DotAdmin User Guide

Editing Destinations

Shipping Destinations make up the part of the shipping system which is visible to the customer. The customer selects a shipping destination for his order from a list (shown in the example below), then the dotAdmin store checks to see which Shipping Zone this location belongs to, and applies the appropriate tax and shipping charges.

Choosing a Shipping Destination for an order.

By default, each “Destination” represents a single nation, but each can be further subdivided into smaller regions if required.

Following on from our previous example: We decided to separate the islands of the United Kingdom into a different shipping zone from mainland destinations so that we could calculate shipping to these locations differently. In the examples that follow, we will add these island destinations to our newly-created “UK Islands” zone.

Opening the Destinations Editor

Editing a zone's Shipping Destinations.

Clicking the “Edit Member Destinations” link in the Shipping Zones editor will open the Destinations Editor in a new window. When you first open this editor, it will look like the screengrab shown below.

Note: On some slower computers, this interface may take a while to display.

Default view of the Destinations Editor.

As can be seen in the image above, the Destinations Editor is made up of three columns of information. On the right is a set of green buttons representing the different Shipping Zones in your store. The “Rest of the World” zone is selected by default. In the centre column is a grey box containing a list of all the Destinations in the currently-selected zone. The left-hand column contains another grey box, showing all the Destinations in the zone we are editing.

In our example the left-hand column is empty, because we have not yet added any Destinations to our newly-created “UK Islands” zone.

Adding Destinations to a Zone

In order to add a Destination to our new shipping zone, we must take it from whichever zone it currently belongs to. This is a simple matter of clicking the name of the Destination we want to take in the centre column, which moves that Destination over to the left column. Conversely, clicking a Destination in the left column will move it back to the centre column.

Moving Destinations between zones.

Note: If you move Destinations from one zone to another, and then select a different zone using the green buttons on the right, any changes made to the previous zone will be saved. If you want to undo your changes before selecting a different zone, click the ‘Reset’ button. Resetting may take a while on slower computers for zones which contain a lot of Destinations.

Dividing Destinations Across Multiple Shipping Zones

To continue with our ongoing example: We want to divide the United Kingdom destination into two distinct shipping zones. If we select the United Kingdom shipping zone in the Destinations Editor, we find that it contains just one Destination; United Kingdom, as shown in the image below.

Dividing Destinations.

In order to separate off the UK's Islands into a different zone, we need to divide the UK into two or more destinations. Clicking the “Subdivide Destinations” link, shown in the example above, opens the Divide Destinations interface in a new window.

Note: When a Destination is divided in this way, each resulting Destination still belongs to its originating country for the purposes of currency conversion and address verification during the store payment process.

The Divide Destinations interface.

In the Divide Destinations interface, we select United Kingdom from the list of countries, and enter a value for the number of Destinations we want to divide it into. In the example above, we have decided to create six destinations.

Clicking the “Go” button shows a new page containing a text-entry field for each new Destination.

The Divide Destinations interface.

We now enter a name for each new Destination, and press the “Split” button. The new Destinations are created, the Divide Destinations window closes, and the Destinations Editor is refreshed to show the new Destinations we have created, as shown in the image below.

Dividing the new destinations between two zones.

Now all that is left is to move the island destinations into our UK Islands zone, and save the changes. Clicking “Save” closes the Destinations Editor. We have now finished our UK Islands shipping zone.

Resetting a Divided Destination

If you have divided a Destination in this way but decide later that you want to revert back to the original ‘Country’ destination, this is easy to achieve.

The Divide Destinations interface.

Once again, open the Destinations Editor and click the “Subdivide Destinations” link. In the Divide Destinations interface you will see a new “Reset Destinations” section has appeared, as shown in the image above. This section maintains a list of any Destinations you have previously edited, allowing you to undo your changes quickly.

Note: When a destination is reset, the reformed Destination will be found in one of the zones that it was divided amongst before the reset, but we cannot guarantee which one. Be sure to check each of the affected zones in the Destinations Editor after performing a reset procedure to make sure they are all properly configured.