WordPress Shopping Carts

January 2nd, 2007 | Posted in blog 44 Comments »

I created a site for a friend who simply wanted some presence on the Internet to publish her essays. Easy enough. I decided to use WordPress as a CMS. I thought I could do it all in about an hour, but then of course I ran into a few snags.

Here are the two main technical snags:

Creating a static home page, and having the blog area available from another link.
Integrating the e-commerce lite shopping cart.

The solution to the static home page proved to be pretty simple. The best solution is available is the one on the Turbocharged site. However, the specifics of my situation made it tough. I created the site as an add-on domain in a folder directory on my host. Whenever I used the method described on Turbocharge, the .htaccess file kept being overwritten and it caused the site links not to work. This is because I had enabled permalinks. I thought the Turbocharge method was faulty, so I kept looking for alternatives.

The .htaccess file controls how the site reads the pages of the directory. The only solution I found was to disable permalinks. This means the URLs aren’t pretty, but I consider it the problem of the add-on domain situation. The guy at Blue Host (my host) said things can easily go haywire with add-on domains.

The second problem was with the e-commerce lite shopping cart plugin. It seems simple on the surface, but despite the instructions included on one of the tabs, it is not entirely intuitive. I have to remember this when I write instructions: always dumb-down the level lower than you think.

But figuring it out wasn’t too difficult after a while. The problem was that after I got everything working, I realized that the shopping cart dropped down when the user added products. The cart dropped right over the text of the products themselves! Frustrating. I added some text at the top to fix that. But then I discovered another problem: the cart only worked in Firefox, not IE.

I later realized that the page parameters within the e-commerce tab didn’t have the pages of the add-on domain’s URL, and that was why I was getting the empty cart error.

If I could have one WordPress wish, it would be for some brilliant PHP programmer to create a more robust, functional shopping cart for WordPress.

Despite all of these shortcomings, I think once I get the method down, I could create a website with a shopping cart in about an hour.

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microblog says:

March 13, 2008 at 11:18 am

WordPress Shopping CartsCreating a static home page, and having the blog area available from another link. Integrating the e-commerce lite shopping cart.

Dan Milward says:

January 2, 2007 at 3:03 pm

Hi Guys, The above image is just one of the “shopping cart” presentation options. Assuming that your wordpress theme follows the wordpress theme guidelines then you can move the cart to your sidebar.php by clicking a button in shop options.

Actually I think that in the latest version it displays in the sidebar.php by default.

With a little more PHP and CSS experiance you can come up with all sorts of cool and funky looking e-commerce sites.

Some examples are on our site:
http://www.instinct.co.nz/e-commerce

More info can be found in the forums:
http://www.instinct.co.nz/blogshop

Here are some visual tutorials on Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/41894169159@N01/

Tom says:

January 3, 2007 at 1:27 am

Thanks for leaving a comment! It’s great that you are so aware of incoming links.

I looked for ways to style the shopping cart, but I’m drawing a blank. I looked at the Flickr photos, but they weren’t in depth enough.

For example, how would I change the text that says “Visit the Shop”?

Also, once you add to the cart, there are three links that appear:
> Make Payment
> Continue shopping
> Empty shopping cart

I would like to style them so that they look more like links.

Overall I am pretty happy with the shopping cart plugin. I just wish there were an easier way to style it. Thanks for making the plugin available.

One more question. How do I rearrange products within a category? It seems like they are arranged in the order they were entered, and it’s not possible to reorder them.

Thanks for your help.

Earane says:

January 23, 2007 at 11:33 am

Hi could I trouble you to be so kind as to explain to me how you got the products and the cart to show up? I’ve followed all the instructions but nothing will show. All the pages are blank!

January 23, 2007 at 9:42 pm

If you go to eCommerce > Shop Options, under Presentation Settings, select the Page radio button. Then look at the URL Settings above. Those URLs are where the shopping cart appears. You can change the URLs so that the cart appears on pages you specify. I can’t remember if you have to actually create the page first or not.

If under Presentation Settings you select the sidebar radio button, the shopping cart automatically appears in your sidebar.

If the cart still doesn’t appear on the page or sidebar, try selecting the manual radio button and putting the <> code into one of your pages. Make sure you turn off the visual editor before you stick the code in.

Also, make sure you have defined some products and categories, and of course activated the plugin.

As a technical writer, I plan to one day write instructions for this plugin, but being that it would be absolutely nonprofit, I may never get around to it. Let me know if you have any success.

Tom

January 23, 2007 at 10:17 pm

Thanks Tom,

I’m following this post. If you could write some technical documentation that would be fantastic!!! Not only would I appreciate it but I’m sure the whole WP e-Commerce community would appreciate it

Ciao,

Dan

January 23, 2007 at 10:22 pm

I may not get to it for 3 months, but it’s on my to-do list.

January 24, 2007 at 4:40 am

Hi again. Thank you very much for your advice. However I am still unable to get it to show up. It works perfectly fine creating products and categories but nothing will show up on page itself.

I’ve created the pages and am using the default urls for shop options. I followed the instructions to a T – I simply cannot understand why it doesn’t work.

I’m using v3.4 on WP2.1, but on the plugins list on the WP homepage the most recent known version that works with 2.1 is v3.3beta – is this the cause of my problem?

Thank you very much once again and sorry to be such a bother!

January 24, 2007 at 8:58 am

I’m not sure about the compatibility of the different versions. You might want to try v3.3beta and see if it fixes it. If so, then you know it was a compatibility issue. If not, you know it’s a configuration problem. Sorry I can’t be of more help to you.

March 8, 2007 at 4:23 pm

Hey Guys,

Check out the latest version of WP e-Commerce.

>> http://www.instinct.co.nz/e-commerce

March 8, 2007 at 10:58 pm

Thanks for the update, Dan. It’s great to see that the e-commerce cart has been enhanced.

Alan says:

June 27, 2007 at 9:13 am

There is an wordpress shopping cart that works great with Paypal (Website payments pro, and website standard payments), Google Checkout, and Authorize.net, so great for accepting credit cards as well.

Generates hacker-proof download links for digital products.

Uses your own Paypals default settings (not IPN), so you can use it on many sites at the same time.

Also has built in affiliate management if you want to run an affiliate program, as well as ad/link tracking.

Not just for WordPress either. You could use on almost any web page.

http://www.wordpressshoppingcart.info (aff)

Great blog here. I absolutely love the simplicity of its theme.

Cheers

Alan

January 2, 2008 at 2:05 am

You should visit the plugin author’s site for support. I haven’t downloaded the latest version because none of my sites require a shopping cart. Another good place for support is wordpress.org/support. Good luck.

January 4, 2008 at 4:12 am

Sorry to hear that. Maybe try a different plugin. Or just use paypal buttons directly.

bas says:

March 13, 2008 at 10:39 am

Hi,
Wow, I am sure to check this one out!!

Bas
Webmaster Motortassen

March 13, 2008 at 10:41 am

Wow,
Anyone has a store up and running based on this tool?

March 13, 2008 at 11:26 pm

Sorry, I don’t know many. I made a tiny little store — the one I linked to in the post. I think the plugin is fairly popular, though. And they have made a lot of improvements since I wrote this post.

dan milward says:

March 14, 2008 at 2:59 am

Hi Guys. Wow yes the plugin has come a really long way since this thread was started way back in Jan 2007. It seems like a life time ago!!!!

We just released WP e-Commerce 3.6 Beta 12 two days ago. Its had over 40 bugs fixed that were posted in our forums and tons of new features.

I hope it works for you. If you get stuck the best place to go for help is probably the WP e-Commerce Forums .

March 14, 2008 at 3:00 am

Opps. Forgot to post a link to the latest files.
- Download 3.6 Beta 12

Ciao, Dan…

harpo says:

March 19, 2008 at 10:55 am

this is such a simple question, but how do you add specific product categories to specific pages?

PalmBeach says:

April 23, 2008 at 9:42 am

I Upload e-Commerce 3.6 RC2 to WordPress 2.5. I can not get the gold upgrade to work. The upgrade read me file States

“Copy the contents of the zip file (a folder called gold_cart_files) into the wp-shopping-cart folder.

The zip file folder contains a #1 folder (called gold_cart_files)and that folder contains a 2nd folder (called gold_cart_files.;-| Which one do I put into the wp-shopping-cart folder? I put #1 folder in and it did not work.

Then the directions go on to say

“Now it should automatically display a new tab called gold options, once you have entered in your API key all of the additional gold features will unlock”. Did not work;-(

Then the directions go on to say “If it does not appear straight away you might need to deavtivate and then reactivate the e-commerce plugin”. Did that and it did not work.

I also purchased Grid view upgrade. That zip file came with no read me file.

I then Unloaded everything including the database and reloaded everything. Still the gold option did not work…..

Aneyone have any Ideas on how to get this to work! Help

PalmBeachs last blog post..Hello world!

Vizualbod says:

June 12, 2008 at 3:25 am

Have you tried yak shopping cart. It is definitely much easier to use and it integrates nicely with WordPress.

June 12, 2008 at 4:11 pm

Yak is a cool lite solution. The Instinct WP e-Commerce Plugin is more suited to people that want a more powerful solution that has more features.

The latest version of WP e-Commerce 3.6.6 is something I am quite proud of. There is a growing community behind it, the forums are getting used, and we’re working on more documentation all the time. Speaking of which I need to go write a few more FAQs…

June 18, 2008 at 3:33 pm

More powerful solution? I doubt it.
Dan, honestly WP-ecommerce code is really ugly and the whole solution is far from elegant. YAK shop beats WP-ecommerce hands down in all aspects.

You shouldn’t write more FAQs. You should write a shop plugin from scratch with all what you’ve learned about software in the last couple of years (MVC, no-bloat…).

You can do better.

June 18, 2008 at 5:01 pm

Good news folks. The WP e-Commerce 3.6.6 Plugin for WordPress has just been given Level 2 Certification by Google.

This is the highest level of Google certification (and trust me they don’t just hand it out to any ugly solution).

We will release this with WP e-Commerce 3.6.7 which will be released very soon. This new version has far more features and it has been even more refined and it has even more elegant code.

We are not just about the code. We want your customers to be happy and we want your e-commerce site to be working – this is more important to us then indenting all our code!! Also what some people call bloat are useful features to other shop owners – we have never introduced a feature that has not been requested by somebody that really needs it. Take USPS shipping, and shipwire integration… these would not be there if you did not need it.

So go get the WordPress e-Commerce plugin today!!

Dan Milwards last blog post..NextGEN Gallery – Buy Now Buttons

June 18, 2008 at 5:08 pm

Funny that my last blog post is showing up there – that is new and cool!! I like it

Speaking of which the NextGEN BuyNOW plugin is very elegant and light weight e-commerce plugin.

It is a standalone module for the NextGEN Gallery plugin (you don’t need WP e-Commerce) that adds Google Checkout or Paypal buttons to your gallery.

We made this in collaboration with the NextGEN dev team.

Arbie says:

July 2, 2008 at 4:16 am

An independent (but fully endorsed) documentation project has been completed and is available at http://wpecommercebible.com

October 12, 2008 at 10:52 pm

Mate. Goto http://www.instinct.co.nz/e-commerce click on the Gold Cart Shop Link. Add the Gold Files to the cart. Click the Checkout link. Follow through to Paypal.. Download the files

Wait a minute. Did you say free? Nope sorry… not unless you want to email me about contributing to the code. I’m happy to talk to fellow plugin developers about collaboration

Also check out the latest Development Version. It is totally on fire: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-e-commerce/download/

Dan Milwards last blog post..Crafty Cart

DigiArtBali says:

October 12, 2008 at 11:15 pm

hi, Dan Milward i was already download the GOLD e-commerce.. but i don’t have the API key?? can you help me…

DigiArtBalis last blog post..Download Ebook Gratis for Dummies

shopping cart software says:

October 20, 2008 at 12:16 am

Hi guys,

Just out of curiosity – if you were to download a commercial shopping cart, would you prefer to buy one that is just stuffed with all the functions or would you prefer simple-but-scalable solution?

Regards,
Paul

October 20, 2008 at 1:00 am

@ paul – That is the weirdest post ever. Obviously you would want something that allowed you to run your new online business in a scalable fashion. To my knowledge all the WordPress e-Commerce solutions are scalable and they all allow small and large shops to do businesses online.

@ DigiArtBalis – email dan@instinct.co.nz and i’ll sort you out if you have not already been helped. There are two reasons you missed your API key. One is that you did not wait for paypal to return you to the Instinct site. Two is that your spam filter ate the confirmation email sent when you buy the gold files

Market says:

November 10, 2008 at 2:42 pm

Hi Guys,

Just wanted to let you guys know about one of the other options that are out there…

Another WordPress shopping cart solution available is the Market theme (http://www.markettheme.com/. It’s basically a premium WP theme that includes a built-in shopping cart system. You simply upload the theme to your host, activate the theme, set your Paypal email address in the setup area — and you’re up and running.

The download package also comes with a helpful backend product manager plugin that helps you easily add & edit products from the WordPress administration area.

It’s quick and easy, and works well.

There’s an online demo available on the Market website if you want to give it a try before you buy it.

I hope this helps.

Cheers,

Eli

November 10, 2008 at 3:06 pm

What would be even better is a Market theme that integrated with the WP e-Commerce plugin given all the additional functionality that WP e-Commerce comes with.

It would be trivial to make a WP e-Commerce powered website using the Thematic theme framework that looked like Market theme… if Market theme don’t do this then I hope somebody else does

That said Crafty Cart + WP e-Commerce is a very hot solution that packs a more powerful punch at the moment then just using the Market theme.

caladohelena says:

November 14, 2008 at 2:47 am

I am trying to add the shopping car for a wordpress website of a friend and I am finding it to be really difficult.

Also it isn’t easy and or you have a huge amount of luck and everything works fine at the first attempt or you have to know something about programming and websites to get it to work.

Anyway thanks for the hint. I will try it right away !

December 6, 2008 at 5:32 pm

Boy Dan, you’re a little opinionated aren’t you?

“What would be even better is a Market theme that integrated with the WP e-Commerce plugin given all the additional functionality that WP e-Commerce comes with.

It would be trivial to make a WP e-Commerce powered website using the Thematic theme framework that looked like Market theme… ”

Maybe you should stick to benefits for the readers, rather than self promotion and trashing of your competitors.

There’s nothing wrong with two paths working toward the same goal. More options for the user is always better.

December 6, 2008 at 7:09 pm

Heh. This is a thread on e-Commerce solutions right? Therefore I’ll stick to my guns… a WP e-Commerce solution that was WP e-Commerce + Markettheme would be great for the readers.

So on that basis I would still recomend using crafty cart and the WordPress e-Commerce Plugin for the additional functionality.

Hopefully one day Eli and I can collaborate on something awesome

Damien says:

December 13, 2008 at 12:28 am

Since Dan Milward seems to be on here often, but doesn’t answer any questions in his own forum:

1. When the next release comes out, can you make it have the option to run only on a particular page rather needing to add code to every page outputted. I don’t want my cart on my article pages, just my product pages. Or do you currantly have a solution.

2. Will the code ever be cleaned up. I would spend the time to do this, but I’m sure a new update will come in and override the work or I’ll be stuck with the older version.

3. If we pay for goldcart, are new release or updates free? and if so how long?

Tom – sorry for interrupting your thread, but Dan owes us some answers. I’ve tried a thousand different ecommerce software over the years, plus several WP carts, but WP eCommerce so far has the most options and for those that can’t code is perfect for them, but I’m some what anal retentive when it comes to how things are. So if I can’t get it to w3 validate, I get rid of it.

December 14, 2008 at 2:26 pm

@Damien; I think you’ll find that there are over 1000 resolved threads in our forums (by me and numerous other contributors) and I blog regularly on our site

1. We are optimizing the next RC as much as possible and taking all these sorts of issues into account

2. The latest version has much tidier code. Variations has been completely overhauled. We’re working on a Template engine which means all display code has been tidied up. We’re moving all Javascript to jQuery. And we have moved all ajax into two new files, one for admin ajax and one for frontend ajax.

Anythink eles you want to know?

3. For the past four years our Gold Files have been unlimited downloads (providing you don’t loose the email with the link). We’re in the process of making our own shop more of a mall where you pay one price for everything – but you only get access for one year.

Tom – Bro. Love your work. Funnily enough I’d rather be writing too

December 14, 2008 at 2:29 pm

Just to prove a point, here is one of “many”

http://www.instinct.co.nz/wp-e-commerce-release-candidate-3/#comment-2195

December 14, 2008 at 3:13 pm

@Dan; Well you sort of proved my point, I sent 4 different emails to you and the only response I’ve received thus far is on this thread.

To give Dan credit, WordPress e-Commerce Plugin is the best out of the cart plugins yet.

I tried them all, YAK Cart & Quick Shop – not worth your time.

eShop – lots of features and cleaner code, but still lacks allot of the features WP e-Commerce provides. Adds way to many tabs to your dashboard! If your not HTML proficient, don’t bother or your shop will look like it’s stuck in the 90′s.

Paypal Shortcodes – good if your selling a couple items and don’t know how to add PayPal buttons or are just to lazy.

zencart-and-wordpress-user-integration – must be knowledgeable of zencart. I’m not a fan of zencart.

WordPress Cart – rating is 1 star and published in 2006, so I’ll assume it’s not worth the time.

WP e-Commerce – fully loaded, but gold cart is $25 and not alot different from the free version. I still bought it hoping for future releases. If things improve, I’ll update this post.

December 14, 2008 at 4:03 pm

@ Damien, Thanks for the positive feedback. I like you

I just searched for your name in my inbox but found nothing – apologies if you fell through the chinks. The best place for support is our forums – if it looks like a bug as opposed to new work somebody will normally help you. Generally speaking (and this is the same for most forums – including wordpress) if you’re not getting helped quick enough then you should pay for somebodies time.

In terms of $$$. Although WP e-Commerce is free our time is not and $25 does not even pay for an hour of our time, an hour of time costs me a lot more then that and I have a team of guys to pay. By upgrading you are helping keep the best e-Commerce plugin on the planet alive.

…that said you could always buy some premium support time over at wordpress.org if you feel like spending over $2500

DavidW says:

December 19, 2008 at 9:13 am

@Dan, Can you say more about this?
“We’re in the process of making our own shop more of a mall where you pay one price for everything – but you only get access for one year.”

Will you still have a free version? I think it’s a great entry point for many folks.

December 19, 2008 at 12:03 pm

@Dan, I may have “fell through the chinks” because I rarely use my correct name in a post, I guess, my bad. Still you should consider upping the customer support.

@DavidW, I’m sure he means the api key you receive will only be valid for free upgrades for one year, after that you will have to renew the license or membership if he choose to make a members section for updates.

@Dan again, As for the free version, I will be greatly disappointed if the free version goes away, I could see the free version being made WP eCommerce Lite and allot of the functions removed, but to make everyone start using the other plugins would be sad.

@DavidW, your right, great discussion topics.

@Tom, I think my next article will include your blog. You have lots of great input here. Thanks!

December 20, 2008 at 10:38 pm

Hey guys. Just a quick note from my phone – there will always be a free version of the wordpress e-commerce plugin. Building a better module API so people can add there own downloadable features is already being planned

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