Gift Certificate with serial number?

[Magus]

Hi folks

I’ve been asked if I’m able to create a printable Gift Certificate, but have the certificate contain a serial number. That way you are certain that someone doesn’t just print multiple copies in order to unethically obtain multiple certificates.

Thanks… Rick

[amin007]

Hi Rick, eStore doesn’t do gift certificates.

[Magus]

Hi there

Posting the solution to this in case anyone else has the need I did!

Last week I had a chance encounter with another person that has a web site and was offering Gift Certificates. When I asked how that was accomplished, I was told that PayPal offers this function! (I had no idea!)

So what you need to do is to use PayPal to manage the Gift Certificates. I’ve not experimented with it yet, but it appears to allow uploading your own artwork (company logo and whatnot) and managing the serializing so you don’t end up with possible duplicates.

Hopefully this will help someone else! Rick

[dlusionz]

Im also interested in this, It would be very useful to let customers buy them and receive a printable pdf with a barcode or QR code, I would personally invest more money into it if you were to sell it as a separate add on, Im investigating other solutions for it, but I would really prefer if it was integrated with the customer list

theres a wp plugin called voucherpress which seems to have gotten the printing part right but lacks the e-commerce, however on the FAQ it says

“Does this plugin work with any e-commerce plugins?

Not at the moment, but I’m sure it could if those e-commerce plugin developers want to get in touch.”

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/voucherpress/faq/

Dont know if you guys have contemplated making that kind of product or addon opportunity but if you are i´d definately sign up to beta test!

[dlusionz]

my interest for it is for online ticketing, I think it would fit very well with the rest of your projects, specially the affiliate opportunities

[amin007]

Do the voucherpress plugin have an API that I can use to create vouchers after a sale?

[dlusionz]

I will begin my journey to investigate that

[winning]

I also would like see a solution to combine both WP eshop and VoucherPress.

Well needed in the field

I also saw another plugin with a QR code solution here:

http://www.suburbanmedia.net/wordpress-plugins/wp-gift-cert

VoucherPress pros: pdf, beautiful templates, (I don’t know if it is possible to add logo)

wp-gift-cert pros: printable email, QR code to Managing Your Sold Certificates

So, a combination of 3 plugins would be perfect even though people always say nothing is perfect…

[dlusionz]

heya, so the voucherpress guy responded to me, this is what he said

Hi,

Yes, it’s an open source plugin so you can make whatever changes you

like (and you contribute those changes back to the plugin for others

to use). There isn’t an API at the moment, but the database tables are

pretty easy to understand. If I were to write an API what features

would you need?

chris@stillbreathing.co.uk

What should I tell him?

[amin007]

Basically I need a way to communicate with that plugin. So after a sale when eStore does the post payment processing it can send a notification to that plugin so a voucher can be created.

A 3rd party software can only communicate with another software using a defined API. For example I expect that other shopping cart developers might want to integrate my Affiliate Platform plugin. So I added API to the plugin and have documented it. This way the shopping cart developers know how to interact with the affiliate plugin so commission can be awarded after a sale.

Ask the developer the following question:

“How will a shopping cart communicate with the voucherpress plugin and create a voucher after the sale”?

[dlusionz]

So heres the reply, i hope its useful

---

Hi,

If the shopping cart is a WordPress plugin running on your site it has

access to all the functions that are defined in the VoucherPress

plugin – they run on the same context. Therefore you can use the

internal VoucherPress function to create a voucher. This is not as

robust as an API, but would work. The function (in the

about-to-be-released version) is defined as:

voucherpress_create_voucher

(

$name, // (string, required) the name of the voucher

$require_email, // (tinyint, required) whether the voucher requires

email registsration to download (0 or 1)

$limit, // (int, required) the total number of instances of this

voucher available (0 for unlimited)

$text, // (string, required) the main body text

$description, // (string, optional) the description of the voucher as

sent to the registered user by email

$template, // (int, required) the database ID of the template to be used

$font, // (string, required) the string name of the font (available in

the return value of the voucherpress_fonts() function)

$terms, // (string, optional) the terms of the voucher, printed at the bottom

$startdate, // (int, optional) the date (UNIX timestamp) this voucher

becomes available

$expiry, // (int, optional) the date (UNIX timestamp this voucher

stops being available

$codestype, // (string) the type of code to generate (‘random’,

‘sequential’, ‘custom’, ‘single’)

$codelength, // (int, optional) the length of random code to generate

$codeprefix, // (string, optional) the prefix to random or sequential codes

$codesuffix, // (string, optional) the suffix to random or sequential codes

$codes//

)

I intend to rewrite the plugin completely and as part of that will

provide an API, but for now you can use the internal functions.

Let me know if you have any more questions.

Chris

—-

so thats pretty much that

[amin007]

After you call this function it will create the voucher. How will send it to the customer? This function does not seem to be taking a customer email address. Or will this function return a voucher after the creation? If this is the case then how does this return value look like?

[dlusionz]

Hi, the developer answered and seemed to be a bit confused,

he says

“

Hi,

I think we need to step back a bit. What exactly do you want to do?

Chris

“

maybe it will help if I give the plugins description, its

Have you ever wanted to give away vouchers, tickets, coupons or tokens on your website? If so this plugin is for you. You can create a voucher with whatever text you want, choosing the layout and font from a range of templates (you can also add your own templates). Vouchers can then be viewed, downloaded and printed from a specified URL.

There are shortcodes to add a link to a particular voucher, to show an unordered list of all your vouchers, or to show the registration for to request a restricted voucher.

You can require visitors to provide their name and email address to get a voucher. If an email address is required an email is sent to the address with a link to the voucher URL. Each voucher has a unique code, and vouchers that have an email address associated with them can only be used once, so once a registration-required voucher is downloaded it can’t be downloaded again.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/voucherpress/

[amin007]

Yeah I understand what the plugin does but before I can do any integration I need to know what behavior you expect from eStore. What will eStore do after a sale? What is the relationship?

I assumed that after a sale eStore will call that function to create a voucher but how will the customer know anything about the voucher that eStore just created? What should the customer see? Do you have a step by step flow of events that you expect a customer to see?

[dlusionz]

heya

I would like the purchase to be made and then have a customized voucher sent to the customer in an email with the information of their purchase, I ideally wanted to include a barcode or QR code or something with the information embedded and to be able to know when the customer has used the voucher and so it cant be used more than once basically, Im not sure if that helps answer the question, but here are teh steps

step one – customer makes a purchase

step two – they get an email with a voucher they can print, the voucher contains information about the purchase

step three – customer takes printed voucher to location(store or wherever) and gets product in exchange

step four – someone somehow marks the voucher as used

thats pretty much the idea I have, I hope it helps, and sorry for the confusion

[Author]

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