Blocs Store front - Bric / Block?

General Discussion
1

I thought I read somewhere on the forum that a Blocs store front might be coming this year but I can’t find any mention via the search. @Norm ?

Does anybody have any experience with gateway ordering / accounting and or gateway payment companies in the screen shot using a Blocs web site?

I am starting my aerial photography and video business and want to incorporate a simple storefront / payment gateway into my web site.

My products are in house captured and edited aerial digital photos that will be sold in packages say 5, 10, 15 with an incremental price for additional individual photos. Video is pretty much a custom quote ( a base part # with a numerical suffix for length of video or feature). So I will not have a lot of SKU’s nor do I have any inventory to ship.

Residential real estate is very time sensitive. Realtor want the ordered photos to be taken by the next day, expect edited images delivered in 24 hours and they get the listing placed on line. The key is getting paid via (on line credit card) before I send a link to my site for them to DL the images.

I’ve read that some gateways will customize their site to mimic the format of your site’ pages. ???

Right now I am at a point in this where I don’t know what I don’t know so any help would be appreciated.

Thanks
Rich

Payment%20gateways
Payment gateways.png1186×820 126 KB

2

Hi! Blocs is perfect for static websites. For dynamic sites with interaction of users or for websites with frequently changing content, like shop items, I would chose a cms, e.g WordPress. I prefer Joomla!

3

Your memory of a Blocs store may have been confused with this https://blocs.store/

I have used PayPal in the past via the e-junkie cart and that worked OK technically, but I do not consider Paypal a great option in many regards. Their biggest plus point is that so many people have a PayPal account already.

Fastspring used to create billing pages that would mimic your site design, but that has effectively been replaced by their new pop up cart. This seems to be way to go, since it keeps the visitor on your website, even if the financial transaction is technically occurring through the billing company services.

If you are developing and updating the site yourself Blocs is more than adequate. Having said that, Blocs will soon have the option of exporting design themes to Wordpress, which would then open up possibilities like WooCommerce.

All you really need is a suitable billing company from among the many, then update your web page to show the new products. Behind the scenes that image content for delivery will have to be added to the cart and delivery system for digital products via the billing company and each one will require a unique ID.

I worked as a freelance photographer for many years, so my concern from your perspective would be the amount of time spent updating the site, uploading content, creating new product IDs and testing before going live.

This would be no big deal if you were adding one product that stays online for years, but given the time sensitive nature and rapid turnover of shoots I can see this becoming very stressful for you. That’s not related to Blocs, but rather dealing with the billing company systems, so make simplicity a priority.

Off the top of my head https://www.ecwid.com/ may be a decent option for you, though I haven’t tried it myself. Last year I set a client up with https://gumroad.com/ and that was pretty straightforward.

N.B Sending out download links manually after receiving email notification of payment will introduce an unwanted delay from the client’s perspective, so this needs to be automated.

I would start by contacting some billing companies to explain your objectives, then see what they can offer. To an extent, the solution you go for will depend on client expectations for payment and delivery. How is your competition doing this?

4

Have a look at Paddle, they provide a “Merchand of Record” service for digital downloads:

I have a custom Bric for the integration also in the shop:

https://blocs.store/product/paddle-checkout/

1 Like
5

@Jannis Do you find Paddle easy for adding new products? They seems very focussed on software and it wasn’t a great option for selling other kinds of digital downloads when I last looked.

6

IMHO, this is not an important question.

More important, you have to answer yourself following questions regarding VAT on digital products:

  • Are you selling digital downloads?
  • Are you selling your downloads also outside of your own country?
  • Are you located inside the EU (well, actually this question isn’t valid, as VAT on digital downloads concerns every country)?

If you are able to answer these questions with yes, you

  • either have to deal with the digital VAT by yourself
  • use a service like Paddle or FastSpring (any “Merchand of Record”) to deal with this

Cheers, Jannis

7

Those points would all be automatic requirements for me. I sell online through Fastspring and they are very capable, however the process of adding and managing products is horribly complex.

The initial post mentioned working with realtors, which is a very American term, so I suspect VAT or working with customers outside his own country will be of little importance.

1 Like
8

Yeah, same for Paddle :slight_smile:

9

I think there are two issue to consider here. The first is the shopping solution itself and the second is the payment gateway. Fortunately, if you have a good shopping solution, the gateway will be built in and will only require you to set up an account with whoever you choose.

I find the best option is to integrate a simple shopping cart system into your blocs project. Although the system is managed from an administration area on your own domain, the actual shopping system is embedded into your Blocs webpage. If you want to check out a simple but very effective system, take a look at PHP Shopping Cart Script | PHPJabbers. Although it allows for ordering of physical products, it can also be used for digital delivery products. It also has a number of payment options, including PayPal, Authorize.Net, Bank Transfer and COD. They will incorporate other payment systems on request. If you don’t feel comfortable with installing the script on your server, the company will install it free of charge for you. Embedding the system in your blocs project simply involves logging into the admin area of the shopping system and copying a piece of HTML code. This is then pasted into an HTML Bric in blocs. Your shopping system will then display in your webpage.

Check out their demo and give it a try. They will set up a demo for you on their own server and activate it for 5 days so you can see how it all works.

10

I would not suggest using phpjabbers because from my recent experience with them, their support system is absolutely terrible.

Great things about phpjabbers:
Their website cms is very friendly and easy to use.
Very easy to sign up and download products you purchased.
They will give you a refund if you apply for a refund within 30 days.
They use a license key verification process to make sure you paid to use their script.

Bad things about phpjabbers:
Their support system is very limiting and there is no way to contact the developers directly through email.
They will ask you to pay for any support you might need as a separate transaction and at $39 USD per support.

I tried using their booking time slots script but it wouldn’t install on the website even after trying several times.
I downgraded my php version to try and install the script but it didn’t work.
Then I went and read about all the horrendous experiences other users had with phpjabbers and realized that I should have done my research before purchasing their scripts.

11

I haven’t had the same experience as you with phpjabbers. Their support system, being ticket based, is no worse than most other software development businesses. The only time they charge for support is if you bought their package of scripts at the heavily discounted price of €4,59 per script. This is clearly stated in their terms and conditions. If you do need support for a particular product, they will charge the full product price in order to open a support ticket, but if you’ve already paid the standard script price, support is included.

There have been issues with some of their scripts when being integrated into bootstrap sites, mainly involving conflicts with various versions of bootstrap. When this happens, the best way to get faster support is to give them ftp access to the site having the problem. They will then modify script components to overcome the issues. Furthermore, they will tell you which component of the script has been changed so you can download it and add the modified file to your local master script files. Remember, these scripts are modular by design, rather than being one large script. Each module deals with a specific function of the script (front end display, payment gateways, administration areas etc.).

The only other time they charge is for modifications that you may request. Under those circumstances, they will provide you with a specific quote to make the modifications you need. With over 600,000 sites using their scripts, it doesn’t surprise me that there will be customers that may not be happy with some aspects of the support they receive - it goes with the territory. However, to say that their support is horrendous is a little unfair. Their support is way better than the support you get from many software companies - including some of the largest in the business (AKA Microsoft, Adobe etc.). If you are unhappy with what you’ve purchased, you can contact the company using their pre-sales ticket system. They will respond to you and explain what their support policies are and offer any advice they think you need.