More than one User-Entered "Ordering Option"

[Mike Young]

We run a store that sells user-customizable products.
I'm fine with the items that have a limited selection like size and color

My problem is that there is only one text-entry area for "Ordering Options".

I'd like to be able to do:
Name: [_______]
Birth Date: [________]
Hometown: [________]
Message: [________]

But I don't see any way to accomplish getting data like that into an order.

Here are the ideas I've had:
1) Make a completely separate form a user needs to fill out with their order that emails us. (seems hackish)
2) determine some way to pass "extra" data to Shopsite during the order such that it shows up on the orderform - Anyone have an idea here?
3) This is what we are currently doing below... it is really ugly and has no way to validate the data until the order arrives

The Ordering options description box for the customizable products says something like:

Code: Select all

"In the Box below, please enter the following information -
1) Name
2) Birth Date
3) Hometown
4) Message
 ____________________
|                    |
|                    | 
|                    |
|____________________|


and so the user needs to put in their own information and number it so we can figure out what is what. It gets incredibly confusing especially since the values come across in the orders without any newlines!!!

Anyone have a suggestion here? I worry I might have overthought the whole problem.
--Mike

[Jim]

The Product options text field where the shopper can enter their comments is referenced as "freeopt". You could create the html for this field and have a separate freeopt field for the bits of information you are asking for. You would have multiple freeopt fields for the data to be inserted into in the form. When the browers sees multiple fields with the same name it concatenates them together with a separator (comma I think) and passes all the values as a single value to the shopping cart. This page in the help has a little about the way the form needs to be configured to submit to the cart properly. Look at the section for [-- PRODUCT.OptionsBox --]

http://www.shopsite.com/help/9.0/en-US/ ... oduct.html