IPrice minimart user guide

Before working with the component, You need to specify mandatory component parameters. Access to component parameters can be of almost any component sections in the backend: the toolbar button "Options". In particular, the global parameters of the component can be accessed by going to the admin in the "Components" -> "IPrice minimart" -> "Items" -> toolbar button "Options"

Mandatory parameters

You must specify mandatory parameters before starting:

• Manager of orders - A Joomla user who will receive orders and order notifications.
• Send a copy of the order for e-mail addresses - E-mail addresses separated by comma, to which to send a copy of orders. For example: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.'.
• Currency - You must select a base currency. The base currency exchange rate shall be equal to 1. Learn more about managing currencies.
• Text after order submitted - The text to be displayed after the user sends the order. The text will be displayed in a Joomla system message area.
• Secret password - set a secret password that is used in some functions of the component, in particular, in the URL of automatic updating of currency rates on a schedule, in the URL of automatic update of items on a schedule.

After setting the mandatory parameters, create a menu item with the type "IPrice minimart->Catalog view" or "IPrice minimart->Price list view". This menu item will link to your item list. You can assign this menu item as the main page of the site.

General parameters

The remaining parameters are for fine tuning of the component. Their settings is optional.

• Show prices - if 'No', then product prices will be hidden.
• Use shopping cart - You can disable the use of the shopping cart by setting this option to "No". In this case, the user can immediately fill out contact information and submit an order after selecting products, without having to add products to the cart. Demo price list without using a shopping cart. Demo of a catalog without using a shopping cart.
• Zero price as contract price - if 'yes', then will be displayed the word 'contractual' for products with zero price.
• Default initial view : 'Item list view' - will be displayed item list by default. This option should be used with caution: with a large number of items, setting up this option can lead to a long page load. Use this option only if you have a small number of products (1000 or less). 'Category list view' - will first be displayed a list of categories. When clicking on a category will display a list of products of this category.
• Sort by default - you can choose the field of product where the products will be sorted by default when displaying the list of products. If the sort field is not specified, then the products will be sorted in order of sequence, set in the admin panel. You can select only fields enabled for sorting in an Item field manager.
• Sort direction - the direction of the default sort: descending or ascending.
• Current filter limits a list of search values - if "Yes", then the list of search values will be limited by a currently applied filter. So when the user once applies a filter for product list, then all other filter values will be limited in search module or in header filters of a price-list .
• Show currency selector - allow user to select currency. "Dropdown list" - the choice of available currencies from the drop down list; "list of links" -select the currency from the list.
• Show list of subcategories in a card of a category - show or not a list of subcategories in a card of a category in a list of categories.
• Use pagination - use or not pagination.
• Show current page number.
• Num items per page - number of items per page for the list of items if use pagination.
• Num items per page for a category list - number of items per page for list of categories if use pagination.

Rules for input box of quantity of an item

• Default quantity for a product - initial selected quantity for a product in a product list (0 or 1).
• Minimum qty of an item - minimum quantity of an item which the user can select. Can be overriden by the item parameter.
• Maximum qty of an item - maximum quantity of an item which the user can select. Can be overriden by the item parameter.
• Increment qty of an item -the step change in the quantity of item, when choosing the number of arrows. The value can be overridden for each product.
• Allow edit an item quantity - allow or not allow a user to change a quantity of an item using keyboard. Can be overriden by the item parameter.
• List of values for an item quantity - list of values for an item quantity, separated by semicolon. For example: 1.8;2.6;6.4. You can use caption for each value separated by ":", for example: 1.8:piece;2.6:pack;6.4:box. Can be overriden by the item parameter.

Adding products to shopping cart:

• After pressing 'TO CART' button - 'Add item to cart' - adding item to shopping cart and display popup shopping cart window; 'Add and go to checkout page' - adding item to shopping cart and redirect the user to the checkout page.
• After pressing 'TO CART' button for already added - If the item already added to the shopping cart, then: option 'Add item to cart' - adding item to shopping cart and display popup shopping cart window; 'Go to checkout page' - when pressing "To cart" button, then the user redirect to checkout page without adding item to shopping cart.
• Enable AJAX for adding to cart - if 'Yes', add an item(s) to shopping cart without page reloading and show popup window with shopping cart content. If you have the AJAX conflict with other components or scripts, set this parameter to 'No'.
• Show modal shopping cart - Show or not popup shopping cart window after pressing "To cart" button.
• Auto-close popup window of shopping cart after (s) - specify the time in seconds, after which a pop-up window with shopping cart content will be closed automatically. If 0, a pop-up shopping cart window will not close automatically.
• Allow add items with zero cost to shopping cart. - if 'no', then products with a zero price will not be added to the cart.

Mark items that are already in the shopping cart:

• Marks a color - products already added to the shopping cart are marked by color.
• Color - the color that will be marked items already present in the shopping cart. Format: #xxxxxx, e.g. #cccccc -it's gray color. The default light green color #E9FEDD.
• Qty in cart near the 'To cart' button - displays the quantity of item already added to the shopping cart near the "To cart" button.
• Qty in cart inside the 'select' field - the quantity of item already added to the shopping cart will be displayed in the selection field of item quantity. Pay attention: this option enables a special mode of adding items to the shopping cart: when you press the button "To cart" a selected quantity of item replaces the quantity already present in the shopping cart. This mode has a limitation: if the product has the custom properties, then you can add the item only with simple set of options. Therefore, this mode isn't recommended if You use the main property or custom properties for items.

Availability:

• Deny to order a products within a quantity of more than is available - If 'Yes', then hides "Add to cart" mini-button and shows status "not available" for an item which is not available on stock.
• Show a product availability as - allow to select a way to show a product availability. 'Quantity in stock' - number of item available in stock. 'Icon' - icons with 3 levels of a product availability: not available, few in stock, many in stock.QTY + Icon Show both Icon and quantity in stock. '4 balls' - icons with 8 levels of a product availability, shows by 4 blue balls.
• Quantity for high stock - quantity of a product availability for an icon "maximum availability".
• How many days the product will be considered a new - the number of days from date add during which the item marked as "New".
• Enable availability control for main property of a product - If enabled, you can set the stock balance of the product for each option of the main property.
• Show non-available options of the main property of a product - if disabled, options of the main property of the product with zero quantity in stock will be unavailable for user selection

Other options:

• Force user login -  if 'yes', then the user will have to log in or register before submitting the order.
• Allow link 'Checkout without registering' -  if 'Yes', then the user will be allowed to submit the order without registration, even if "Force user login" is "Yes".
• Show breadcrumbs ('You are here') - show or not breadcrumbs above item list.
• Enable redirect - allow to redirect the user after submitting the order. Redirecting to the specified URL only works if not using payment modules.
• URL for redirect - link to redirect the user after submitting the order.
• Use Captcha - use or not to use Captcha code before submitting the order and user registration to protect against spam. You need to install any captcha plugin for Joomla or use preinstalled Re-Captcha plugin. You need to enable only one captcha plugin at a moment. All other captcha plugins should be disabled.
• Use captcha for registered - if 'no', the Captcha code will not be required for authenticated users.
• Use Community Builder integration - If 'Yes', the contact information for the fields of the order can be taken from the user profile of Community Builder. You need to set an appropriate field name of CB user profile for the field of the order in IPrice order field manager. See more "Order contact fields".
• Select item fields for export to Excel - select the fields of a product to be uploaded in CSV price list, if the user clicks the link "exoprt in Excel" above the list of items.
• Decimal separator - decimal separator of amounts, prices and totals. Default is '.'.
• Thousand separator - separator of thousands for amounts, prices and totals. Space by default.
• Weight unit - weight unit eg. 'pc', 'kg', 'tn' and etc.
• Number of decimals for weight.
• Unit capacity - unit of product volume eg. 'sq.m.', 'gallon', 'bl' and etc.
• Folder for uploading item files - specify the site folder into which the electronic product files will be downloaded. The folder must be specified as a relative path, for example: images/iprice. When manually loading electronic product files, you need to add the .dat extension for files, for example: before copying the data.zip file to the electronic product files storage directory, you must rename it to data.zip.dta. When downloading an electronic product file from the product editing page, this extension will be added automatically.
• Folder for storing order files - specify the folder of the site where the electronic product files will be copied when creating an order, if the corresponding option "Make a copy of the file" is set for the product. The folder must be specified as a relative path, for example: images/iprice/orders. When you create an order, a subfolder with the order number is created in this folder and the electronic product file that is ordered in this order is copied to this subfolder.

Other parameters

See description of other parameters in appropriate chapters:

• For tab "Price list" see Price-list chapter.
• For tab "Catalog" see Catalogue chapter.
• For tab "Item page" see Item page chapter.
• For tab "Shopping cart" see Checkout page chapter.
• For tab "Order" see Order chapter.
• For tab "User orders" see User control panel chapter.
• For tab "Images" see Image gallery chapter.
• For tab "Payment" see Payment methods chapter.

Tab "Taxes"

This section allows you to set the parameters of the two methods of calculating taxes: the price includes the tax and the price does not include tax.

Tab "Discount"

This section allows you to specify a global discount for the order. Volume of discount may depend on the number of ordered items or the total order. Also you can assign individual global discount for 5 groups of users. You can enable the calculation of bonuses, setting a percentage for the amount of bonus for each order. It is also possible to set cumulative discount: if the user has paid orders for an amount greater than specified in the predefined discount, he will receive a discount on future orders.  See more at "Prices and discounts".

Tab "Automatic import"

The component allows you to configure automatic importing products that can be used to automatically update prices, add new products on schedule. For more information see section "Auto Import on schedule" of "Import" chapter.

Tab "Colours"

This section allows you to set colors of price list.

Permissions

If you have users, who manage the component and not included to group "Super Users", then You need to set permissions for this user groups. You can set permissions in a global options of the component, on tab "Permitions". See more details about managing access control at "Administration"-"Permissions".

Adding content

After setting up the component you can start add data.You can use two ways to start adding data:manual mode or using the Import CSV.

Add data manually

First add categories and subcategories of items. Then start adding items. If you wish to use discounts for the products, you need to add all used variants of discounts in "Discount/surchage" section, and then set these predefined discounts for each item or item category.

Import data

Importing data allows easier adding and subsequent updating of products. Prepare an import file for categories, items and images, then upload it using the section "Import" in the admin panel. For more information see "Import" chapter.

Appearance

Begin to customize the look of a price list with the global parameters after add data. In the section "Item fields" of the backend you can specify the order of an item fields, add your own custom fields (properties and charcteristics) for an item, can specify a field headers, a field alignment and a field width. Also in this section you can define fields are displayed in the price-list, in the checkout page, and in the order. Here you can set fields that you want to search in a search module.
In the "Order fields" section you can add your own custom fields for a contact information of the order, set the caption of fields, select fields will be displayed in the order as well as to determine the order of the fields. Do not exclude the field "e-mail" and do not make it optional.

Display items on site

Items can be displayed on the site using two modes: interactive price-list or catalog.
Create a menu item of type "Price list layout" to display items in price-list mode, or type "Сatalog layout" to display the items in the catalog mode. The alias of the menu item will determine the link from which product page will be called from component modules.
If you want the user to be able to view and manage their orders, create a menu item of type "User order layout".

Overriding language constants

You can change any phrase displayed on the site by redefining language constants. Language constants of the IPrice component are located in files:
- /languages/com_ipricecalc/en-GB/en-GB.com_ipricecalc.ini - for the site front.
- /administrator/languages/com_ipricecalc/en-GB/en-GB.com_ipricecalc.ini - for the site backend.

It is not recommended to change the language constants directly in these files, since when you update the component, your new values will be replaced with the standard ones. To change language constants, use the standard Joomla Language Overrides feature: Admin-> Extensions-> Languages-> Constant Overrides. Use Joomla guide for overriding language constants. You can also manually create the file /language/overrides/en-GB.override.ini, copy all the constants from the language file of the component that you want to override into this file, and set new values for the language constants.

Additional extensions

• Install and publish the module "Shopping cart" allow the user go to checkout page from any page from the site.  Also the module shows current state of a shopping cart.
• Install and publish the module "Categories" ("Table of content") for quick access to a category of items.
• Install and publish the module "Advanced Search", which provides a detailed search for products.
• Install and publish the module "IPrice items" to show items filtered by any criteria on home page, on catalog page or on checkout page.
• Install and publish the search plugin to allow search items using standard Joomla search.
• In order to use the opportunity to comment on the product, download and install the component JComments. Then unzip the plugin  jcomments-plugin.zip and save the file  com_ipricecalc.plugin.php to a directory on  site   /components/com_jcomments/plugins/. Enable comments for product page in the component settings in the "Item page" section.
• Install and publish the content plugin , if you need to insert price lists, catalogs or "Buy" buttons into the site content.