WordPress Shopping Cart Software
I decided to launch a new site recently to promote computer repair products and services locally within the town I live. I am very comfortable building with WordPress, and it’s a very stable program. Commonly, most people use WordPress as blog publishing software; however, WordPress can also be used as a content management system. And that is how I use WordPress most of the time. In other words, I use WordPress to build and maintain websites. The reason why is simple. WordPress is easy to install, configure, customize, search engine optimize, and use.
That said, I needed to build an online store so that I could promote and sell my products and services. What I wanted was WordPress shopping cart software. Amazingly, this software exists, and more astonishingly, it’s also free. The software is called WP e-Commerce and comes in the form of a WordPress plugin. Dan Milward, Thomas Howard, Chris Beavan, and Allen Han are responsible for the creation of this work of art. It’s a full featured shopping cart program well-suited for selling products, services, and even processing online fees or charges within your WordPress blog. It also integrates seamlessly into your current theme and ties directly into Google Checkout or Paypal. Manual payment processing is available as well.
WP e-Commerce is ideal for anyone who has a blog and has products and services to sell. The creators of this state-of-the-art e-Commerce platform placed a lot of focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. Their claim is that WP e-Commerce is both free and priceless at the same time. There may be other options available; however, I am already sold on WP e-Commerce. The software has been downloaded over 300,000 times, it’s very stable, updates are made available frequently, and WordPress integration is stupendously simple and painless.
WP e-Commerce is also marketing and promotional software. To help ensure that your store is a success, WP e-Commerce comes with social networking tools that allow you to import products directly into FaceBook Marketplace and Google Base. Also included is the popular “Share This” plugin which can be used to encourage customers to share your product pages on their blog, by email, in popular social networks such as StumbleUpon and Twitter.
Check out this YouTube video created by Adam from Hungry Dog Media who demonstrates how quickly and easily WP e-Commerce can be installed on HostGator.com.
All in all, if you’re a blogger and you’re looking for complete e-Commerce / shopping cart solutions, then I strongly recommend using WP e-Commerce. It’s easy, effective, secure, and free, and the creators offer exceptional customer service and support.
October 21st, 2009 at 7:59 am
The folks at eCommerce have been helpful, but there's one problem that is prohibiting me from using it: The item thumbnails won't show up, nor will the larger images.
Several people have had this issue, and while some say they have a fix, none of them have worked for me.
Some suggest the problem might be thumbnail permissions, but I don't know how to change those. Any suggestions?
October 26th, 2009 at 6:54 am
what about http://www.avactis.com shopping cart?
I think it also could be added to the WP blog.
October 26th, 2009 at 11:19 am
Hi Dave,
Thanks for sharing. What are some specific things that you think Avactis has that WP e-Commerce does not. To me it seems that WP e-Commerce is something that will couple up with WordPress effortlessly. Avactis seems to be freestanding. Have you used Avactis before? If so, then I'd like to hear more about it.
October 26th, 2009 at 11:22 am
Hi ccorry,
Thumbnails seems to be one of the more popular topics in their support forum. I suggest checking out these two links:
http://www.instinct.co.nz/forums/tags.php?tag=t…
&
http://www.instinct.co.nz/forums/tags.php?tag=t…
Let me know if that helps.
October 27th, 2009 at 9:12 am
Haven't tried that one. I setup my store using a different WordPress theme called Market theme. It was easy to setup, easy to understand, and really nice support. I recommend it.
October 30th, 2009 at 9:05 pm
What about a shipping module?
October 30th, 2009 at 10:33 pm
Thank you for your blog. Appreciate the information very much. Have a web developer who was designing a site for me on the WordPress blog. She said the only plug ins she could find for eCommerce were very expensive. I had heard there were free plug-ins somewhere.
Glad to know this is here and that what I envisioned really can be done. And, what a bonus, the video on how to do it, too. Excellent. What a bonus. I love WordPress and I love HostGator.
November 2nd, 2009 at 8:04 pm
My ONLY problem with this script is how SLOOOOOOOOW it makes my site. The script renders my website almost useless with load times of up to 15 – 20 seconds depending on what's running in the background.
It's NOT the amount of images on the page, because I only have about 5 small GIFs. Running firefox's YSlow add on, I've found that this script increases my HTTP requests to about 20 with all of the various JS and CSS it uses.
Also, it causes conflicts with the WP built in js libraries, instead of simply using the libraries already called from the standard WP header.
There are MANY people on the forums who have had the same issue, but the developers have been completely unresponsive to any requests for help. Maybe they're working on a fix in the next version.
It's inefficient, and poorly coded. I've had a hell of a time working this thing out, and to be honest the only reason I've stuck with it is because I can't afford $300 – $500 for a reliable cart software.
The script has a lot of great options, and integrates seamlessly with WP, but the fact that it is such a resource hog makes it almost unbearable.
November 15th, 2009 at 8:38 pm
Hi, can I ask, would this plug in be compatible with selling Amazon goods at all?
December 4th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
We are using PHPurchase (http://www.phpurchase.com) on our site. It is a very simple plugin to set up and use and it's working great on our site.
February 1st, 2010 at 11:41 am
It is a great tool but I need to know does it provide free hosting like wp blogs.
April 16th, 2010 at 5:58 pm
Hey, That’s wonderful i got alot of links from your site I got your site helpful.
April 26th, 2010 at 6:14 am
nop…so many people says..its running slow..but what i have experienced is that….when i installed it on my server…it was fine…may people shouldn't have installed it right or other programs may be confilcting..