Adding OpenCart to Dolphin

I had a member to ask me about adding OpenCart to Dolphin.

Here is how you can add OpenCart; or any other cart platform, to Dolphin in an iframe.  Create a new database for OpenCart.  Create a directory on your server for the OpenCart software.  Upload the OpenCart software to that directory.  Open up a browser to the OpenCart directory; http://yoursite.tld/opencart/.  Follow the installation instructions making sure that any permissions are properly set.  After you install OpenCart go to your admin, builders and go to page builders.  Create a new page.  Drop in an HTML block and turn off the toolbars and add an iframe to the block <iframe src="http://mysite.tld/opencart"/></frame>  You may want to add some additional parameters like the height of the iframe to keep scroll bars from appearing; look on the net for information about iframes parameters.  Save the page out and note the URL as you will need this to create a menu item.  Go to the builders and go to navigation menu.  Drag a new item to the menu bar and point it to the page you created.  

There you have it, OpenCart in an iframe on your site and it cost you nothing but a bit of time.  If you want to have OpenCart integrated with your members, Scriptologist, and others, in the Market offers integration services.

The only issue with this is that a member would have to create another account for purchasing within the OpenCart "site". To get around this, you would need to check the account creation parameters for OpenCart - especially concerning the password storage and retrieval and Cookies. If you can figure this out, then in theory, you should be able to just use one user database for both your Dolphin site and OpenCart. Just make sure the Cookie is being passed through to the OpenCart site.

Another option. The first time a user buys from OpenCart, save the members id into a field in the Opencart database. Tehn - each time a person goes to the Opencart page, it will pull in the credentials automatically and then fill out the login information automatically - in the background. So, basically, you would have a page with a button that says "Enter Store" this button would supercede the normal login form and pull in the info in hidden fields.

Scriptologist in the Market offers an integration server.  What I presented to him was that when a member joins the site, they would also be created in OpenCart; and the same for when they remove their account.  When a member logs into the site, they are automatically logged into OpenCart (so they don't have to log in again in OpenCart).  Logging out of the site would log them out of OpenCart.  Scriptologist response was that yes, this could be done.  Now I have not actually hired Scriptologist to do this work as I am not yet using OpenCart, or any other cart application on my site.

I used Opencart for a bunch of Online stores in the past. One thing I think would work - instead of installing Opencart and using an Iframe, just install Opencart within a folder in your main domain. So if your main site is mydomain.com, then it would be mydomain.com/opencart for the store. This way, you can modify the Opencart template to match your main site template. This way you do not have 2 header section from running opencart site from within an iframe. WIth this method, you just need to make sure that your cookies are passed down to the Opencart directory when accessing that site.

 that's what i plan to do, i know i've mentioned this before but has anybody actually tested Opencart in an iframe because when i did, although it looked great and seemed to work as it should, when it came to making a test purchase using paypal, it wouldn't work, it might have simply been something i did but i came to the conclusion (rightly or wrongly) that paypal was blocking it for security reasons because it was in an iframe, so i gave up on the iframe idea.

you can test the iframe theory. create a paypal button and put it in a page that is displayed in the iframe, see if it works. But for me - designwise, I do not like the idea of putting Opencart in an iframe. I saw the module for it, but it just doesn't look right to me. you have 2 different templates, with two top header sections. Whereas, going with a site within a site makes it visually better, IMHO. Again, that's just me. I am not a graphic designer, and couldn't if my life depended on it. even my stick men looked f*ed up. So, with that being said, I like things simple. The template I put together for our project was a simple one. A few minor changes to the uni template, and BAM. I have done a few Opencart sites - each with their own custom template, and I like the way you can do templates in OpenCart. I know we will reopen our store, and I will use Opencart. At that time, I may even look into making a module of it. So your url would be yourdomain.com/m/opencart, and it would use the dolphin template design.

 a module would be great news, i would be straight in there to buy it, but rather than the url being 

yourdomain.com/m/opencart

would it be possible to have it create subdomains, i.e. 

opencart.yourdomain.com

would be a lot better for people that wanted to advertise their store, 

i was going to use a different cart script that does exactly that, but there is no community to speak of and so no extensions or themes and sadly the look of it is terrible and like you i'm no graphic designer