Having a lot of shipping rates makes the website slow?

[lindapowers]

We sell products of 5, 10 and 15 kg.

Using the country weight plugin and selling all around europe could give us easily 500 shipping rates to set.

We are worried about the fact that having so many rates VM takes ages to make calculations at the checkout and makes it slower.

We have tried searching for a shipping plugin or component but none seem to do what we want:

we will have to set rates this way: until 5 kg, until 10 kg, until 15 kg etc etc maybe until 100. and that for a particular zip code interval in Spain. only in this country we have like 6 intervals to fill.

Then some european countries again: until 5,10,15 kg etc etc to 100 kg. This ones are easier as theres no interval in zip codes and just prices for european countries grouped in 2 zones.

So we are going to have a lot of shipping rates, is that an issue in Virtuemart a part from the nightmare it is for us setting them all up.

We can deal with that, but not if we make the effort and then the website runs slow.

Thanks

[lindapowers]

Hola?

[PRO]

what version?

I know getOrderWeight    has been cached in the newest version

[lindapowers]

2.016

[PRO]

this is exactly why I made my own plugin, 0to have it all under 1 plugin.

I have forwarded this to the devs to see if they know a solution

[lindapowers]

thanks Pro

[veeco]

I prefer you use custom plugin, or modified the existing one (weight_countries).
if you want to do it quick, i prefer you modifiy weight_countries and using array() to store countries and fees.

[lindapowers]

Hi veeco could you explain a bit more what you mean?

We found a plugin by states http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/extension-specific/virtuemart-extensions/virtuemart-shipping/9840

This one at least makes us have to enter half the shipping rates, at least for Spain we can avoid all the zip intervals and just choose the states.

The standard virtuemart plugin by weight, country and zip code is too limited, they seem to forget that the weight is multiplied by quantity or another way of saying it, is not the same cost sending 10 than 40 kg and is not the same sending 1 box of 5 kg than sending 5 boxes of 5 kg.

We found another plugin that afte reading the description seemed a perfect solution http://www.wegotballs.co.za/index.php?product_id=447&page=shop.product_details&category_id=209&flypage=flypage.pbv.v1.tpl&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=162

but after sending an email to the south african developer you are lucky if he replies more than 1 phrase and not even answering if his component works with latest version or multilingual websites so the shipping by states will do for us.

Regards

[GJC Web Design]

maybe my one helps you?

http://www.gjcwebdesign.com/joomla-downloads/virtuemart-20-postcode-zip-code-shipping-plugin.html

feel free to ask me any questions relating to this...

[lindapowers]

Hello GJC I looked at your plugin before and seems to have a lot of functionality but not for us and to be honest I consider it very expensive. I bought the shipping by states for 15 € and your plugin costs 40 €.

Is obvious the hard work there but is just too much money for a shipping plugin.

However we would have bought it if the explanation was a bit more clear, I don't really understand the price multiplier and the price trigger but the real issue for us is that our shipping methods have 21% VAT applied so they all end up being a round number (to avoid decimals in cash on delivery payment) so they look this way. 5.00 €, 7.00 €. 9.00 € with 21% vat applied and we didnt understand how to round those additional prices per units/kg with the tax to obtain those results with your plugin.

Anyway im sure it will be useful for a lot of people.

Regards

[stAn99]

Hello, i was just working on the same issue with 500 shipping methods installed into VM2 and it seems that raising memory limit by your hosting to at least 256mb per php process solves many issues here. I also would recommend to hire a programmer to do the logic of the shipping method in an unique way.

Best Regards,
Stan

[lindapowers]

Hi thanks, didnt know that of the php process.

I was told by a programmer that even if you had 1000 rates maybe the calculation takes 300ms to load, so ithe real pain seems just having to manually add them.

Using the shipping by states plugin and using intervals of 10 kg instead of 5 kg in higher weights saves us from entering a lot.

About hiring a programmer we though of that, the problem is that sometimes logic doesn't work.

Many shipping plugin developers though about the logic of adding an additional charge per units, but they dind't though that the Tax applied in the additional charge will give decimal results which for some people won't be valid. At least that happened on the ones we tried.

Imagine charging someone 56.78 € in cash on delivery.

Regards

[PRO]

Imagine charging someone 56.78 € in cash on delivery.

this could easily be rounded down or up

by using


ceil()   & floor()

[reinhold]

From the description of your problem, it appears to me that my "Shipping by Rules for VirtueMart 2" plugin is the perfect solution to your problem... You only need to set up one shipping method and define the different shipping rates in one line of text each, by simply writing the conditions for a rate in normal text notation. See:
http://open-tools.net/virtuemart-2-extensions/vm2-shipping-by-rules-plugin.html

I suppose the free version would already fulfill your needs (although I'm not entirely opposed if you want to buy the advanced version ;-) ).

we will have to set rates this way: until 5 kg, until 10 kg, until 15 kg etc etc maybe until 100. and that for a particular zip code interval in Spain. only in this country we have like 6 intervals to fill.

So you would set up "Country set 1" as Spain, and then write rules like:

Code Select Expand


Name=Spain Alicante, below 5kg; 03000<=ZIP<03999; Weight<5; Shipping=4
Name=Spain Alicante, below 10kg; 03000<=ZIP<03999; 5<=Weight<10; Shipping=6
Name=Spain Alicante, below 15kg; 03000<=ZIP<03999; 10<=Weight<15; Shipping=7
...


If you can express the shipping cost as a function of the weight, then the Advanced (Paid) version of the plugin might even reduce the number of rules.

But even if that is not possible, copying a line of text and changing it in a text editor is much faster than having to create a complete shipping method with the default shipping plugin of VM. (Plus, changing the quantity in the cart will leave the shipping method selected, even if the order falls into a new weight category.)

Then some european countries again: until 5,10,15 kg etc etc to 100 kg. This ones are easier as theres no interval in zip codes and just prices for european countries grouped in 2 zones.

So you would set up two more country zones (Country set 2 and Country set 3), which have similar rules to the spanish provinces (only without the ZIP condition).

I hope my plugin can help you easily set up your shipping cost structure. Please ask if you have any questions or encounter any problems. It's a brand new plugin (which I needed for the webshop of my own music score edition), so it's not listed at the Joomla extensions directory. But I'd be really happy about feedback of other users, how well it works  and how it can be improved.

Cheers,
Reinhold

[lindapowers]

Hi Reinhold, I'm really interested in testing it, is your website down or my connection having problems?

Im trying to access the link but it won't let me, neither your homepage. I accessed it before without issues when I was looking at other plugin from you (invoices numbers etc)

Regards

PD: The only thing I saw you didnt mention is the Tax in your example line. We need to apply a Tax to our shipping costs.