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[divivo]

I am working on a project with a client who needs the possibility of handling multiple vendors.  I would like to know how I could help to make that part of the VirtueMart more stable and what need still to be done.

[Soeren]

Hello,

a lot must be done in this area...
At this time the vendor system is a bit confusing...I would need someone who also adds that feature into the CVS version.

The main question is "HOW" this feature is to be implemented...

ciao, Soeren

[gram]

a lot must be done in this area...
At this time the vendor system is a bit confusing...I would need someone who also adds that feature into the CVS version.

The main question is "HOW" this feature is to be implemented...

Soeren,

As the primary dev for VM, can you give us an idea of what you percieve the issues to be?  And perhaps some insight on how you think it would be best to incorporate this idea going forward?  If we choose to assist with our own developement it would be good to understand what think about these things.

GRAM

[velocis]

I have done a multi-vendor system mod with php-shop last year and it works well, everyone can buy and sell there own stuff as well as make offers on products.

Maybe I am miss understanding multi-vendor but is it the same as lets say ebay, the ability for anyone to list, or is it a whole lot more in depth than that.

I am more than happy to offer my insight into the project I did, which is still running with 600+ users and 30,000 products.

Cheers

[divivo]

May be we just don't know how to use what is actually working right now.  I would love some insight.

What I want to do is having the vendor able to register from the frontend and enter their information (all information available in vendor profile). Then when authorize they will be able to add products.

My concern is that for the moment to add product we need to give them admin right and it is done through the backend.  Or I am missing something.  I would like the vendor just have the possibility to add products to predefined categories, that's all.

Any suggestion on how to accomplish that with the actually version of VM? Thank you, Chris

[Soeren]

The recent version of VirtueMart will not be "multi-vendorized".
The work on that must be done on the CVS version.
The current stable branch 1.0.x is feature-freezed. Please note that!

I'm sure we'll find a developer who can integrate that into VirtueMart 1.1.x CVS...so please help!

ciao, Soeren

[velocis]

I know when I modded php_shop we had to set everyone on the site who registered to a storeadmin, so that they could list there own products.. Then on the Product add screen we got the system to take note of the user_id of the person listing.. We then put that id into a new field we created, 'user_id' on the product record.

We then just copied the function that lists all products and called it mylist, we then made changes to all the queries so it would only show the person products that they had listed ... This is the equivilent of My Ebay, where you can see and modify your products.

Then just made sure we removed any edit functions from the browse and flypages so that the person could only modify their products from the Mylist feature.

Worked, and still works today on that site... no issues.

[divivo]

we had to set everyone on the site who registered to a storeadmin, so that they could list there own products.

I understand you gave the storeadmin permissions to the users:
What Group did you set the users to:  Registered, Publishers, Manager...??

It seems that I need to set it up at least to Manager but the problem with that is that then they have the permissions to change content in Joomla?

Thank you for your help
Chris

PS: Just for general information to whom may read this threat, dont forget to set:
Allow Frontend-Administration for non-Backend Users?   in the Global Configuration of Virtuemart.

[velocis]

REMEMBER: This is PHP-shop I am talking about... Not sure of changes going into Virtuemart

So yeah that is correct, in Mambo I set all the users to registered and in php-shop I set all the users to storeadmin.

Now if they have integrated the user details together then this option may not be doable.. again it did take a reasonable amount of adjustment to a few pages to get the whole thing working like it was supposed to.

cheers

[kemi]

I know when I modded php_shop we had to set everyone on the site who registered to a storeadmin, so that they could list there own products.. Then on the Product add screen we got the system to take note of the user_id of the person listing.. We then put that id into a new field we created, 'user_id' on the product record.

We then just copied the function that lists all products and called it mylist, we then made changes to all the queries so it would only show the person products that they had listed ... This is the equivilent of My Ebay, where you can see and modify your products.

Then just made sure we removed any edit functions from the browse and flypages so that the person could only modify their products from the Mylist feature.

Worked, and still works today on that site... no issues.

Hi.  I am a newbie Joomla user and I am very interested in using your technique.  I plan on building a similar online mall to what you have built with multiple users, each having their own products.  Can you please detail your technique?  It also looks like you may have modified some scripts and changed some database elements -- if so pls share your modifications.  I am on a deadline and appreciate any input you can give.  Thanks.

K.

[velocis]

Ok here goes, but its been a long while since I did this.

Please find the modified files I could remember in this zip file
http://thedenniszone.no-ip.org/virtuemart/php_shop_mod.zip

I made a copy of /html/product.product_list.php to /html/product.product_mylist.php and made some mods to that to either show all products if the user is an admin or just the products owned by that person (this is done by tracking the user_id on the product record when the user logs the product, see the product_form.php in the zip for the code that does all that) Please remember I am checking for admin by looking for User_id=62, whereas it should probably be done properly but I did not know how to do this back when I wrote it)

Then I created a link on the menu to point to this function, not the product.product_list function.. This was used so the person could look at their products. so my link was
index.php?pshop_mode=admin&page=product.product_mylist&option=com_phpshop

See the reference to product.product_mylist !

Adding Products
Line 149 on product.product_form.php provides the functionality whereby it checks for Admin (currently checking for user_id=62, change this to a standard Admin check) and if it is admin, then it displays a list of all the users, this allows the admin to enter products under anyones user_id, very handy ! If they are NOT an admin then it just puts their user_id in that box which is sent back to database (this is done inside the ps_product.php class file I think.. also included)

I think from memory we just set the default in MySQL to automatically declare the customer
as  a storeadmin (e.g. default value on that field is storeadmin, I think it was null otherwise)

Anyway hopefully that will get you started.

You could try using my test system for this website, to try it and see how it works.. you will have to register though. http://thedenniszone.no-ip.org/paperexchange/   This is a test site, so you should be ok to trial it, but please don't pass it around for people to try..

Again I did this in PHP_shop so I am unsure of the changes from php_shop to Virtuemart, although it was the last PHP-SHOP before moving to virtuemart so they should be pretty similiar.

cheers

[divivo]

OK, I made a hack to suit my needs of a vendor management system with Virtuemart.  Please note this is a hack although it is working great on my site, I won't have time to provide support for it.  This hack is for Virtuemart 1.0.4.

The basic functionality I implemented are as follow:
Creation of a type Vendor, so I don't need to give the admin right to the users.
The vendor, can from the front end:
 add a product,
 see THEIR product list only,
Update there Store information,
and see a report of what product h as been sold (they see only THEIR SOLD product)
vendor can't publish THEIR products, all product need to be verified and PUBLISHED by the admin and storeadmin.
A notification email is sent to all ADMINs when a product is add by a vendor and a product need to be verified and published.
A notification email is sent to the VENDOR when the product is published.
all text are implemented through the language file so it is easy for other languages to be implemented.

Hint: the SKU is automatically generated since they don't see all the product.

In the admin you will have to update the access to the Virtuemart modules with the vendor type.
I included a copy of my table updated.

PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU BACKUP your database and site before you IMPLEMENT THIS HACK.

To install the hack simply unzip the attached file and replace the file through FTP.

Hope it help someone
Chris

[velocis]

Cooool divivo... Will have to give that a try,

Did anything I mentioned from php-shop help in your development or did you approac it from
a completely different angle ?

Do you have an example of it working I could see.. ?

cheers

[divivo]

What you mentioned in the php-shop gave me some good ideas.  i kind of started from scratch because i don't know anything about php-shop compare to virtuemart.

I do have an example but i can't share it directly on this forum, so if you send me an email through my www.divivo.com site I will reply with the site and username to try it out.

Chris

[divivo]

You need to modify the cart module as well so that the link to the backend is visible for the Vendors as well.
I attached the hack.