A bunch of noob and not so noob questions that I would like answered please........ (Aussies attention!)

My sole experience with ASP.NET was creating some simple websites (not projects)
using controls and tying them to Entity model and  SQL data sources using all the inbuilt wizards etc.
So I kind of felt like an impotent chimp when I opened up the nopCommerce source, the levels of inheritance between
pages, controls, feature specific classes and master business logic classes etc. is a little more than I can bare with my limited knowledge. The $20 guide as I understand covers the administration settings and data importing/backing up etc. and does not actually explain the relationships and workings of the application on the source code level ?  

its a very powerful, modular and feature rich app no doubt, but there's just a bunch of little changes that I absolutely
must make in order for it to become of use to me and it's the seeming difficulty of implementing those changes
that will probably leave me with no choice other than to adopt some mass consumed solution like ZenCart instead which has modules and config scripts for nearly everything/everywhere.

If you can please answer any one or more of the following questions that you may know the answer to. I especially need to make some shipping, registration/address country specific changes. I am in Australia.

1. I need to add a "suburb" field to the new user registration form and the rest of site, we have postcodes here in Australia that cover up to 5 suburbs or so. So it's important for the suburb to be specified and printed on the address label. Which files should I be concerned with besides CustomerRegister.ascx/cs? Say I pull a "copy cat" with changed ID and LocaleResourceString  on the ""txtStreetAddress2" etc. across all the files will that get me a working field ? I presume I will also need to update the database tables on my sqlserver as I don't want to re-install everything from fresh if I let the install/scripts/*.sql files do it ? A dynamic suburb field would be ideal of course, if it could use some page method/webservice to match the postcode to a suburb(s) and let the user choose his one if more than one.


2. A shipping module that works around postcode ranges! The ones included by default are very limited and of course would give the same shipping cost to all buyers regardless of location in Australia. I can use the Australia post class as it does this, but then again I have different prices in mind and use a courier service. Maybe I can hax0r the Australia post shipping module :(  


3. I am using PayPal standard payments, but in NopCommerce admin settings for this module I could only find a static " Additional fee:" option that  can be specified in whole dollars and that's that. Kind of silly if you want people to pay a surcharge for using credit card/pay pal as amounts paid will vary. I of course wish to specify a percentage ie: 2.0% off the final total, this shouldn't be too hard should it? Any tips on how to change payment module code to do this?


4. I wish to change the strings: "Tax" and "including Tax" that can be seen in the summary on check-out. To GST and including GST. LocaleResourceString datasource again?


5. I get errors if I try to use any of PDF convert/create features like  "invoice PDF", the error is as follows: Request for the permission of type 'System.Security.Permissions.SecurityPermission, mscorlib, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089' failed.     What's that all about? This feature never worked for me even when I tried diff ver. of nopcommerce on another server. Do i need a plug-in or something? or different permissions to execute this on the server?


6.  Importing products: Surely there must be a smarter way to go about it than just copy and pasting
corresponding fields off the suppliers excel/csv product sheets into fields on an empty nopcommerce excel template?
Is there like an application that one can program that you can assign the relationship to between fields from various suppliers sheets and the nopcommerce standard where this application will read/scan those files and pull the necessary field data out and arrange into nop compatible format?    

7. I see a lot of storefronts have live stock levels and prices that they grab from suppliers xml files, so using RSS or whatever it's called. Is anything similar available in nopcomemrce where it can link up to such files ?


8. Lastly I do realize this is a lot of questions to some of which the solution may require some quite advanced coding and I will probably not get all the answers I seek from this forum as it's not exactly swarming with users nor noob oriented. Can you people recommend some good  asp.net forums/irc channel where noob questions get fast answers and where people are familiar with nopcommerce? Lastly any particular book I can pick up to use as reference and or that orientates around building a demo storefont project with a simplified yet similar architecture/patten approach?


Much appreciated....

Your requests are understandable but certainly not trivial.  As long as you are not under a short time constraint these are all customizations that you could figure out yourself.  If you are dealing with a short deadline then I would recommend getting a reputable developer to do the work for you.  There is just too much to explain in a forum post on what you are requesting.

If you want a basic tutorial on how to add additional tables and/or fields to nopCommerce there is a short tutorial here.  There are also many other resources in these forums.  For better search results use Google instead (e.g. "adding new table to database site:nopcommerce.com").

If you are looking for a good all purpose forum, I would strongly recommend stackoverflow.com.

A final suggestion would be to try and work on the first item on your list.  Take it as far as you can and then post a question here or elsewhere asking for assistance based on what you have accomplished so far.  Forum members like to see your code so they can understand what you are trying to accomplish.

Good luck.

t

I am in Australia.
Me too. In Newcastle.

1. I need to add a "suburb" field to the new user registration form and the rest of site we have postcodes
There is a City field there that you can use for Suburb and Zip code for postcode - the names of thes can be changed in the Admin settings.

2. A shipping module that works around postcode ranges!
Australia post shipping module is included

3. I am using PayPal standard payments, etc
People have talked about the percentage fee in the forums look around to see if any answers there ?
The Manual Describes the setup of Pay Pay and other gateway methods.
We use Commonwealth Bank Payment Gateway Methond which I have writen. We are charged a percentage by them but have built it in to the cost of products.

4. I wish to change the strings: "Tax" and "including Tax" that can be seen in the summary on check-out. To GST and including GST. LocaleResourceString datasource again?
Settings in Admin

5. I get errors if I try to use any of PDF convert/create features like  "invoice PDF"
Might be a trust issue with your server - search fuorum for solutions.

6.  Importing products:
There is an application that some other crew have writen seach the forum for nopadmin    

Learning the code is about loading it up trying and make it work. Pull it apart. Copy and rename bits and build new bits That's how you learn it really and offcourse the forum and google is a big help for errors.
I can recomend the Manual for setup as well.

All the best with it.

A

have a look at my website www.giftforacoach.com.au

I built it using solely nop commerce and just making a few changes to the source code
most of the headings can be changed in the localization section and you would need to select city required in the global settings section of the administration section.

i required the suburb for posting my stuff as well as a couple of other things.

start off by making a local server version first and when you get it right then upload all the files to your internet provider copy the datatbase to your provider and then away you go.

I suggest you make a back up copy to you website when you get one change right. If you dont you could wind up in my situation and make one small mistake and have to start over again.

the booklet will help in getting you started.

the photoball king
adelaide

i am available to help in some areas but i am not a programmer so i am not an expert and am still learning.

Nice one. Good to know that nopCommerce is starting to get a bit of a showing in Aus !

the photoball king wrote:

Thanks for the tips.

Yeah changing the city resource name to suburb does the trick, would
be great though to implement something that automatically fills in the suburb name
if post code is provided or vice versa if suburb name was typed in first.