Dotnetpanel Forums

I'm not understanding the logic and flow of how e-commerce is intended to work.
In it's current form it seems to be limited for purchases of products post registration only. The online demo site seems to confirm this as well.

I could be missing something thats not documented, but how would someone make a purchase without first registering and then signing in to reveal the products for sale ?

Also, I can't find documentation on this as well, how does a registered user make a payment on an existing plan (eg, extend by 6 months).

Theres been mention of 2.1 fixing a few holes, are these some ?

Hi swan,

The reason why do the registration is required prior purchase is the following: you can't distinguish customers payments if they are anonymous.

But if you have suggestions about more transparent purchase/sign-up workflow or how to improve existing flow - pleae do not hesitate to share you ideas!

I'd like to modify the anonymous workflow/signup process a bit also, can you give us some hints or tips on to modify this? and if we can create multiple avenues for workflow based on the user and rights?

Thanx for the reply. Unfortunately only one question was answered, so I pose them here again worded differently:

1. Here is the way I would have imagined a control panel ecommerce system works:

• A casual visitor on our site views, likes, and wishes to purchase a hosting plan.

• He commits to purchase and in the process he completes necessary personal and payment details.

• Once completed an email is forwarded containing relevant plan and control panel logon details.

Paul, again thank you for your reply, but I’m puzzled by your logic. How can a casual purchaser view products on a system they have no access to, let alone make a purchase ?

Perhaps visiting a number of hosting sites and experiencing their systems may give you some clues on this.

How does anyone else do this on DNP ?

2. Also, I can't find documentation on this as well, how does a registered user make a payment on an existing plan (eg, extend by 6 months).

You don't have to be a user to use the Online Store

http://demo.dotnetpanel.com/Default.aspx?pid=ecOnlineStore&CategoryId=1

If you want to purchase something it allows you to create a account

swan:

Paul, again thank you for your reply, but I’m puzzled by your logic. How can a casual purchaser view products on a system they have no access to, let alone make a purchase ?

Perhaps visiting a number of hosting sites and experiencing their systems may give you some clues on this.

You can anonymously browse all of storefront areas such as categories, products and put necessary products to your shopping cart as well. No registration is required until you decide to purchase all of products in your shopping cart and go to checkout. If you have an account already you can enter your username/password combination and complete a purchase, in case if don't have account you should create one in order to complete a purchase. That's it. As you can see it's a quite common workflow and we didn't change anything here.

swan:

2. Also, I can't find documentation on this as well, how does a registered user make a payment on an existing plan (eg, extend by 6 months).

When a hosting plan and other recurring items purchased by customer are about to expire Ecommerce automatically create an invoice for these items and send it to customer's email address. Also it is possible to suspend/cancel unpaid customer's hosting resources automatically. More information about automation and configuring Ecommerce can be found here: http://help.dotnetpanel.com/Administrator%20Guide/Home.aspx.

Thanx Paul again - I finally feel as though we're starting to get somewhere.
I guess more than anything this demonstrates a shortcoming in the documentation.
This also leads to the question of skinning, in particular the pages that handle e-commerce, so it's more in-line with the style of the rest of the site.

Also, I understand your reply to my second question, however my question was how payment could be made for an existing plan more on an ad-hoc basis. For instance, should a client wish to pay up six of one monthly payments (eg, he goes on holidays). Is this possible ?

 Thanx

I read in this thread that the E-commerce storefront can be seen by non-registered users.  This is something that has been puzzling me for some time and I had almost given up on finding a solution.  What settings need to be changed to allow everyone to view the e-commerce storefront and place orders?

Speaking from a personal perspective, all of my frustrations with Dotnetpanel stem from bad documentation!!!  Documentation that walks you though skinning Dotnetpanel, setting up the e-commerce shop, setting up user accounts, etc. is a requirement and not something that can be looked over lightly.  Where as http://help.dotnetpanel.com/ is good for basic information, it does not contain an indepth information on the crucial workings of Dotnetpanel.  The lack of an in-depth manual hinders usage of Dotnetpanel greatly.

Is there any comprehensive documentation on Dotnetpanel?

You

Promodaz:

I read in this thread that the E-commerce storefront can be seen by non-registered users.  This is something that has been puzzling me for some time and I had almost given up on finding a solution.  What settings need to be changed to allow everyone to view the e-commerce storefront and place orders?

 You don't need to change anything non-registered can always see the e-commerce storefront.

 I think we need to modify the ecommerce functionality to include importing/exporting or other product types of some sort. I realize this is host automation we're talking about here, but what's the end portal for the majority here? wow I know where we could go with this really! but I'm just thinking about truly managing product and services for the webportal's admin "chosen" type of user? or even better yet! Allow the host portal to feed products into a webportal? Now's we're talkin, and allowing the webportal to publish edit modify the products, ect.

 am I crazy here?, ok maybe broken in area's and grammer sucks but the idea should sound at least mildly interesting to some...