1. Can I re-direct cart items to a software download?
Yes the cart supports downloadable products we sell all our modules using our store on our website and they are downloadable. After the user purchases your product they will be presented with a download url to download your product. Additionally, the user will be able to download the product they purchased from your site by using the download link available in the smith my accounts module.
See page 55 of the manual for a description of the how to setup downloadable products.
See page 83 for a description of the my accounts module
http://www.smith-consulting.com/Portals/0/docs/smithshoppingcartmanual.pdf
Download URL – Enter the URL to the product that you wish the user to download upon successful checkout and payment. Before entering the url in this field, create a subdirectory to store your downloadable products off the portal root. Next, upload/copy your downloadable files to the directory you just created on your server. By allowing you to copy your downloadable products to your server using FTP you can copy as many products as you wish in a single operation rather than uploading your products one by one.
2. The login required feature confuses me a bit. I want people to register for the site as part of the process, and add them to the owners role. But I don't want them to register to begin the purchase process. Is this possible.
The user does not have to login before buying something using the cart. On step 3 of the checkout (before the user clicks process payment) there are 2 fields for the user to enter their userid and password if they want to create a dnn account on your portal and these fields are optional.
If the user does not enter a userid and password then the cart will attempt to authorize their credit card and will save the order information to the customer, orders, order detail and payment history table but will not create a dnn user account.
If the user enters a userid and password then the cart will attempt to authorize their credit card and will save the order information to the customer, orders, order detail and payment history table and will create a dnn user account.
If you do not check the require login checkbox in the cart settings then the userid and password is optional which is the default and the user is able to checkout anonymously.
If you check the require login checkbox in the cart settings then the userid and password fields become required in order for the user to purchase from your store.
Additionally, when the require login checkbox is checked the cart will pre populate the username textbox with the email entered by the user in step 1