How to disable showing Shipping in cart when it's a downloadable product

[delliott]

Am using Joomla 2.5.11, with VM 2.20.x (latest).

Am using VM2 Downloads for Sale Plugin, Version 1.5.1. 

Looks odd in the checkout screen to see a shipping method shown when it's an electronic download product purchase.  How can I configure 2.x to show something here that looks more appropriate?

[jenkinhill]

The plugin should turn off shipping.

But if the shipping method is shown and you only have downloadables you can simply change the name of the shipping plugin to "Product to be downloaded" or similar, and make sure that Enable Automatic Selected Shipment?  is selected in Config/Checkout. You can use template overrides to remove the shipping address button in the cart.

[reinhold]

Looks odd in the checkout screen to see a shipping method shown when it's an electronic download product purchase.  How can I configure 2.x to show something here that looks more appropriate?

You can't. VM does not have any setting that a product does not need delivery like downloads, but also things like seminars, online courses, gift coupon codes, massage appointments, etc. (And in turn, a product with downloadable files does not neccessarily mean that it does not need shipping. The download can be e.g. only a device driver for the purchased hardware, or a user manual, etc. So VM can't also simply turn off shipping if a media file is attached. It really needs to be a product propery like the weight or the dimensions.)

There is only a workaround: Set up a shipping method named "Download" and 0 shipping costs. If you sell downloadable and non-downloadable products, then it's even worse, because then you'll have to find a way to distinguish orders that need to be shipped and orders that don't. You can use product weights for that, and have orders of weight>0 shipped, while orders of weight 0 are pure downloads.

But I regard this as a hack to work around a VM limitation. (Also notice that the user will still be presented with the shipping address input button/form...)


See the docs of my downloads for sale plugin: http://www.open-tools.net/documentation/downloads-for-sale-plugin-for-virtuemart.html#shipping-methods
or the FAQ of the iStraxx Shipping for Virtual Products documentation: http://extensions.virtuemart.net/all-tutorials/9-custom-fields/9-shipment-for-virtual-products

Reinhold