Donations through your eCart shopping cart

Donations are a very common use of eCart. Although it is not explicitly called out in any of the interfaces, configuring eCart to receive donations is quite simple.

To allow donations to be received, you need to make the Price option for an Add to Cart button ‘Updateable’. This would allow someone to enter the amount of the donation they intend to give, and add that to their cart for checkout. This How To shows you the steps required to create this type of Add to Cart button.

What you need to start:

  • Dreamweaver CS3 or CS4
  • eCart 5

    • Create the Add to Cart button

    Since this Add to Cart button does not need to be dynamic, you can apply it anywhere on your site that you see fit.

    1. Open the PHP page you wish to provide the donation feature.
    2. Place your cursor on the page where you wish the Add to Cart button and amount field to display.
    3. Choose the Add to Cart Button option from the eCart toolbar/Insert panel.

      Add to Cart
    4. Choose Add static item to cart.
    5. Specify a page to redirect to after clicking Add to cart.
    6. Select the Bindings tab.
    7. Choose the Price column.
    8. Select the Updatable checkbox.
    9. From the 'as' menu list, choose Select List or Text Field.

      Select List or Text Field
       
      NOTE: If choosing a text field this will allow donors to enter any amount they like. You will want to apply validation to prevent inputting 0 or a negative amount. If you do not already know how to apply validation to your form fields, consider CSS Form Builder for applying various validations.
    10. Click OK.

    Since this Add to Cart button does not need to be dynamic, you can apply it anywhere on your site that you see fit.

    Populating Select List fields

    If you have chosen to make the price column updateable as a select list, you will need to populate those fields with various values. Most likely, you will want to provide values for the most commonly donated denominations.

    1. Choose the select list that was added to your page.
    2. From the Properties Inspector, choose the List Values option.
    3. In the Item Label column, enter the amount you wish.
    4. In the Value column, enter the actual value of each amount.

      List Values
    5. Click OK.
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