Question on Cubecart Abilities

[Guest tommiesguides]

Reading the blurb on the website it says "Multiple stores with one database" so does this mean I could effectively create one database of products and then set up individual stores for each client thus giving them a different set of pricing and/or discount?

Thanks

[Guest EverythingWeb]

No, not without modification.

What it means is; you can have ONE MySQL Database with entire multiple stores running off that DB, bu utilising the Table Prefix command.

ie: store1_

store2_

[Guest tommiesguides]

Ok thanks. Hmm not going to be easy then. I have a request to set up an inventory (not ecommerce enabled) that allows users to view the products and selected range at the price they are set up for. Do you see any way Cubecart might do this or do you think something more like mambo/joomla would be better?

thanks

[Guest chantesse]

You can comfortably have multiple online shops on one Database by assigning different prefixes to each store.

You could use Cubecart to create an inventory, either by manually entering products into different categories or bulk upload. Removing the Buy buttons makes it a catalogue rather than a shop (trivial mod).

Finally a modded version of the store could allow customers to log in and only view products within a certain price range (if I understood your meaning) - you could set up such ranges in Edit Customer in Cubecart Admin if modded. I assume you mean that Customers/Users would view items in one common database but by price range. The extent of the mods is not huge so it may be worth adapting Cubecart this way as it handles categories, inventory and images very nicely.

[Guest tommiesguides]

You can comfortably have multiple online shops on one Database by assigning different prefixes to each store.

You could use Cubecart to create an inventory, either by manually entering products into different categories or bulk upload. Removing the Buy buttons makes it a catalogue rather than a shop (trivial mod).

Finally a modded version of the store could allow customers to log in and only view products within a certain price range (if I understood your meaning) - you could set up such ranges in Edit Customer in Cubecart Admin if modded. I assume you mean that Customers/Users would view items in one common database but by price range. The extent of the mods is not huge so it may be worth adapting Cubecart this way as it handles categories, inventory and images very nicely.

Thanks - I like the idea of "tweaking" each item with a prefix - that way the item code can be the same for housekeeping purposes but means we can I.D. each one ok as essentially the item will be the same but the price different depending on the customer.

So to answer your second paragraph, thats not exactly right - as I mentioned above, you could have 1 item but 1,2,3 or more prices for it - depenent on the customer. Now this if I understand it could be controlled by your suggestion of prefixing the item. So if I then created a store for each customer that then gives me one database but different storefronts for each customer thus catering for price differentials.

However, the next issue could be one of these customers find the URL of each store, maybe by accident, maybe because someone moved jobs and took details with them. Is there a way to make a customer log in to the store befoe being able to view either 1) products at all or 2) products with prices? My only other thought was to stick each store behind a password protected folder on the server.

I think I might leave the buy buttons in because I think it would be good to allow a user to create an order but then have the order simply routed to us ie as in a purchase order rather than online payment. Presumably this method works ok off the shelf?

Thanks again, very helpful.

Ryan

[Guest chantesse]

Hi Ryan,

I was responding to this paragraph:

...

Reading the blurb on the website it says "Multiple stores with one database" so does this mean I could effectively create one database of products and then set up individual stores for each client thus giving them a different set of pricing and/or discount?

...

Now, Cubecart can support multiple online stores - each store will see just it's own products, this is controlled by a prefix that's defined in global.inc.php - eg for my Wholesale shop it's $glob['dbprefix'] = 'ws_'; File Groups get created that have different prefixes - can be seen via MyPHPAdmin. Perhaps this is not quite what you were thinking of, but I just responded to the info I could see at the time in your post.

Using the above function, yes you could have a different store (with it's own url) for each Customer. You would not need to append prefixes to product codes manually as Cubecart keeps then separate anyway via those internal prefixes (not seen by Customer). But you would have the big admin overhead of maintaining multiple product databases.

This may be a better idea: There is a standard mod out there which allows you to define 3 classes of Customer and for each product have 3 individual prices depending on the Customer Type. So, just one product database but you can admin 3 individual prices per item. Depending on the Status you award your Customer, when he logs in he sees only his prices. This could be an elegant solution for your needs. But, supposing you have 10 price bands in mind for 10 different grades of Customer - I am sure you could get a special version of that modification done that handles 10 bands.

Finally, Cubecart handles Purchase Order Creation perfectly. Customer can print out his copy, and you get an email notification then can view his order - with HIS totalled prices - in Cubecart Admin. You can even print the Packing Note from there.

I have been using Cubecart since March this year. The first wholesale order came in 1 hour after we populated the product database and it's been rolling ever since. I have had several mods added - some standard free ones, some paid for and a couple of nice little customizations coded for me. Recommended!