Post by TFOMS » Thu Jul 22, 2021 12:19 am

Hi Everyone

I'm trustee for a small charity fundraising for a local primary school. As part of our fundraising, we often sell small items during the year such as Christmas cards designed by the children, Christmas trees, Christmas puddings (spot the theme), plus a few other bits and event tickets. Rather than manually collecting paper orders and cash payments / bank transfers, all requiring a huge amount of manual reconciliation and inevitable errors, I wanted to create a basic online store to handle orders and payments.

I have installed OpenCart 3.0.3.6 onto our web host, which is running CPanel, and managed to get some example products onto the site. No new templates or themes have been installed - just whatever is standard.

Separately, we've created a business account with Paypal and been approved as a charity.

Having achieved these basics, I'm now a bit stuck and spending hours going round in circles, so hoping someone could help me.

Firstly, how do I get Paypal activated on OpenCart? I have so many different extension options available and don't know which one is the right one and how to set it up. This is especially frustrating as it seems such a fundamental thing but I can't seem to find that simple answer within all the complex/genuine issues people have and PayPal is too common a term to search for on here!

Secondly, is there a way to disable some of the standard header and footer options? For example, I don't need any of the "Extras" pages (Brands, Gift Certificates etc), would like to disable "Wishlist" across the site and, perhaps strangely to some, remove the phone number from the header (we don't run an actual store, if that makes sense), and "Returns" as we won't need those. Is that possible?

I'm not too far advanced into the setup really, so happy to take suggestions for alternative ways of thinking, e.g. if there is a standard theme/template that makes my life easier or, dare I say it, a different platform that might be more suited to our needs (OpenCart looks amazing for someone running a proper store, by the way!)

Thank you in advance!

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Post by OSWorX » Thu Jul 22, 2021 1:03 am

For PayPal use PayPal Express.
Removing parts (e.g. sections, links, etc.) use the internal Template editor - the easiest way. Another could be creating Events (but that's more for experienced OpenCart developers/users).

btw: either use 3.0.3.7 or 3.0.2.0 - not 3.0.3.6

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Post by TFOMS » Thu Jul 22, 2021 5:17 am

Thank you!

I've managed to upgrade to 3.0.3.7 and got PayPal Express working. Part of the issue was that I hadn't set up the API credentials on the PayPal side of things, which I have now done and managed some testing in the Sandbox environment.

I can see that I need to amend a few of the settings to remove a lot of the order status options and also figure out a way to produce a report that shows orders in bulk - for example, we collate all the Christmas Tree orders and arrange collections on a single day, so just need a simple list that we can tick against rather than printing individual invoices.

I'll now have a tinker with the Template Editor and see if I can get it looking like I want. Plus there are bits I need to fix on the hosting side, like SSL certificate and actually getting the store to appear under our external URL rather than changing to the long nonsensical URL provided by the host.

Strangely enjoyable trying to figure all of this out.

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Post by fegdeed » Thu Jul 22, 2021 7:24 am

You can try Let's Encrypt for SSL, IT'S FREE. There's a Reports section in admin where you can check products purchased reports using the filters.
Also, for seo urls, you can try the extension in this link https://www.opencart.com/index.php?rout ... n_id=31993, it's free.

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Post by OSWorX » Thu Jul 22, 2021 7:47 pm

fegdeed wrote:
Thu Jul 22, 2021 7:24 am
You can try Let's Encrypt for SSL, IT'S FREE.
Clearly: NO!

Why not?
Let's Encrypt Certificates are used by many fakeshops.
Second: this kind of certificate does not confirm who the owner of the webshop/website is.
Third: a qualified certificate will cost approx. 15,- Euro per year - that amount should be spend for a correct SSL-Certificate.

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Post by straightlight » Thu Jul 22, 2021 7:53 pm

Let's Encrypt is also used for development only, not for production.

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Post by fegdeed » Fri Jul 23, 2021 1:15 pm

OSWorX wrote:
Thu Jul 22, 2021 7:47 pm
fegdeed wrote:
Thu Jul 22, 2021 7:24 am
You can try Let's Encrypt for SSL, IT'S FREE.
Clearly: NO!

Why not?
Let's Encrypt Certificates are used by many fakeshops.
Second: this kind of certificate does not confirm who the owner of the webshop/website is.
Third: a qualified certificate will cost approx. 15,- Euro per year - that amount should be spend for a correct SSL-Certificate.
You have valid points and I agree that paid SSL is better for live shops, however, it would be nice to provide the link for your third point lol.

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Post by paulfeakins » Fri Jul 23, 2021 5:59 pm

Disagree, Let's Encrypt is fine for live shops, you can be sure than 99.99% of customers won't know the difference.

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Post by straightlight » Fri Jul 23, 2021 7:37 pm

paulfeakins wrote:
Fri Jul 23, 2021 5:59 pm
Disagree, Let's Encrypt is fine for live shops, you can be sure than 99.99% of customers won't know the difference.
Exactly. Customers won't know the difference. Only service providers will.

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Post by ADD Creative » Fri Jul 23, 2021 7:48 pm

fegdeed wrote:
Fri Jul 23, 2021 1:15 pm
OSWorX wrote:
Thu Jul 22, 2021 7:47 pm
fegdeed wrote:
Thu Jul 22, 2021 7:24 am
You can try Let's Encrypt for SSL, IT'S FREE.
Clearly: NO!

Why not?
Let's Encrypt Certificates are used by many fakeshops.
Second: this kind of certificate does not confirm who the owner of the webshop/website is.
Third: a qualified certificate will cost approx. 15,- Euro per year - that amount should be spend for a correct SSL-Certificate.
You have valid points and I agree that paid SSL is better for live shops, however, it would be nice to provide the link for your third point lol.
I would like to know too where you can get a property validated SSL certificate for that price. I suspect for that price it's just a domain validated one, the same as Let's Encrypt. Sure you probably had to give a billing address when purchasing it, but that isn't the same a validation. I certainly wouldn't trust a basic DV certificate much more than a Let's Encrypt one.

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Post by OSWorX » Fri Jul 30, 2021 9:37 pm

straightlight wrote:
Fri Jul 23, 2021 7:37 pm
paulfeakins wrote:
Fri Jul 23, 2021 5:59 pm
Disagree, Let's Encrypt is fine for live shops, you can be sure than 99.99% of customers won't know the difference.
Exactly. Customers won't know the difference. Only service providers will.
Sounds like:
let the customer die stupid ..
Same as it was with https: 2,3 years ago, nearly none (except specialists) knew the difference between http and https.
Nowadays I assume 90% of the internet users know the difference.

Will be the same with SSL-Certs in a few years, Let's Encrypt is only a good way to sensibilize the people.

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Post by OSWorX » Fri Jul 30, 2021 9:45 pm

ADD Creative wrote:
Fri Jul 23, 2021 7:48 pm
I would like to know too where you can get a property validated SSL certificate for that price. I suspect for that price it's just a domain validated one, the same as Let's Encrypt. Sure you probably had to give a billing address when purchasing it, but that isn't the same a validation. I certainly wouldn't trust a basic DV certificate much more than a Let's Encrypt one.
Not true!
Creating a certificate with Let's encrypt requieres basically to click a single button in the server administration - even an Ape can do that.
Buying - and therefore spending money - a Certificate requries beside that you have to provide your billing address also a verification method.
Either per Email, DNS-entry, etc. - all of them require access to server tools.

And yes, for this price it is a Domain validated certificate (Class 1), a Class 3 (EV) would cost approx. 170,- per year (and can be issued only by registered companies).
Even it cost around 170,- Euro, what is this in comparison to what the folks want to earn with their webshops > peanuts (many of the them spend more for obstruse themes and templates, modules and extensions).

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Post by straightlight » Sat Jul 31, 2021 3:48 am

OSWorX wrote:
Fri Jul 30, 2021 9:37 pm
straightlight wrote:
Fri Jul 23, 2021 7:37 pm
paulfeakins wrote:
Fri Jul 23, 2021 5:59 pm
Disagree, Let's Encrypt is fine for live shops, you can be sure than 99.99% of customers won't know the difference.
Exactly. Customers won't know the difference. Only service providers will.
Sounds like:
let the customer die stupid ..
Same as it was with https: 2,3 years ago, nearly none (except specialists) knew the difference between http and https.
Nowadays I assume 90% of the internet users know the difference.

Will be the same with SSL-Certs in a few years, Let's Encrypt is only a good way to sensibilize the people.
Yes, correct.

Dedication and passion goes to those who are able to push and merge a project.

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Post by mikeinterserv » Sat Jul 31, 2021 4:14 am

OSWorX wrote:
Fri Jul 30, 2021 9:37 pm
way to sensibilize the people.
Gave me the best laugh for ages. NOT happening, in fact its clearly going the other way if you have been paying attention to the world.

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Post by ADD Creative » Sat Jul 31, 2021 9:46 pm

OSWorX wrote:
Fri Jul 30, 2021 9:45 pm
Not true!
Creating a certificate with Let's encrypt requieres basically to click a single button in the server administration - even an Ape can do that.
Buying - and therefore spending money - a Certificate requries beside that you have to provide your billing address also a verification method.
Either per Email, DNS-entry, etc. - all of them require access to server tools.

And yes, for this price it is a Domain validated certificate (Class 1), a Class 3 (EV) would cost approx. 170,- per year (and can be issued only by registered companies).
Even it cost around 170,- Euro, what is this in comparison to what the folks want to earn with their webshops > peanuts (many of the them spend more for obstruse themes and templates, modules and extensions).
I think you reasoning is wrong to think that and averaged customer knows the difference between DV certificates and that criminals running a fake shop wouldn't be prepared to enter a fake details and spend a bit of time.

There are good reasons for paying for a good DV certificate (even better an EV). Proving a site is legitimate is not one of them. You only need to look at the research.
https://chromium.googlesource.com/chrom ... ge-info.md

The realty is 99.9% of customers don't know the difference.

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