Trying to set up a subscription product...

[Cessquill]

Hi

I'm re-developing some of our shop in order to automate orders, and one of the products I'm having trouble with is a magazine subscription.

I've got a page sorted where the user ticks the option they want and clicks add to cart to buy a subscription (options being 1 year, 2 year, UK, Europe, USA, Rest of world, etc.). Actinic returns the correct product code for that subscription configuration.

However, one additional component I need is the "First Issue" (i.e., which magazine issue they'd like to start their subscription with). In the past, I've just had a dropdown with "Next", "Jan", "Feb", etc., and processed manually, but now it's being automated, I need to identify exactly the product that they wish to start with.

All past, current and forthcoming issues of the magazine are in Actinic as products within sections, and available to buy separately - I just need some way of listing them in a dropdown for a subscription and returning the product code.

As each magazine is in its own section, I was a fair way into getting them out of the section tree array with JavaScript, until I realised that I could not derive the product code from this, so back to square one. I know a fair bit about Actinic, but as it's not my full time role, I get a bit rusty, and I've hit a dead end.

I don't really want to recreate the products in a manual dropdown (title and product code only), since it would need updating every month, and we have 12 different magazine subscriptions to manage) - but if that's the most practical way, then so be it.

Any ideas guys - I've got a feeling I'm missing a simple trick here? Many thanks for getting this far!

[NormanRouxel]

One way would be: You have a product "Magazine Subscription", this has a mandatory Component "Start Issue", within this Component, you create an Attribute and Choices for each issue. You then use the Permutations tab to associate a product (the separate individual start date product) with each Choice.

The above will sound confusing but luckily is covered in the Help - See the Help and Starter Guide regarding Components, Permutations and Associated Products.

[leehack]

The choices you add to actinic can be straight choices as you have done or you can link them directly to actual products. It just sounds to me like you need to do the latter. Add your attribute into a component, click on fill on the permutations tab and associate the products in question to the choices.

[Cessquill]

Ahh, that's certainly a step in the right direction, thank you. From what I can tell, that would need manual intervention every month. Ideally, the current issue would always be first on the list, with all other future issues following that (and potentially back issues after that, but that's for later).

With each new issue released, I would need to reshuffle the list to make the next issue "current", and drop off/hide the previous issue (and perhaps add another one to the end).

Certainly given me something to think about - thank you.

[leehack]

Given that most magazines seem to be launched in the month before they are meant for, i don't see how you could ever get a system to work out which is the correct option to display reliably, even more so across different mags with different timescales on this. Lets face it most readers haven't got a clue when a mag comes out or which month it is for, we just have rough ideas lol.

I can't see this part ever being anything but manually maintained, especially using actinic, but you could of course get clever with some macros, excel and a hierarchical export doing an update once a month. If that has gone over your head, please forget I even mentioned it.

Another approach could be that you tell them which version the subscription starts with and they select if they do not want that. Some form of a global message on product layouts could do that.

[Cessquill]

I'm normally an ASP site developer by day, so I get where you're coming from on the macros, and I'll have a bit of a think.

Current Issues are in one Section, Back Issues are in another, and Future Issues are in a third. Each time a magazine is launched, an administrator moves the current issue into back and forthcoming issue into current and republishes.

Therefore, there's always going to be a manual element involved, I'm just trying to minimise it (and not make it too complicated for an admin). I was looking into ways I could potentially build the dropdown based on the current/future/back lists - which I did with the JavaScript and act_section_tree, but without getting the product codes.

Hmm...

[RuralWeb]

I would just add a paypal subscription button to that product

[Cessquill]

Afraid I don't think we can go down the paypal subscription route, because...

- Customers may purchase a combination of mail order items and magazine subscriptions
- Paypal subscritions, I don't think, will be able to feed data straight into our in-house subscriptions system (we process quite a lot of subscriptions across a dozen publications).

In reality we are not far off requiring a bespoke shop, but I was looking into the feasibilities of perhaps using a PHP function to build a component on the fly (or when the site is published) that would generate the dropdown I need.

I can do the database side of it, but I don't think I can implement it into Actinic without having to do very bad things...

Oh well, thanks for your help - looks like it'll be a manual process for now. If anybody thinks of anything else, I'd be grateful...