Out of Stock - E-Mail Notification

[Hollmers]

I have been testing the Shopping cart version 8.5 and looking at page 103 in the "Getting Started" manual, there is the possibility of creating a condition based upon the stock level.

I would like the template to show

"Please notify me once the item is back in stock" and then I would like to create a 'hyperlink' to my E-Mail address and allowing the user to send an E-Mail directly out of the shopping cart'.

Is there a possibility to include a hyperlink, which seems to be so easy if you are using MS FrontPage.

Thanks for your help.

George

[leehack]

There is a condition in your product layout which checks what the current stock level is and fires the message onto the layout if the stock measurements reach the parameters you have set. To change the message that shows you can edit it in design>text and you can also add a normal <a> email tag within the condition. Whatever you put in between the blockif and /block, will show when it meets the condition.

I'd suggest doing a snapshot and then copying the existing layout you are using and then having a play with and testing it. Once you have it done, select the layout for the product or section in question and test it. You can always revert to the original if you balls it up as you are working on a copy of it and you always have a snapshot if it goes really tits up.

There is also a few threads already in the forum about different stock level messages too. First thing to grasp is what the blockif is doing and how it works - study a few already in place to get a good understanding of the method they are created.

[Hollmers]

I have been testing the Shopping cart version 8.5 and looking at page 103 in the "Getting Started" manual, there is the possibility of creating a condition based upon the stock level.

I would like the template to show

"Please notify me once the item is back in stock" and then I would like to create a 'hyperlink' to my E-Mail address and allowing the user to send an E-Mail directly out of the shopping cart'.

Is there a possibility to include a hyperlink, which seems to be so easy if you are using MS FrontPage.

Thanks for your help.

George

I use a site for testing purposes only. I used the first book for testing.

Here is the link: http://www.hollmers.com/acatalog/Books.html

I obviously fail to understand how to create the E-Mail link in the block created.

Here is the code and nothing shows up on the web site, so obviously I entered 'garbage'.

<actinic:variable name="ProductRelatedProductsList" />
<br /><actinic:block if="%3cactinic%3avariable%20name%3d%22IsStockMonitored%22%20%2f%3e%20AND%20%28%3cactinic%3avariable%20name%3d%22StockLevel%22%20%2f%3e%20%3c%201%29">
Please contact me once the product is back in stock!<br>
Click here to enter your E-Mail
<a href="<actinic:variable name="SendMailPageURL" />"></a>
<a href="<actinic:variable name="SendMailPageLink" />"></a>
<a href="<actinic:variable name="SendMailText" />"></a>
</actinic:block><br>

The condition show above is taken from the manual, i.e.
Excercis - Creating a Condition Base on Stock Level. I used the "Contitions Editor" and the "Condition Filter" just as per sample and tested basically as follows:
IsStockMonitored and (StockLevel < 1)

It merely shows 'Out of stock' but I don't know what I am doing in creating and Email link.

Thanks in advance for any help and your quick response.
George

[leehack]

Your links are not formed correctly, your source code on the site is showing:

Click here to enter your E-Mail <a href="http://www.hollmers.com/cgi-bin/mf000001.pl"></a><a href="http://www.hollmers.com/cgi-bin/mf000001.pl?ACTION=SHOWFORM"></a><a href="Contact Us"></a>

There are 3 main elements to an anchor <a> tag:

1 - Where it points to
2 - The link text
3 - The tag settings

Therefore, if i am creating a link, i give it the address and what i want it to say. So a link to your contact form, would be as follows:

<a href="http://www.hollmers.com/cgi-bin/mf000001.pl?ACTION=SHOWFORM">Click here to enter your email</a>

Code in blue is the address, code in red is the link text and code in green is the html <a> tag. Now the code i have included manually into that <a> tag can be replaced by using an actinic variable instead, so you would have:

<a href="ACTINIC VARIABLE FOR CONTACT FORM URL">ACTINIC VARIABLE FOR LINK TEXT</a>

Which would give you:

<a href="<actinic:variable name="SendMailPageLink" />"><actinic:variable name="SendMailText" /></a>

Which will work as you want it to, so basically remove all of the orange code below from your code and replace it with the correct code above:

<actinic:variable name="ProductRelatedProductsList" />
<br /><actinic:block if="%3cactinic%3avariable%20name%3d%22IsStockMonitored%22%20%2f%3e%20AND%20%28%3cactinic%3avariable%20name%3d%22StockLevel%22%20%2f%3e%20%3c%201%29">
Please contact me once the product is back in stock!<br>
Click here to enter your E-Mail
<a href="<actinic:variable name="SendMailPageURL" />"></a>
<a href="<actinic:variable name="SendMailPageLink" />"></a>
<a href="<actinic:variable name="SendMailText" />"></a></actinic:block><br>

So the final code to go into your layout is:

<actinic:variable name="ProductRelatedProductsList" />
<br /><actinic:block if="%3cactinic%3avariable%20name%3d%22IsStockMonitored%22%20%2f%3e%20AND%20%28%3cactinic%3avariable%20name%3d%22StockLevel%22%20%2f%3e%20%3c%201%29">
Please contact me once the product is back in stock!<br>
<a href="<actinic:variable name="SendMailPageLink" />"><actinic:variable name="SendMailText" /> </a></actinic:block><br>