.1 beta. Nobody appears to be doing any kind of new release of the module, so I'm going to share what I'm working on.

Here is a list of changes so far:

• * Modified code to work with SS 2.4, and payment trunk as @ revision 103257. This mainly involved supporting the Money class.
  
• * Separated out unnecessary css styling. The default style is very much tied to black candy. (This can be put into a theme)
  
• * Improved efficiency of ProductGroup to make one database call to retrieve products. All ProductGroup children are retrieved by default, rather than just the immediate children.
  
• * Removed 'ShowInMenus' condition for displaying group products.
  
• * Added sorting controls to ProductGroup pages
  
• * Added pagination to default ProductGroup template
  
• * Removed separation of featured and non-featured products. The default sort is set to show featured products, then the rest by title (similar to TradeMe.co.nz)
  
• * Tidied up invoice printing
  
• * Got the 'all orders' SS report working again
  
• * Added 'Store' model admin for orders
  
• * Show products in multiple categories (does not yet include recursive sub-category products)
  
• * Variations of the same product can now be added to the cart together
  
• * Prevented order payment form showing on checkout template if nothing is in shopping cart.
  
• * Re-ordered CMS fields so they are more visible (eg price, weight, model)
  
• * Updated sitetree icons (product = package, checkout = shopping cart, account = contact card)
  
• * Include shopping cart page type
  
• * Removed quantity selectors from products on group page, as they can be updated using the cart on the left.
  

Once I'm happy with it myself, I'll post the code on here for people to test. I'll be prepared to integrate any patches people provide.

Perhaps Nicolaas and jam13 can allow the current 0.5.4 version in the extensions area to be updated after testing.

Feel free to express your interest in the release, and thoughts on the changes.

Google project: https://code.google.com/p/silverstripe-ecommerce/

Keen 8-]

It's great to hear that someone's still working on the e-commerce module. The changes that you've made so far sound good. Are you committing your changes to the Silverstripe code repository?

I have some suggestions on future improvements, but it would probably be best if you just get the module working reliably first. Regardless, some of the things that I'd like to see are, e.g.:
- Change it so that products are DataObjects instead of pages and provide a matching product database editor for the CMS. This should make maintaining large numbers of products easier.
- Better logging of all actions (e.g., have a viewable log of the status changes of all orders)
- More advanced reporting (e.g., sales statistics by customer, product, or product group)
- Add support for electronic download products via secure download (could be done as a separate module instead of being built in)
- Linking to accounting (and/or ERP) packages such as XERO

I'll be keeping an eye on this thread as I'd be interested to test your changes once they're done.

Hans

Hi HansR,
I don't have commit access to the SVN repository. I'd be happy to comit if they set me up a branch or something, otherwise I'll just post as files. Do you want to inquire about that for me?

I'm going to look at setting up a model admin for products, perhaps just using the one that Nicolaas provides in his ecommerce extensions. This should make large amounts of products more manageable. As for changing to DataObjects, not something I'm looking to do at this stage.

Likewise, with your other suggestions I probably won't venture towards implementing anything at this stage, unless it benefits my customers :D

Jeremy

Hi Jedateach,

Willr said that they might open up SVN access if someone who was experienced enough and serious about updating it. You should talk to him about it.

Likewise, with your other suggestions I probably won't venture towards implementing anything at this stage, unless it benefits my customers :-D

Naturally. ;-)
My suggestions would be a lot of work to implement. However, if enough people want/need them...

Hans

I am almost done implementing 0.6 beta on a ss 2.3 site.
I've been messing with making it translatable (it runs on 2 languages), removing Prototype.js related requirements, unnecessary theming, email templates, and making a little sense of their and AccountPage's include structure.

For a next project - on ss 2.4 - I would be very willing to contribute, as I've found that the ecommerce module contains a lot of great features, just that many of those unfortunately never were finished off properly.

this is outstanding news!
Ecommerce was a key feature that moved me from ModX to SilverStripe.
I am still rather new to the system, so I can not be of much development help currently, but I will lend support in what ever way I can.

I have been working with the ecom trunk and 2.0 payment mod on SS 2.4, I have found that this seems to be working as far as I was able to test so far. Perhaps the trunk has some additions beyond the beta that might be of use?

Great Stuff.

And I'd be keen to contribute. I have several clients running e-commerce on SilverStripe and was about to give up on it and write my own now that Payment module has taken out much of the complexities of managing payments.

To my mind, the current module is a little over-complicated and I would like to see it modularised so that functionality can be added through dataobject decorators. Right now you can't even add product attributes without changing "core" code. This extends (no pun intended) to things like testimonials, they've been added to the core code where they should really be decorators, I've had to write a decorator to remove them! This approach would make most people happy as you can swap in and out much of the wish list items described in this thread already.

Anyway, I've spent quite a few hours under the hood of e-commerce and keen to see SS2.4 + Payment module as a far more stable platform on which to build an ecommerce site.

Let the games begin :)

Rich