Hosted e-commerce to integrate with MOD-x / standards based design

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[Leezig]

Can anyone recommend a decent hosted e-commerce solution that offers total customisation so I can either integrate it with a modx site or wrap the  code in a similar template?

[rthrash]

Look at foxycart.com

[Leezig]

Many thanks Ryan; looks good at a glance, will check it out  properly later today.

[Leezig]

It looks very useful and will probably be great news for MODx developers.  I await backend access with bated breathe! 

[ConseilsWeb]

Wow, looks great!

Something is suspicious... there's a banner at the bottom of that page... tells me something

[rthrash]

Now that's very nice of Brett! He's the guy behind Foxycart and one of our community members. Looks very cool from the demos I've seen ... incredibly well done in fact.

[Leezig]

Does anyone have any inklings of a release date yet?

[The Man Can!]

Haha, well, we were planning on posting to the forums this weekend after we had a chance to clean up our docs a little, but we were beat to it. Here's the (long) post I was preparing:

FoxyCart: Ecommerce by MODx lovers, for MODx lovers.

Hello all.
Wondering if anybody in need of ecommerce for MODx would like to beta test our new ecommerce creation: FoxyCart.com. More than anything it's an *ecommerce backend* that could be used to great effect with MODx. It was born out of a desire to add ecommerce to our clients' sites without abandoning MODx.

While there are obviously other options for adding ecommerce to MODx, my hope is that this would be of use for more people than just me If you're at all interested, please sign up for a beta here. We'll probably be inviting people within the next couple of days.

Some of the cooler features:

• Almost no duplication of data required at all. Conceptually, it fits perfectly with MODx.
• Automatic shipping rate calculations (USPS only right now, UPS and FedEx coming soon).
• Full JSON cart object, so you can pretty much do whatever you want with the display.
• Downloadable products, easier for the customer than most other systems we've seen.
• Pretty radically redesigned checkout process (one page checkout + LOGIN; never been done before as far as we can tell).
• Templating in true MODx style. Just add ^^cart^^ or ^^checkout^^ to your templates.
• FoxyCart pulls your template in and caches it on our server, so you don't even need an SSL cert. I'm most excited about this one. Give FoxyCart a URL and it'll pull in your template, cache all your images, and make the whole thing secure. It's your website... no template language, no crazy hacking, just your code. Just like MODx
• XML Data Feed: Send encrypted XML to a URI of your choice after every transaction.  Paired with recurring billing, this allows some pretty awesome stuff, like potentially adding customers to MODx or phpList.  We're also very close to adding subscription products, which would allow you to do subscription-based access to a forum or MODx site or anything else.

Some notes:

• Hosted solution. Obviously this isn't going to work for everybody, but it's really ridiculously flexible. Also, one of the things I hated about doing ecommerce sites was always worrying about critical security patches long after the project was over.
• The XML Data Feeds are really cool. I've already created a very basic inventory snippet, but the possibilities are really endless.
• We'll be working on additional MODx integration soon, like a module so you can manage your FoxyCart information from within the MODx manager.

As far as opening it up for access, we're looking at this weekend. Just need to clean up our docs.

[luke.stokes]

ahh... I feel like a father who's little baby is about to go off to their first day of school.

*sniff, sniff*

We've been working on this behind the scenes for... dang, a year and a half now? There's a lot more we'll be doing, but it's also a pretty cool system in its current form.

Thanks for the kind words, Ryan. Brett and I both really respect your opinion and we love that MODx users get the first crack at this. The next couple months (as with any beta testing) will be interesting... but I'm looking forward to the ride.

[pixelchutes]

Wow...very cool! Nicely done.

I will be very interested to see what other basic cart options are available!

e.g. Discount coupons, bundle packages, product option/variants, etc.

Provided a few of the most common items are available, this will be very promising!

At first I didn't fully understand the template capabilities, however I am pretty sure I grasp the concept. Initially, it wasn't as clear since the cart is from FoxyCart.com and the template looked like FoxyCart...but the placeholders make sense.

So EVERYTHING is the same, as if on your site directly, only the images aren't served from your site? Internal links, etc all work as well?

It all makes sense! Does it incorporate well with Authorize.net and more common gateways, too ...getting really anxious now...

Update:

How does/will foxycart plan to handle form hacking where Pricing information is determined client side? Maybe I don't follow, but this used to be a big issue with PayPal stores prior to offering encrypted form values...

Code:

<form class="foxycart">
<input type="hidden" name="name" value="A great product" />
<input type="hidden" name="price" value="5.00" />
...
</form>

[ProWebscape]

Brett and Luke,

This is looking pretty cool. Would love to try it out as well. I know my customers would love it.

Chuck

[charliez]

Looks nice and fast!!
Please, please include inventory tracking by attributes (sizes, colors, material, etc) and will be
awesome!!

[luke.stokes]

Wow...very cool! Nicely done.

Thanks!

e.g. Discount coupons, bundle packages, product option/variants, etc.

eventually, eventually and yes

So EVERYTHING is the same, as if on your site directly, only the images aren't served from your site? Internal links, etc all work as well?

It all makes sense! Does it incorporate well with Authorize.net and more common gateways, too ...getting really anxious now...

Yeah, Brett's "auto magic cache" system is pretty nifty. It rewrites all the links and image locations as needed.
We currently integrate with Paypal and Authorize.net. We'll do more as requested down the road.

Update:

How does/will foxycart plan to handle form hacking where Pricing information is determined client side? Maybe I don't follow, but this used to be a big issue with PayPal stores prior to offering encrypted form values...

We've got some plans for a client-side encryption system that will take care of this. Our initial customers included some who wanted the ability to specify the price on the fly, so we went with what we have so far. Also, downloadables have to be configured with a price so there's no way someone could get around that. As it stands now, store owners just have to review the order before shipping it.

Thanks again for all your kind words everyone. I've spent so many late nights on this thing, it's nice to know someone appreciates the work.    It's just gonna get better and better.

[knightknight]

this seems promising. 

but is it going to be available in other flavours other then hosted?

[The Man Can!]

is it going to be available in other flavours other then hosted?

For a few different reasons, the short answer is "probably not". I definitely understand where you're coming from, as I generally prefer self-hosted apps myself. Probably because of that preference, we built FoxyCart to be more flexible and easier to integrate, with less duplication of data than pretty much any other self-hosted ecommerce app we've seen or used.

Ways FoxyCart makes it not matter as much that it's hosted:
* JSON cart object.
* XML data feed (read on for the first example)
* Template caching (so you can use all your code/templates, but don't have to get your own security cert)
* An API is in the works for some additional functionality.

Please, please include inventory tracking by attributes (sizes, colors, material, etc) and will be awesome!!

FoxyCart doesn't actually do any inventory tracking, because we knew there's no way we'd be able to please everybody. Instead, you can use the XML datafeed to integrate FoxyCart with whatever you'd like.

To illustrate this point, I just built a basic inventory snippet. It keeps track of inventory in TVs, and outputs different chunks ("Add to cart" or "Out of Stock" or etc.) based on inventory values, but it should be pretty easy to modify this to track by attributes if you need to.

Does anyone have any inklings of a release date yet?

All MODx users are officially invited as of right now.   We'd love feedback!

If anybody's interested in our very near future plans: We'll be rolling out subscriptions/recurring products, and will also be doing a snippet set to tie MODx webusers to a paid subscription (obviously utilizing the XML datafeeds).