Storefront
The storefront is a component of Caribou that allows you to sell non-subscription products online. These products can be downloadable products or shippable products. Downloadable products will be delivered via email after purchase. Caribou protects your downloadable products by sending a personal link to the purchaser. Furthermore, the user can only download the product twice with this link. Shippable products will, unlike downloadable products, require shipping information from the user upon checkout.
Creating Your Store
Before you start adding products and sub-categories, you must first create the initial store category. This category will be the parent category for the entire store. It determines the name to be used in your site’s navigation menu as well as the page that is displayed when someone accesses /store at your website. If you want to restrict access of your store to certain usergroups, you can specify the usergroup restrictions here as well.
Creating Store Sub-Categories
If you have many products, you may want to create sub-categories of the store that contain your products. Each sub-category will have its own listings page that will list the category’s sub-categories (if they exist) and products (if they exist). Furthermore, adding products below a sub-category will generate a breadcrumb with links to all parent categories.
Creating Products
As stated previously, products can be either shippable or downloadable.
Shippable products require a weight attribute (in pounds) and will force a user to give shipping information (name, address, and shipping method) when checking out.
Having trouble checking out when purchasing shippable products? Make sure that you have created at least one shipping method in the control panel at Storefront > Shipping.
Downloadable products are special and a unique feature of Caribou. These products don’t have a physical weight or require shipping information from the user. Upon purchase, a personal link the uploaded file will be sent to the user. These personal links protect the file from direct access. Furthermore, each link can only be used twice before it de-activates. This protects your downloadable products from being shared.
Products can be restricted for purchase by users of certain usergroups. This way, you have members-only products. Furthermore, you can specify different prices for your products depending on the user’s usergroup. With this feature, you can (for example) charge non-subscribers $20 for your eBook but only charge $15 to regular subscribers.
Product options are attributes of products like Color, Size, Version, etc. Product options are assigned to individual products upon addition or editing of the product. You can charge additional money for a product option.
If you have product options that require user input, you can create product custom fields in Administration > Custom Fields. These custom fields will be attached the product like product options. For example, if you need to know the school name of everyone who purchases your “School Dance” product, create a custom field called “School Name” and assign it to the “School Dance” product. When users add this product to their shopping cart, they will be required to enter a school name. When the order comes through in the control panel, you will be able to see the school name you entered in Storefront > Orders and Users > Billing History.
Store Specials
Specials create a special sale price on an item (or all items in a certain category) until a specific date. Specials can be created in Storefront > Specials. Alternatively, you can add individual sale prices to products upon adding or editing an individual product.
Products can only be subject to one special at a time. So, if you add a special on all Computer products for 10% off and then add a special on all Computer Mousepads (a subcategory) for 20% off, computer mousepads will be discounted at 20% off. In essence, specials are not additive – the special added last will overwrite all previous sale prices on applicable products.
