One of the drawbacks to Sunshop is that you need to choose between realtime and table based shipping.

Realtime shipping methods are those that contact carriers (UPS, USPS, FedEx, etc) to get shipping quotes based on the weight of the order.

Table based shipping is where you set up ranges based on weight or order value, and charge shipping on that.   This is the more traditional methods used by catalogs and offline vendors to simplify shipping, but some online vendors like to use it as well.

I recently had a client ask to be able to use both of these simultaneously.  My solution, which seems to be working at this point, was to create a “shipping module” that ties into the shipping tables.  So it acts like a realtime method, but is actually pulling from the tables.  I also added a “Free shipping” trigger, because the client wanted to offer free shipping (using the table method) for orders over $50.  The “realtime” methods still show up, but the customer has the option of choosing their “standard” (table based) shipping rate, which is often the cheapest method.

Here’s a screenshot of the module settings:

Realtime module which pulls from the shipping tables

As I mentioned, this is still in the testing phase, but so far it seems to fit the bill.

Turnkey Web Tools announced the release of 4.4.2 of their Sunshop ecommerce platform.  There are a few new features that should be nice – the “Bulk product editor” is one that I’ve heard from several clients as a need.

Overall this is a small update, with a 4.4.3 update promised soon.  I’ve recommended Sunshop for many years now, and the product has really come a long way.  In my experience, it’s a very solid and full featured php / mysql based shopping cart.  It’s not overly complex to learn, and almost all source code is included, so you can modify it – as I do for my clients when they require it.

It seems like they’ve put the 5.0 release on the shelf for now, which is fine by me.  The current release is stable and has a lot of great features, so the longer they support and update it, the better.