Visser Labs

My delving into Instinct’s WP E-Commerce plugin for WordPress has raised a few questions and now that I have had some spare time I’ve prepared some Visser-style hacks and solutions!

I recently raised in Hot Aussie Topics for WP E-Commerce that there was no shipping calculator supporting flat-rate shipping for Australian states which were manageable within the WordPress Administration and selectable by customers at checkout, well here’s my fix.

• Login to WordPress Adminstrator
• Under General Settings set the Base Country/Region to Australia and save changes
• Using your favourite FTP manager navigate to /wp-content/plugins/wp-e-commerce/shipping/... and with your preferred text editor open flatrate.php
• Ensure you have an original copy of flatrate.php stored on your computer.
• On line #39 paste the following…
  case 'AU':
$output .= "<tr class='rate_row'><td>Australian Capital Territory</td><td>$<input type='text' size='4' name='shipping[au-act]' value='{$shipping['au-act']}'></td></tr>";
$output .= "<tr class='rate_row'><td>New South Wales</td><td>$<input type='text' size='4' name='shipping[au-nsw]' value='{$shipping['au-nsw']}'></td></tr>";
$output .= "<tr class='rate_row'><td>Northern Territory</td><td>$<input type='text' size='4' name='shipping[au-nt]' value='{$shipping['au-nt']}'></td></tr>";
$output .= "<tr class='rate_row'><td>Queensland</td><td>$<input type='text' size='4' name='shipping[au-qld]' value='{$shipping['au-qld']}'></td></tr>";
$output .= "<tr class='rate_row'><td>South Australia</td><td>$<input type='text' size='4' name='shipping[au-sa]' value='{$shipping['au-sa']}'></td></tr>";
$output .= "<tr class='rate_row'><td>Tasmania</td><td>$<input type='text' size='4' name='shipping[au-tas]' value='{$shipping['au-tas']}'></td></tr>";
$output .= "<tr class='rate_row'><td>Victoria</td><td>$<input type='text' size='4' name='shipping[au-vic]' value='{$shipping['au-vic']}'></td></tr>";
$output .= "<tr class='rate_row'><td>Western Australia</td><td>$<input type='text' size='4' name='shipping[au-wa]' value='{$shipping['au-wa']}'></td></tr>";
break;
• On what was line #54 replace the following with my updated version:
  Original: if (get_option('base_country')=='NZ') {
  Updated: if (get_option('base_country')=='NZ' || get_option('base_country') == 'AU') {
• On what was line #92 add in the following between the NZ and US ‘case’ entries:
  case 'AU':
$shipping_quotes["Australian Capital Territory"] = (float)$flatrates['au-act'];
$shipping_quotes["New South Wales"] = (float)$flatrates['au-nsw'];
$shipping_quotes["Northern Territory"] = (float)$flatrates['au-nt'];
$shipping_quotes["Queensland"] = (float)$flatrates['au-qld'];
$shipping_quotes["South Australia"] = (float)$flatrates['au-sa'];
$shipping_quotes["Tasmania"] = (float)$flatrates['au-tas'];
$shipping_quotes["Victoria"] = (float)$flatrates['au-vic'];
$shipping_quotes["Western Australia"] = (float)$flatrates['au-wa'];
break;
• Save changes and upload the updated flatrate.php to your web server.
• Within WordPress Administrator open General Settings and switch to the Shipping tab
• Select Flat Rate under Internal Shipping Calculators and save changes
• Hover over the Flat Rate checkbox and click on Edit
• Under Flat Rate in the right column of the Shipping tab fill in your fixed rate pricing for each Australian state
• Click Update to save changes

That’s it, you’ve just hooked up flat rate pricing for Australian customers! Now jump on the front-end and test to ensure that when Australia is set from the drop-down that your prices are coming up. We’re all learning here so if there’s any problems let me know in the comments or send me an e-mail for personal assistance.