Custom Paypal Script for Combined Shipping?

[redterror_11735]

Im a little new still with basic website scripting, and unfortunately my highschool class did not cover any sort of advanced coding like the one I need help with. Anyways on my website, I am selling many single-stock items, but when setting up the shopping cart I came across the fact that Paypal does not offer the ability to use combined shipping. After asking the company for help, I was simply told that I would need to create my own script to manage this.

Now unfortunately the only example for script I have come across for this is if I'm selling many of a single item, which is not the case for me. The reason I can't use the predetermined shipping based on the purchase total is because I have different items of the same weight, but different pricings (it would therefore charge more for a $10-15 single item compared to a $1 item of the same weight).

Anyways, does anyone have any advice for me, or can point me in the direction of a tutorial that offers me the code I need? By the way, the items being sold on the website are trading cards, if that helps in the explanation.

 

[misson]

Either:

• calculate the shipping cost based on the combined weight of the items, or
• assign each item a base cost for shipping that item and total these shipping costs, or
• check if the carrer has a way to calculate shipping based on weight, source and destination postal codes and use that, or
• use a pre-existing shopping cart rather than your own custom one.

The last is likely the cheapest, fastest, easiest and all around best option.