# Need some advice on shopping cart with attributes



## mfreund (Sep 12, 2005)

I have been using Zen cart for a few years to sell tshirts and it works out good buite or blt I am building a new super site style tshirt site with alot of shirts and want to add a bunch of different styles of shirts and here is my problem.


Zencart allows you to add options and valuse to those options but here is its drawback and where I am stuck and why i need some insight,


With zencart normally I would add an option of size and color and the customer can choose for example red white or black shirt for example and that has not been a problem thus far....cause you would just add a product and then add the options in the color field....BUT NOW I would like to add a style field and put in there for example tshirt,sweatshirt for example.....but lets say that tshirts come in red,white or blue. BUT sweatshirts only come in Black or gray. The problem I am having is Zen only lets you add base attributes so a customer could for example pick RED sweatshirt...but I only offer Black and gray in sweatshirts,but there is no way to do this with zen cause it does not do attribute validation at all. Have any of you guys found a way to do this or maybe do it with another cart or something that is better or as good as Zen?


Cause shirts come in many different colors depending on brand and style I do not want to have to stock all of them just cause of limitations with the cart.


Can someone help out with options I may have so I can sell many different styles and still have the power of something like Zen?


Any help is appreciated


Thanks



Matt


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## Rodney (Nov 3, 2004)

Have you searched the zen cart forums for a solution. Often times there are third party plugins you can download or buy that will fit your needs.

There's probably something like that out there for Zen Cart. If not, I would check other carts like CubeCart and search around to see if there is a plugin that will do what you need.

I'm 99% sure that there is one out there (if not, you could hire someone to program it for you as an add on to the cart you use).


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## mfreund (Sep 12, 2005)

yea....I actually hired a programmer and he is working it out as we speak


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## zhenjie (Aug 27, 2006)

To date there is no Zen-cart contribution which allows dependent attributes. The zen-cart admins themselves have said so. The closest so far is using Javascript to do a validation AFTER the attributes are selected which isn't really the best solution.

I know a lot of people (including myself) who would love a dependent attribute mod for zen-cart. I'm sure if we got together we could all chip in for the programmer.


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## Rodney (Nov 3, 2004)

I know this is a zen-cart thread, but I was messing around with CubeCart yesterday and there is a mod that does this for CubeCart.

It's called "Stock Levels for Product Options" and it can show the current stock level for your items including the size/color stock levels.


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## mfreund (Sep 12, 2005)

there is one of those for zen but i put it in.....and it does let you put in the attrubutes and stock but it is not showing it to the customer....very strange dont know why it is not working


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## burgensteen (Jun 24, 2006)

I think you would be hard to find any ecommerce off the shelf package to include this feature, I dont know of any, whichever ecommerce package you use i believe you would have to have it coded and I think you mean that you want dynamic dependant product options (depending on what you choose on the first drop down dictates what is optionable for the second etc etc). I only know of Javascript to do this, which is the way I done it on sites in the past (I may be wrong though).


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## paulo (Dec 13, 2006)

Rodney said:


> I know this is a zen-cart thread, but I was messing around with CubeCart yesterday and there is a mod that does this for CubeCart.
> 
> It's called "Stock Levels for Product Options" and it can show the current stock level for your items including the size/color stock levels.



Rodney,

Im looking at that mod, but I can't seem to figure out how to assign stock levels for each size.


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## Rodney (Nov 3, 2004)

paulo said:


> Rodney,
> 
> Im looking at that mod, but I can't seem to figure out how to assign stock levels for each size.


Have you installed it? All the instructions are in the install file.


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## paulo (Dec 13, 2006)

Rodney said:


> Have you installed it? All the instructions are in the install file.


Yeah it was installed but looks like there was a bug, but Estelle has corrected it for me! Works great!


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## mavricovich (Jul 31, 2007)

it's been awhile but i set up the stock for attributes on zencart. i think the question you are raising was in the forums and can be done in some tedious manner. i had simpler needs but was foreseeing changes i would make later. over numerous things i eventually became disgruntled with zencart. my hats off to those who spend time putting together free software but i think zencart is kind of a jumble. it's been added on to in pieces in a way that i think the backend is sloppy. i am confused that there are numerous addons that have been written for it for a long time that need to be updated for new versions, are obviously very popular, but have not been added to the basic package. displaying products in grid form for example.

i decided to go with xcart, which CAN do the kind of attribute breakdown you are talking about. xcart is a lowend commercial package for 200 bucks. there are numerous addons for sale but the basic package has an easy to use backend and good standard features. it is php based so it can be modified as well. i got quick answers in their forum. and they have paid customer support for more technical stuff, and people who can make modifications for you. havent done that, so i dont know the pricing compared to someone independent.

not saying zencart totally sucks, but it can be time consuming to get answers, if at all. so i like a little more support available.


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## tuan (Nov 11, 2006)

i decided to go with xcart, which CAN do the kind of attribute breakdown you are talking about. xcart is a lowend commercial package for 200 bucks. there are numerous addons for sale but the basic package has an easy to use backend and good standard features. it is php based so it can be modified as well. i got quick answers in their forum. and they have paid customer support for more technical stuff, and people who can make modifications for you. havent done that, so i dont know the pricing compared to someone independent.

Hi mavricovich,
Just curious if you're got your store set up using Xcart yet? I'm about to buy xcart and was wondering if you're using Xcart's USPS shipping generator feature and if yes do you like it? How does it work? Does it make printing shipping labels for USPS easy for you, if you're using USPS. 
Thanks.


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