how do simplify the UI and back end if features aren’t needed

[artyom]

Hi folks.

I'm making simple course and event registration system for a small private academic institution.

Most of the details about products, manufacturers, shipping methods, etc, are not relavent to this situation, so I'd like to remove them from the Front Office, and also from the Back OFfice, so my (not so tech savvy) clients don't have to tab past alot of things that don't pertain to them when wanting to add a new course or event.

1) What is the best and cleanest way to remove the extra "stuff" from the cart, product details, etc? Just rip it out of the template files manually, or is there some way to modify and simpify the data model itself so that the extra UI doesn't get generated in the first place?

2) A similar question for the CMS (Back Office)... how do I remove unwanted fields, etc in the "best practices" way?

If there are some good guides for this sort of thing, either in the "official" guides or on other post, please direct me to them. (I'm pretty new to Prestashop, but not to php programming, css, js etc.)

thanks in advance,
Artyom

[artyom]

Hi folks.

I'm wanting to make simple course and event registration system for a small private academic institution.

Most of the details about products, manufacturers, shipping methods, etc, are not relavent to this situation, so I'd like to remove them from the Front Office, and also from the Back OFfice, so my (not so tech savvy) clients don't have to tab past alot of things that don't pertain to them when wanting to add a new course.

I'm wondering if there is a theme that is closer to this, and also...

1) What is the best and cleanest way to remove the extra "stuff" from the cart, product details, etc? Just rip it out of the template files manually, or is there some way to modify and simpify the data model itself so that the extra UI doesn't get generated?

2) A similar question for the CMS (Back Office)... how do I remove unwanted fields, etc in the "best practices" way?

For context, I'm pretty new to Prestashop, but not to php, css, etc.'

thanks in advance,
Artyom

[artyom]

Hi folks.

I'm wanting to make simple course and event registration system for a small private academic institution.

Most of the details about products, manufacturers, shipping methods, etc, are not relavent to this situation, so I'd like to remove them from the Front Office, and also from the Back OFfice, so my (not so tech savvy) clients don't have to tab past alot of things that don't pertain to them when wanting to add a new course.

1) What is the best and cleanest way to remove the extra "stuff" from the cart, product details, etc? Just rip it out of the template files manually, or is there some way to modify and simpify the data model itself so that the extra UI doesn't get generated? (in MVC terms, what is the most "legit" way according to the programming model)

2) A similar question for the CMS (Back Office)... how do I remove unwanted fields, etc in the "best practices" way?

For context, I'm pretty new to Prestashop, but not to php, css, etc.

Payment
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I also want to make a simple payment method that just forwards the cart info and CC info there office so they can process it manually (in addition to paypal). Is there a module for that? I would think this is a not uncommon wish for small, low volume vendors that dont' want to pay for a gateway.

thanks in advance,
Artyom

[rocky]

Topics merged - please don't post your question in multiple forums

[artyom]

sorry about the duplicates... I'm new to the forum, so wasn't sure how "separate" the audiences where for each. Phrased it in different ways so as to get angles in.

SInce I posted, I answered a small part of my own query: I saw that you could disable "blocks" that show in the main front office page, so that is a start toward simplifying things.

I also so an unsupported module that does offline CC processing of payments (which I was inquiring about on the modules forum)

Any other comments or suggestions would be much appreciated : - )

-A

[rocky]

Yes, the offline credit card module was designed for PrestaShop v1.1 and was unmaintained for a long time, but the author is now working on redesigning it for newer versions. PrestaShop v1.3 final will be released very soon.

I'm not sure why you want to remove products altogether, since then you can't use the offline credit card module. You could add the courses as products, but change the text from "products" to "courses" (through Tools > Translations), though PrestaShop doesn't support memberships or renting products, so I'm not sure whether it will work how you want. You can't renew a product or cancel a product and get a partial refund for an unused period. I'm not sure whether PrestaShop really suits your needs, but you can have a play around with it see what you can come up with.

[artyom]

thanks rocky. I did see the offline cc module.

I didn't mean to say that I would remove products. (may not hvae worded that clearly enough) As you say, Products could become courses...

No need for subscription in this case; one time payments are ok

How about the CMS fields themselves? Can I remove some of the unneeded complexity from the "new product" page? (suff related to shipping, for instance) ... and can I remove the "shipping" step from the little progress indicator that shows what step you are on?

[rocky]

No, you can't do that from the Back Office. It's possible, but isn't easy to do, since you'll need to modify PrestaShop's core code, which isn't a good idea, since you'll need to re-modify PrestaShop every time a new version comes out. It is best to add new modules and modify the theme files only. If you really must remove shipping, I suggest that you remove it from the Front Office only and leave the shipping options in the Back Office.

[artyom]

thanks. So in general, is it fair to say that the CMS experience for the user is not meant to be modified very much? Is that going to change w time or is that an architectural decision that will likely stay that way?

[rocky]

You can actually modify the tab structure in the Back Office by going to Tools > Tabs. You can delete tabs you don't want and rearrange the existing tabs, but doing this won't affect the functionality that appears in the Front Office. There is no plan that I'm aware of to add an option to disable shipping altogether using a single preference in the Back Office.