Back-Order / Pre-Order buttons

[christopherpm]

Is there a facility to add a "Pre-order Now" button or a "E-mail me when stock arrives" button?

Some items show as sold out, but I'd like customers to be able to let us know that they'd like to be notified when said product is back in stock...

[TieTastic]

I don't have an answer, but I do have a very simular question...

I want to let customers order items that are out of stock, but I want the customer to know that item is out of stock!

The best i can come up with is move the suspend level down to minus 10 or something like that and print the stock level (NETQUOTEVAR:STOCKLEVEL) on everything....

What I'd like to do is just display the stock level (or an out of stock sign) where we are out of stock!

I can't use the suspend or out of stock templates, because they are only displayed when you can't purchase an item!

Any ideas much appreciated.

Many Thanks
Nick.

[TieTastic]

In the interest of part answering my own question I did find this in the Advanced User Guide... (page 17)

Including the Stock Level into the Store Pages
To include the current stock level against a product, go to 'Design | Options | Layouts' and click
'Edit' next to the 'Default Product Layout' field.
Enter NETQUOTEVAR:STOCKLEVEL wherever you want the stock level to appear.
You can then go on and write a JavaScript function to display different phrases based on the value
of NETQUOTEVAR:STOCKLEVEL.
To do this, include the following script function into the <HEAAD> section of the Overall Layout
template(s) for your store (normally Act_Primary.html):
<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript" TYPE="text/javascript">
function StockLevels(pItem)
<!--
{
var strIDs = 'Stock Message: '
{
if (pItem >= 10)
{
strIDs = 'Normally Ships in 24 Hours'
}
else
{
strIDs = 'Normally ships in 1-2 weeks'
}
}
return strIDs
}
//-->
</script>
Note: Change the figure of '10' to alter your stock threshold. You can also change the stock
messages to suit your requirements.
Then, add the following code into your Product Layout template(s) (normally
Act_Productline.html) where you want your stock messages to appear.
<script language="Javascript">
document.write(StockLevels(NETQUOTEVAR:STOCKLEVEL))
</script>



I'd still be interested if anyone has any better ways, I'd love to be able to include an Add to Cart button in the template for the outofstock message (rather than handling everything client side).

TIA
Nick.

[cdicken]

Here's some quite funky code from another thread for a pre-order button:

<img src="pre_order.gif" alt="pre order" width="100" height="32" border="0"
onclick="location.href='mailto:you@your.URL'
+ '?subject=Pre-order Enquiry'
+ '&body=Let me know when the following product is available - NETQUOTEVAR:PRODUCTNAME - NETQUOTEVAR:PRODUCTREFERENCE. My email is:';">

I haven't tested it, and don't really understand it, but it looks like it may do the job.

[christopherpm]

I have two questions:-

1) Where would you place this code?

2) How could you have it so that this button only appears if your stock levels are 0 for the item in question?

[cdicken]

1) Where would you place this code?

In the product layout template.


2) How could you have it so that this button only appears if your stock levels are 0 for the item in question?

Not sure. I don't know how to embed an expression like this one into a larger JavaScript expression (like the one mentioned by TieTastic, above). You could try entering the code in Act_OutOfStock.html and see if the variables are intepreted correctly - I doubt they will be though.

[TieTastic]

It wont work in the out of stock template! There is no way to pass the details of the product to that template unfortunatly. (been there and tried it) So it must be done in the product line template...

After some playing I found the answer I was looking for - I don't want to have stock numbers visible on the website (or in the website code) - but I do want people to know if it's in stock or not - so I used some SSI

<!--#if expr="NETQUOTEVAR:STOCKLEVEL > 0" -->
Item In Stock <br>
<!--#else -->
Sorry - Out Of Stock <br>
**preorder text here**
<!--#endif -->

so if you can use SSI simply paste this together with that pre-order texts from the posts from Chris into the product line template - and you should be sorted...

hope that helps