[Trellis-developers] ecommerce

[Shaddy Zeineddine]

we could remove products from catalogs if we did this. we might also
want to reconsider our catalogs/items since dealing with courses as
items is confusing and redundant.

catalog_items -> catalog_id, item_type, reference_id
courses (no changes)
bundles (re added)
bundles_courses (replaces bundles_items, limits bundles to courses
rather than products, courses, subscriptions, or other bundles)
subscriptions (no changes)

this would improve almost every aspect of catalogs for non ecommerce
clients, and it might also improve it for ecommerce clients too

Shaddy Zeineddine wrote:
> Ecommerce is still a lacking area of Trellis. The truth is that most
> current and future clients do not have a need for ecommerce in their
> learning center so it hasn't been a priority. For these reasons, it is
> hard to justify the inclusion of ecommerce in trellis as a core feature.
> 
> I think we should consider taking an existing ecommerce solution and
> integrating it with trellis through a plugin. I know James is somewhat
> familiar with ZenCart (oscommerce branch), and I was happy to hear the
> latest version will require php 5.2 (just like us). I have not looked
> into integration very much, but it is something to consider.
> 
> Basically the plugin will need to provide the methods we would use to
> complete transactions without needing the zencart user interface, we can
> also forward users to zencart for purchasing and sync our catalog with
> zencart. This would probably mean management of ecommerce would be done
> using zencart, administrators can be forwarded to the interface and user
> accounts can be auto generated from trellis. We can customize the look
> to match our admin site, it doesnt have to be an exact match, but it
> should feel familiar.
> 
> If we can integrate trellis with a third party ecommerce program, it
> will be easy to offer advanced functionality to our clients who request
> it. And for the rest, we will have one less chunk of code to worry about.
> 
> Any thoughts?
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