http://www.classified-software.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=16
Using The Maffo Checkout System
Chapters
1. Setting up Price & Expiry Ranges
2. Defining a Package
1. Setting Up Price & Expiry Ranges
Hopefully your installation went without a hitch and you are now ready to configure your new dynamic checkout system.
Note: Make sure you have chmodded the 'prices' folder to 777. If you haven't done this your system will not work.
Inside your 68 Classifieds Admin Panel under the main tab 'Payments', you should now have two new sub tabs which appear in black and white. Packages & Prices.
If you dont see these,make sure the mod is activated!
The 1st step is to set up the prices & expiry ranges so click the 'Prices' tab followed by 'Create New Price Element'.
Lets assume we will be having a simple basic package.
I will be charging a $5 base price.
Therefore I want to give my customers
50 title characters
100 Short Description Characters
200 Descriptive WORDS
2 Images
This package will also expire after 1month.
Note: For those who have free add sites you will be able to set a base price of 0 (explained later)
Ok, Lets start with our Included Title Characters
You should enter a good descriptive name for use at a further stage.
I want my Title to be be Characters, although you can use words if you wish.
The ranges look complicated but they are straight forward once you are used to them.
In the above example you can see that from character 1 to character 50 are free (included with my base price), the step of 50 means the entire 50 characters.
Note: Dont start with character '0' you need to start at character '1'.
I will now add some extra ranges to my Basic Package Title in case the Customer needs more Characters. As a businessman, I want my customer to pay for this!
I have set the second range from character '51' to '100' with a price of $0.20 for every further 10 characters they use. Easy yes?
For the third range from character '101' to '300' I will reduce the price to $0.10 for every further 10 characters they use.
Notes:This tells the system to accept upto a MAXIMUM of 300 characters.
Rules:The 'count' between the 'from' & 'to' must be divisible by the step.
Let me explain.
- Code: Select all
Example: From 51 -- To 100 || The count = 50 NOT 49!!!
Try it on your fingers!
So as long as the count can be divided by the step, you can set the step at whatever you want.
- Code: Select all
Count = 50 || Possible Steps--
1 (price per character)
2 (price every 2 characters)
5 (price every 5 characters)
10 (price every 10 characters)
25 (price every 25 characters)
50 (price for the entire 50 characters)
The count of 50 can be divided by each of the above steps.
Dont worry! The system will warn you if you place a wrong step.
We can set our Short Description Characters and Description words using exactly the same method
For Short Description I have included 100 Characters with my package.
Should they require a second 100 Characters I will charge them $0.50
They can have upto 500 Characters with each additional 100 costing them $0.25
For Description I have included 200 WORDS with my package
Should they require more Words it will cost them $1.00 for every hundred upto 500 words.
I then drop the price to $0.75 per hundred words upto 1000 words
I then drop the price to $0.50 per hundred words upto a MAXIMUM 2000 Words.
Images
Images work in exactly the same way as Words & Characters.
You can see that I have included 2 images as part of the package.
Any further images will cost the customer $0.50 each!
Dont go ridiculous with the amount of Images you allow. Any more than 12 is pure overkill.
Expiry
Last but not least is the expiry.
How great that your customer can now choose how long they want their ad to run for!!
I have included 1 month as part of the basic package price.
As an incentive to keep the customer longer and for me to earn more money I have offered a 25% discount for every extra month they purchase upto 6 months.
I have offered a huge 50% discount per month for months 7 upto my set maximum of 12 months.
GREAT ! You should now have a whole lot of Price Elements that look like this
We can move on to packages!!
Packages
Packages are really simple to set up and configure once you have your price elements built, I promise!
Click 'Packages' in the top tab and 'create new package'
The first two fields are really simple. The Package title is for your benefit so give it a clear name. The Package Description is if you wish to tell your customers about the package.
We can then set our base price, I will charge $5.00. You can set this to 0.00 if you wish to allow free ads
NOTE:You can change the name of 'Base Price' to anything you like such as 'Listing Price' , 'Advert Price' by simply replacing the text. Whatever you type is what the customer will see. This also applies to 'title', 'short description' & 'description'
Moving onto the 'title' I know I want to use Characters. Once I select characters, I will be presented with a list of 'Character Price Elements'. As I have named by Elements well, it is easy for me to choose the 'Basic Package Title Characters' that I want to use.
I do the same for Short Description, Description, Images & Expiry.
The last few options are straight forward.
Listing Price is how much the person is selling the item for, should we have this field? Do we require this field?
Extra Options are as normal on 68 classifieds only that I have include the option to actually charge for a URL if you really feel the need to. Set to 0 to make free.
Categories
Just like normal in 68 classifieds you need to assign the package to some categories. The only difference with this system is that you can only assign one package to any particular category. For example if I had set up two packages, 'My Basic Package For General Items' and 'Package for Houses' , If I had a category, 'houses', I am only able to assign one package. In this case I would assign it to Houses. This makes perfect sense when you think about it.
Thats it!
Go to the user end of your site and test the system! Have fun.
Any problems, please report them to this forum