Shipping Director plugin - beta1 released

I am excited to announce the beta 1 release of the Shipping Director plugin.  The Shipping Director allows a store owner, consultant, developer, etc. to create ad hoc shipping rate calculations.  While enhancing nopCommerce for my own customers' needs, I‘ve spent much time researching nopCommerce’s shipping capabilities and reading shipping related forum posts and replies.  I’ve considered many user requests while designing and developing the Shipping Director.

Please feel free read about its capabilities and download the beta to try it out at www.nopTools.com.  Also on nopTools.com, I’ve started writing a blog to help you begin evaluating whether the plugin meets your needs; more formal documentation is being written.   The power of Shipping Director is in its ability to evaluate expressions – for user defined variables, as conditions whether a shipping option applies, to calculate rates and surcharges, and even to calculate the shipping option name and description.   A store owner (non-developer) may find writing these expressions a bit difficult at first.  I think, however, that many shipping scenarios are probably just set and forget, and that I or other community members could provide the expressions for those who might have some initial problems writing them.  I’ll be happy to take your feedback, comments, and suggestions.

Shipping Director will not be a free plugin; I think I’ve priced it very reasonably considering its capabilities, the effort I’ve put in, the additional documentation that will be written, and the support and enhancements to come.  (And it pays for itself by calculating accurate shipping charges!)  The current beta version is free, and there will also be a free evaluation/trial version.  The current beta is limited to 5 shipping rate requests (each time the plugin is loaded), and will expire on 12/31.  After the beta, licenses will be offered on either an URL basis (e.g. www.yahoo.com), or a Domain basis (e.g. yahoo.com).  I think this is a fair pricing/usage model – if you have multiple store fronts or you are a consultant with multiple clients, each store should have its own licensed copy.  If you have more than 2 stores as sub-domains, then you can get a Domain license at a discount compared to purchasing multiple URL licenses.

Have fun!

Oh, forgot to mention...
When you configure  Shipping > Shipping Rate Computation Methods, be sure that Shipping.Director is the only "Is Active".
You can still configure the other methods you need.  When you want to 'call' another rate method, just put the name in the Rate Expression field  (no quotes)  E.g.

Option    Fed Ex    true    Shipping.Fedex

You need to add thumbnails to the product listed on your website so we can actually see the screenshots.

Thanks.  I turned on the picture zoom.  I'll also add more screen shots.

(actually, the zoom setting is missing from Media Settings page.  I'll report it as a bug on another post)

I've added more examples and screen shots in the blog  http://www.noptools.com/blog

Shipping Director plugin - beta2 (final beta) has been released.

Please read about its capabilities and download the beta to try it out at www.nopTools.com.  Feel free to register on the site it you like, but it's not required for the beta - you can just use the DOWNLOAD SAMPLE button on the product page.

The major new feature added is Packing.  Eventually we hope that the nopC core will support Packing plugins.  Until then, those who need better shipping rate calculations from the Shipping plugins may find that this basic "FirstFitSingleBox" packing may help.  

I'll be blogging about the new capabilities over the next few days.


Also, note nopTools.com has a new version of the FedEx Shipping Plugin.  I've submitted the full source code to NopCommerce team to have in the Extensions section of this portal.  For those who can't wait, (or who are not interested in code), I've posted a compiled (no source) version (for NopC 2.30) on nopTools.com.    It has two additional packing methods, one of which will typically be used with the Shipping Director Packing.   You can read more about the enhancements in the product description.

I've added some blogs about Packing.  See http://www.noptools.com/blog

I am pleased to announce the production release of the Shipping Director plugin (1.01b).

Please feel free read about its capabilities and download the trial to try it out at http://www.nopTools.com.

You will see a "Download Trial" button on the product page.   The trial version is a full version of the product and when you purchase the License it will function without limitation.    If you wish to purchase, be sure to follow the notes at the bottom of the product description in regards to verifying your production host URL required to generate the correct license file.

I've started using shipping director and I'm pretty impressed with the flexibility it has given me in the cart!

If anyone has a quirky requirement for shipping, this product is well worth a look.

In addition, when I needed some help, New York was pretty quick to throw up a blog on the subject... nice work!