Start Date - End Date

[webdevkev]

Hi All

I'm new to the world of ecommerce... Is Actinic the answer to all my prayers

I'm developing an ecommerce site for rental products, which means an off the shelf click 'n' buy solution just won't work!!

Basically when a customer orders/rents a product and checks out, they are required to fill out the rental start date. For this I can use the "Date Info Question" field. However, I need another "Date Info Question" field for the rental end date.

Or maybe another acceptable solution would be to have two mandatory date fields on the product page itself? Can I add this functionality???

Are either of these requirements possible with Actinic V 7.0.2?

[NormanRouxel]

There's an Actinic site doing rentals (probably many) - see http://www.chariotsonhire.co.uk/

You can attach a Component and Choices to your products that select the rental period(s) and use Permutations to set the price for each period. The Help system should give you enough info on Permutations.

[webdevkev]

Thanks Norman,

I was aware this option was available for displaying prices for rental duration, but it doesn't capture the customer's required on-hire dates, i.e. if you rent a car online the rental company need to know the rental start date (day you pick up the car) and the rental end date (day you return the car).

Is there any provision for capturing this info from the customer?

[NormanRouxel]

Not out of the box. You'd need some JavaScript or Perl patching to add, verify, and pass such info through the order to the reports.

[webdevkev]

How would you acheive this?

Are there any 3rd party modules for this extra functionality or should I look into custom coding this myself? Is custom coding even a possibility with Actinic? Which files can be edited... if any?

Any feedback on this greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[NormanRouxel]

Actinic can be customised to a great extent. The pages are static HTML and you can add HTML / JavaScript to the Templates to do all sort of things. Buying a product is via a FORM submission and the code for this can be modified and checked in all sorts of ways.

The Cart and Checkout are via Perl scripts and Actinic supply them as fully commented source. You have to be somewhat skilled to tinker there as you can easily break the entire site with a single wrong character.

I've done lots of extra functionality tweaks. Look on www.drillpine.biz/actinicstuff/ for some.

[webdevkev]

Thanks Norman for your help, I'll look into it.