Online Shops with WordPress & WP e-Commerce Plugin
The flexibility of WordPress has always been its strong point. The fact that you can tweak and twist it to your own will with just a bit of knowledge and an extraordinary support from a large community of developers and blogger transformed what initially was a blogging tool into a powerful website CMS, may it be a blog, photoblog, portfolio or simple presentation website.
And since its flexibility is undisputed, the folks at Instinct, a New Zealand development company, took it a little further with their WP e-Commerce plugin.
Here’s what they have to say about their plugin:
The WordPress e-Commerce plugin is a state-of-the-art e-Commerce platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards and usability. It is both free and priceless at the same time.
Let’s see about that!
The Good
If your coding knowledge is limited, you have the chance of getting your own online store up and running in about 5 minutes, including the download. That’s a big plus.
If offers a wide range of settings for your products, including extra custom fields, product variations, promotions, coupon codes and downloadable products. Again something worth having.
There are many payment gateways that you can use, including PayPal and Google Checkout, and transactions are made safely through SSL connections. To that you can also add downloadable CSV sales reports.
Subscriptions with recurring billing are also available with the purchase of an upgrade module called Gold Cart. Individual bloggers can get a license for $25, while businesses have to check their pockets for $195. Although they are not very specific about these licenses, I suspect that the “business license” simply allows more installations.
And to top all the good features, this plugin is free, which is really great.
Until now it sounds like a dream, I know, but let’s check out the downside.
The Bad & the Ugly
The easy part is to install the plugin, but what comes after can prove to be a real nightmare if your knowledge is limited or if you’re a perfectionist.
With the free license, you only get one way to display products in category view, similar to a list. If you need a grid view, you’ll have to get the cash rolling and buy an upgrade. Let’s say that this being a customization, you either do it yourself, or support the developers by buying the grid module.
But what it you decide to do it yourself? Tough luck. You’ll bump into poorly organized code, with insufficient comments. If you’re used to WordPress’ logical file naming structure, you’ll get a headache trying to figure out what goes where. But you’ll get to it… in time.
If your patience runs out you’ll probably look for documentation. Aside from the information you’ll get on how to manage your store, containing most of the plugin’s screens there’s not much to see. There little info on development and integration. And I meen LITTLE.
The community lacks of real official support and most times users do their best answering each other’s questions.
Considering the four years (or so they say) spent developing this solution, I think they should have took a bit to invest into documenting it right, which apparently they did not.
And, after four years, there’s no built-in search capability, at least with the free package. If you try using your regular WordPress search box you’ll get no results, as product entries are stored in a different set of tables, other than WP’s regular ones.
There’s also not widget to simplify the search and if you go into developing themes with WP e-Commerce support, you’ll notice the lack of “template tags”. There are 4 or 5 of them, but mostly not very useful. One template tag per year of development doesn’t seem OK to me. Ohh, but you can have a product search box if you buy the Gold Cart upgrade. It figures.
Conclusions
While the WP e-Commerce WordPress plugin might satisfy the needs of a not so picky user, after 6 hours of continuous tweaking I decided to let it go. I can get a new (not so spectacular, but from scratch) WP Theme up and running in a maximum of 2 hours, so I hate “tweaking” a plugin for almost 6 hours, only to discover more things that need tweaking.
I’m not saying it might not be right for you. I’m just saying that you have to have an open pocket to upgrade and a lot of patience to adjust.
If I were to rate it, I’d say that it is far from being a “state-of-the-art e-Commerce platform” as claimed, but rather a solution for those with low expectations. 3.5 out of 5 stars would be fair for this WordPress plugin, and mostly because of the poor community support and documentation.
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5 blog posts linking to this article
- Review: Online Shops with WP and WP-ecommerce Plugin :: WPLover
- “magento” site de ecommerce open source, la plateforme qui monte « International business (eng) & Commerce international (fr)
- Corey Eulas » Start an Online Store Using Wordpress
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- WordPress Shopping Carts | WordPress Shopping Cart
I’ve read a couple of review of this plugin but yours comes out as the most honest and transparent review I’ve came across so far.
Tweaking for a good 6 hours may not sound like a good idea for a super perfectionist like yours truly.
I trust your review and I’ll give this a pass unless I get a complimentary review copy…;)
Yan
Say we wanted to run an e-commerce site, which software would you recommend? Still wordpress? Or sth else?
Interesting point of view. Planned for a long time to make a premium eCommerce wp theme but i’ve invested a lot of energy and time in something else.
Nice review mate, I have always wondered how good the ecommerce was on WordPress, and this is perfect for what I was looking for, I think I will give this a miss and carry on using software made just for an ecommerce website.
Hey guys, thanks for your comments. Again, I must reiterate the fact that while it did not fit my needs, for smaller projects could turn to be a good solution.
Stefan, building a full-featured theme for eCommerce goes a bit beyond the classic WP design. Aside from design it requires a great deal of actual coding, which can prove to be very time consuming. If you’re willing to take on a project like this, make sure you have that time.
Phy, until starting QBKL (which is a design studio almost exclusively) I had a team of developers at my side and we created our own eCommerce solutions. Now, I have to rely on tools developed by other people.
A popular solution is the classic OS Commerce, but I don’t really like its customization capabilities.
Recently I’ve turned to Magento, and while its documentation is pretty much outdated due to numerous changes with their latest release, with patience it can be turned into an amazing online shop.
I’m talking about patience because those used to the simple and logical architecture of WP, won’t find Magento as easy to skin. Nevertheless, there’s a good community involvement, quite a bunch of extensions and modules and even premium themes from websites like Template Monster.
Great info, I have been looking to build an ecomm site using wp, bit cannot succeed till now due to my unique requirements, still searching…
You’re right … guess i’ll have to buy some time from someone.
Thanks for the write up (I think).
We’re currently working on a new release (probably one of our most important releases yet). One of the cool things about this verison is the new template engine that is based on the actual wordpress template engine – if you can make WP themes or edit them you will have no problems with customizing your new products page.
It also comes with a range of other great features. Better Facebook integration. Better Stock Management tools. More customization tools. More shipping options. And a few tweaks here and there to make it look sexy in WP 2.7
If you look at the following site you will see that it uses 5 widgets:
- shopping cart widget
- price range widget
- latest products widget
- a group widget for brands
- a group widget for categories
I would like to know how these are not very useful especially given some of them are necessary in any modern e-commerce site and the others were based on seomoz.com suggestions for making your e-commerce site more search friendly.
You criticised the lack of widgets and you say the ones we have are not very useful but I don’t see you mentioning what would be. If you have suggestions I’d love to know
The WP e-Commerce documentation project is still young and we are in the process of integrating media wiki so hopefully more people will contribute. That said I will commit some more personal time to writing soon.
In terms of the forums. People answering peoples questions is a good thing. Check out the wordpress.org forums they are just as busy with thousands of threads. We are also working to launch our own premium support service (that would be exactly the same as wordpress automattic support options)
And finally while I remember we are currently looking at ways to extend the default WP search functionality so that it works with the wordpress search but I’m not sure if there are any WP hooks that let us.. we will get there. Oh and funnily enough the next version does actually come with a free search widget
Ciao,
Dan
Great review Alex, but also a good reply from Dan.
It’s good to hear that you’re listening to the customers needs
Thanks Thomas.
I was sitting in a cafe this morning wishing I knew where Alex got stuck so I could start thinking about that particular piece of documentation. But since I still don’t know yet I started to write this instead:
Upcoming WP e-Commerce Videos
Fresh install using 2.7 > adding product
Shipping Settings
Setting up your payment gateway
Settings Overview
Docs to write
Payment gateways
Writing your own payment gateway
Customization and design
Adding a new shipping module
Adding a new language file
What videos and documentation would you like to see next?
I posted this to help people point us in the right direction: http://www.instinct.co.nz/writ.....ng-videos/
where i cant get the code to customize this plugin
Dan, I’m glad you’ve joined the discussion, and at the same time, sorry for taking a bit to answer. I’ve had a couple of extremely busy days. Anyway, here goes my “reply”, step by step.
1. This post is and should be considered a personal review, touching good and bad aspects of your project. Definitely impartial from where I stand. Offering solutions and suggestions is not always the role of a reviewer, but rather a tester involved in the project. I’m not one. I’m only a simple user.
Of course, as you’ve come here asking for suggestions, I’ll gladly share them, because you’ve joined the discussion and positioned yourself as an individual looking to correct whatever could be bad about your product.
2. The BETA version you’re working on right now, which adds more customization options and the search widget is only something too look for in the future. This “review” cannot base itself on “will be”, but on “it is”.
Even so, those are features one would really need having in an eCommerce website.
3. From your answer, I think you’ve understood wrong. I’m not “criticizing” your widgets. I’m cool with them (except the non-existing search widget, for now).
The problem I have is with the “template tags” that you rather don’t have than have. The shortcodes, as you call them.
These shortcodes/template tags have made WordPress what it is today. A very easy to skin platform that designers could use at full potential with pretty limited PHP & MySQL knowledge.
I know my way around PHP, I know how to get inside the core and change the display functions to remove descriptions, position the title later in the output and so on. But again, I know my way around that. How many people do so?
And that’s where documentation comes into play.
You’ve documented the plugin well when it comes to managing the shop, and by looking at the upcoming videos and tutorials, you continue to do so.
But, when it comes to design, output codes, implementing, skinning, all you have is a list of 5-6 widgets and 4-5 shortcodes (not very helpful ones).
I want to change the template of the product details page. How do I do that? What is the PHP file and what are the functions I need to edit in order to move thumbnails around, put the “Add to cart” button in another place, and so on?
When I have no shortcodes for that, at least guide me through the files. Assume I’m a newbie coder and I can really mess up the code without proper guidance.
Instead of generating these HTML product templates through functions, which makes them kind of “hard-coded”, why not give people tags like:
<?php prod_title() ?<
or, to cover extra(custom) fields:
<?php prod_output(‘title’); ?<
Maybe my examples are not the best, but how much easier would them make my life? Allowing me to output the title, the description, the “add to cart” button, whenever I what, wherever I want, IF I want.
What I’m trying to say is that you also need to document the front-end, not only the back-end!
4. People helping people is great. What I was talking about is admins/devs helping people. That I did not see as much.
The WordPress forums are a good example of users interacting, but beyond that, have you seen the WordPress Codex. It’s a huge documentation project, covering mostly everything. Why put all on people or devs to answer in forums when one could easily get the right info from the “documentation project”.
Dan, thanks for stopping by and showing interest in making your project better. I, for one, don’t believe in 100% positive reviews. The perfect product hasn’t been invented yet, in any field.
If my post has at least turned on a “red light” over at Instinct, I’ve done my job. As I said in the review, the initiative is amazing, what this product could do, for free, is worthy of appreciation, but simple appreciations will not make it evolve.
Hope you got my views on this, now.
Cheers,
Alex
Oh, man. I agree with everything you said in your review. I used the plugin on two sites and since I *am* a perfectionist, with just enough PHP knowledge to be dangerous, the experience was pretty hellacious. I am just itching for a better e-commerce solution for WP. At the moment I’m looking at FoxyCart and wondering if there’s an easy way to incorporate it with WP…
I was disappointed with their sales response (or lack thereof) as well as the inability to remove product tags after deleting a product. I also wish it was compatible with 2.6.3. Other than that, it looks like a decent cart, but I’m too weary based on what I’ve seen so far to consider the $200 license. I’m looking elsewhere.
Hi Guys. I’m sorry that WP e-Commerce did not meet your expectations – thanks to Alex though for posting this review we have started putting together this lesson on CSS:
http://www.instinct.co.nz/e-co.....-with-css/
And we have fixed Jim’s bug with product tags not being removed after product deletion.
Also there was a bug with 2.6.3 and Revisions but Tom has fixed that – the patch is in the latest Development Version and will be available in the next Release Candidate due out tomorrow night.
Ciao,
Dan
This review was incredibly timely and helped me a great deal in making a decision. Thank you very much.
BTW, one of the problems I have with evaluating plugin is trying to see the “examples” of the cart in use. The first and fifth links go to 404 error pages. The third goes to a site that has very unintuitive navigation and whose products either have no buy links at all or the “click to buy” links to go error or out of stock pages at Amazon. ??? The second and fourth seem to work reasonably, but I’m not even sure if those are using the plugin.
I encountered an error during the installation of the premium “gold cart upgrade” and got no response from the support email I sent.
However, another user I found on the support forum was kind enough to fix the problem.
Overall I am still a big fan of this plugin. The admin interface is far more intuitive than the likes of Zencart. Inexperienced users are able to operate the day-to-day functions easily.
I would recommend this solution for designers who do not need overly customised shopping carts.
Alex, solid review. I think the plugin is really decent and I can manage to wing my way through a lot of the customization I need done, thanks to a bit of PHP knowledge and Windows Grep that helps me find the words I need to change and all that.
My biggest hangup though is writing my own payment gateway.
I also have problems using RC2 on WordPress 2.7, whether the Betas or RC1. I’ve had to revert to WP-eCommerce RC1.
Could you maybe write up such an review of the new eCommerce plugin, which is called Shopp? I am currently using it, and I think that it has very much potential.
The current functionality and UI are very well implemented, and frankly quite amazing. Customization is also easy to accomplish.
Just wanted to mention this, as I really believe this will help a lot of new shopp owners making their choice between the available plugins for wordpress.
Hey Alex,
I wouldn’t agree that WP e-commerce is just for small stores, or as you put it on 11/17 “might be good for smaller projects”. Two of my clients have hundreds of products on their wp e-commerce stores
I do agree that there’s room for improvement. My own bent is SEO and I’ve discussed it with Dan in regards to the cart. He didn’t know me from Adam, but he listened and has been working to implement better seo features.
I guess that’s the thing, I’ve found Dan and Instinct to be quite receptive about improvements that could be made. WP e-commerce is not perfect yet, but I’ve worked with other carts that cost a lot more and are also far from perfect and just as hard to work with.
For people who find this post in 2009 and beyond I would definitely suggest not taking a pass based on this post as the wp e-commerce is improving every day.
Thanks David, its been a pleasure working with you. I agree that there is always room for improvement – even WordPress 2.7 could be improved
Earlier this year we improved the admin interface for a user in Germany with over 10,000 products and his site runs perfectly.
If the WordPress e-Commerce Plugin is built for small e-Commerce stores then the others are for tiny stores
The thing with the WordPress e-Commerce plugin is this. We were first and we based our early development work on what retailers, shop owners and sellers needed first – and that was to sell stuff online and quick.
We did it the best way we knew at the time with all the resources we had. It has come a long way since then – the code overhauls have been amazing.
Now that we have the majority of features (that sellers want) we are focusing on the features that hard core WordPress developers want – for instance our new Template engine and API system (so that developers can make there own modules).
For the sake of conversation though it does occur to me that some shop owners do not “nesessarily” even care about our new template engine. They are quite happy with the existing widgets and WordPress themes on offer and they are more interested in knowing that their shop has good SEO i.e. they just want to sell sell sell.
The WordPress e-Commerce plugin 3.6.9 which we just uploaded is that plugin. It works bloody nice and it looks totally sexy in the WP 2.7 interface
I hope you all have a fantastic Christmas and I look forward to helping as many of you as possible in the new year!!!
Warm Regards,
Dan Milward
- Download 3.6.9
- Download Development Version (with Template engine)
Is there a comprehensive list of known bugs, bug fixes, & new features? I did not see this in the readme for 3.6.9, or anywhere in the Instinct forums.
WP e-Commerce is a great plugin and I’ve used it successfully for a number of projects. Yes, there was a lot of tweaking involved and it could’ve been better…
For those interested in alternatives, there are two other WordPress Shopping Cart plugins that look very promising:
http://shopplugin.net/
http://tribulant.com/products/.....art-plugin
Cheers,
Jonah
Something I do not understand.
Why this plugin use “Page” instead of “Category”.
Most WP themes are designed in a way that “Category” is a category. This makes this e-Commerce plugin doesn’t fit well in most of the WP theme.
Another stupid question I wish can get the answer here… What is the url for Instinct Forum?
Thanks.
Hey KC,
The Instinct forum link for the WordPress e-Commerce Plugin is as follows:
http://www.instinct.co.nz/forums
Ciao,
Dan
This has been the best “balanced” post about wp-ecommerce that I’ve managed to stumble upon
In addition to considering wp-ecommerce I’m also looking at way of adding the google checkout buy now button code in to wordpress post or page. Does anyone know of a way of adding the code (normally wp will strip it out)? Are wordpress shortcodes the way to do it?
Regards
Agree with razoren – a review of the Shopp plugin would be great. It seems to be a very promising product and support seems to be spot on. I’ve used wp-commerce in the past and also found it to be, well, niggly.
I am also using now using Shopp after using WP e-Commerce for a year or so, because I got sick of the bugs. Its a shame of the bug issues with WP e-Commerce, because out of the box I had to do hardly any styling, and if it worked, it would be fantastic for the likes of us who arent so good at css.
Jeremy, why did you switch? I am currently evaluating carts that integrate well with wp…i’ve been looking at shopp and wp ecommerce.
Phil, I have also been evaluating wp ecommerce solutions for the last couple of months. When I started using wp e-commerce I was extremely impressed. I’ve been using a test store with quite a number of products and various selling scenarios. One of the things that I found to be very nice was the ability of wp e-commerce to integrate and look great with almost any theme that I throw at it. However, now that I have delved deeply in to the use of features such as product variations, variation pricing, and the product table rate pricing, I’ve discovered bugs at every turn.
For example… unless I’m missing something (please tell me I am), the product table rate pricing is buggy and unusable. When initially adding a product I can check the box for “table rate price” then add my graduated pricing levels. However, they don’t seem to work in the front end store, and if I attempt to edit the table pricing scheme after the initial input, I am not able to access the table pricing at all. The same is true for variation pricing and other product features I have attempted to use.
I’d look forward to eating a slice of humble pie if someone could point out the error of my ways and explain that I’m mistaken.
Please don’t get me wrong, Dan and the others working with the wp e-commerce project are to be commended. I believe that as wp e-commerce continues to evolve it will truly become the great software it appears to be at first encounter. My plea to the wp e-commerce team would be to fix the bugs first and add new features second.
Lastly, my apologies that I can not take a larger part in helping to remedy some of these bugs myself and contribute back to the project, but alas, I am a code pusher at best. I would however be very glad to compensate a developer that could help with these and other areas of the software that could be enhanced.
Best wishes to all,
Will
Hi guys! Will is right. There are a lot of bugs at the table fix rate for shipping. My php knowledge is null nevertheless I’ve found some but still doesn´t work as it should.
I have installed the latest version and still have the same bugs or different! I would like to know if it’s possible to fix it.
The shipping costs doesn´t appear anywhere after I complete the fields, I have tried everything I could imagine but my knowledge is limited.
I’ve fixed a lot of bugs in SP_sp.php
If you can give me a little help It’ll be much appreciated!!!!!
thanxs!!!! great job!!!
Have you tested out eshop for wordpress? I have heard good things about that. Have you also tested out http://www.wp-oscommerce.com/?page_id=7 this seems to be brand new, and I am having trouble finding reviews. Would love it if you would test out other shopping carts and provide your feedback.
Hello Dan,
First, I’m sure you’re already aware of the bugs in the table rate pricing for products, and the table rate shipping, and the product variation pricing. Any word on if/when these will be addressed? I’ve really been wanting to commit to using wp e-commerce and its upgrades for my own stores and my client’s stores, but with most of the rich features rendered unusable because of bugs, I fear that may be a poor choice.
Any encouragement regarding a resolution?
Thank you in advance for your time.
Will
Thank you!
Obviously,you are so familar with this plugins.And I think can we organiz a e-commerce plugin forum which can solve all the problems ?
And,can you give some good thems about e-commerce?
Thanks again!
I found this plugin to be a bit confusing, and when I lost some functionality on my site I immediately deleted from my server, whew, that was a close one.
Thanks for the post, fair rating. Thinking about switching to Magento now..
WP e-Commerce 3.6.10 is ready to download and it is looking real hot.
It comes with some nice new features like “add to cart” shortcodes for each product, a more advanced shipping system, tidier UI, more comments in the code, better online documentation and of course we polished up many many outstanding issues.
The next release 3.7 will have more shortcodes and the full template engine will kick some serious butt.
Also. Alex. Thanks for the tweet
I found this review on Shopp. Not the best written article you’ll find but it reviews Shopp.
Dan: nice to see you’ve updated Wp Commerce. Will give it a twirl over the next few days.
dan – IN the several comments you’ve made since Alex mentioned the tags/shortcodes issue you’ve not addressed it and I really wish you would. The actual features of your product fit my needs, but the plugin violates the style of WP. One thing about WP that’s incredibly nice is that I can put a taga tthe right place in the code, feed it parameters and it puts out the right information. I want any plugin to do the same. Tell me ALL Of the tabs I can use with ALL of their parameters. I don’t want to have to use your Products page… I want WP-Ecommerce to be an engine that interprets tags place in a theme. But I can’t even tell what the tags ARE in your product… if I want to display a category thumbnail right THERE in my theme, what’s the tag to do that? Etc etc.
I’d much rather you simply bite the bullet and charge, say, $39 for the software, roll in the gold cart stuff etc and give me documentation at the level of the WP Codex for all of the tags it knows about. I’d love that. As is, I can’t easily develop a design my customer likes, templatise it and insert tags to call the right function… which makes it a non-starter for me.
Thank you for the review. I have been considering moving my web store at http://www.greenandchic.com/ where I use http://www.pappashop.com/ to WordPress to match the blog thats attached to it.
After reading this, I think I will hold off on making the transition. I love using WordPress for my blog, but I know there are certain things that I cannot do on my own and I have to hire someone on Elance every now and then to get me out of a CSS or other type of jam.
Hi Alex,
I agree with your review and it’s very accurate. After I tried the plugin myself I was disappointed with what they say on their very flashy website. I decided to also write my opinion as well. I also tested out their latest version and there have been some additional changes since then, but there’s still more work needed.
Read the WP-eCommerce Plugin review:
http://www.internetbusinesspat.....-wordpress
Thanks.
Amen, you put it perfect…. looks like I am back to damn PHP and OSCommerce because this WordPress e-Commerce Plugin in is still just a little ways from being effective. 1.5 thumbs down
having struggled through the installation and sorting out how the pages work and searching the net for the short codes, i got to a point where it was almost ready.. but alas i could not find where the rss feeds were for the product catalogues. searching i find a reference
http://www.instinct.co.nz/e-commerce/marketing/
it states “..RSS Address: Each product catalogue has an RSS feed – you can find your RSS feed address here. ”
WHERE…??? there is no hyperlink to show me where, looking in the settings where the product catalogue are then there is no hint as to what the rss feed should be.
i even tried the default format for rss feeds and this did not even work…
very close to uninstalling and trying out shopp..
Thanks to the blogsessive guys for the review and to the instinct team for attempting to provide feedback here.
I have to say I am enthused, but that has cost me about 6 hours as well, and I’ve decided to look for other solutions at this point.
First problem: I wanted to move the cart to a different page within wordpress. Moving the cart itself was easy, however then updating the url within the settings seems buggy. (I’ve been playing around for about 2 hours now). For example the “Fix Permalinks” link seems to be to fix a caching issue, but always defaults the values to the old cart address?
Second, I simply want to customize the product listing page a bit and it is a waste of an hour trying to find the page, code, and the documentation is not helpful unless I purchase the $39 bible.
Last, at this point, I have decided to just purchase the Grid-view, which is listed as $15 on the site, but upon further review it requires purchase of the Gold Cart Module, which is $195 for anything but non-profits (and if you are a non-profit, I’m not convinced that more than one user will be able to log in).
Dan, if you’re still here: I think this product has ALOT of potential, and I love the admin interface, and integration with WordPress. But as Rick had stated above:
“I’d much rather you simply bite the bullet and charge, say, $39 for the software, roll in the gold cart stuff etc and give me documentation at the level of the WP Codex for all of the tags it knows about. I’d love that. As is, I can’t easily develop a design my customer likes, templatise it and insert tags to call the right function… which makes it a non-starter for me.”
And for me as well. Also – see jQuery (or wordpress for that matter) for a perfect documentation model. If this change is made, I could see huge potential for you.
At the time I was looking for a WordPress shopping cart, about 1 and a half years ago, this seemed the best cart available. I don’t recall having any installation problems, all went smoothly. A default installation is perfectly OK if you are happy with it’s default behavior and available options. If you plan on changing some things more to your liking, as I did, or you’re a perfectionist as someone already said in this discussion, then it’s hard and I wouldn’t recommend it to you. It is too late for me now to move, I’ve spent many many hours (and also fixed a few bugs) around it. Upgrades where painful for me, not because they didn’t work but because the fixes and changes I’ve done had to be merged with new versions, and the program structure made it hard to do; so I froze in version 3.6.2. The only “full” feature I missed on it was a product search, integrated with WP’s own search, but I solved that writing a small WP plug-in to support it (which I actually sold a few copies to make up for the hours I spent on the EC plug-in). Nevertheless try it, if you like it out-of-the-box, it’s worth it; otherwise look for other options.
I too have used the WP Ecommerce plugin and found it to be lacking in two key areas – documentation and support. Also, quite a lot of “fatal errors” seem to plague users if you look at their forums. It’s a great start, for sure, but needs some fine tuning.
I have tried some other shopping carts, and although not as versatile as WP EC, they work very straightforward.
Thanks for the review and all the comments here. I am currently trying to put together a simple e-commerce site and looking for the best solution. I am very familiar with wordpress and therefore, it would be the best solution if there was a good plugin.
I looked into the wp-e-commerce and started to play around a little but the documentation site http://www.instinct.co.nz/e-co.....-with-css/ gives me “Error establishing a database connection”. Any ideas?
Yea. WP-eCommerce is sweet and I use it on my website.
I have to say the codes for wp e-commerce are not very good. It’s very hard to make any changes. And the way they do CSS is a real nightmare.
Alex,
Any suggestions about CRE Loaded? I have my e-commerce site built with CRE Loaded.
I much prefer WP for all the free plugins like SEO Title Tag, site maps etc.
CRE Loaded charges $90 for SEO Title Tags alone. Sounds a bit steep!
I also like to use WP, because of the tags. I dont know if CRE Loaded does or not!
WP Commerce, I have not tried, but I only have a half a dozen products. When people talk about bugs.. it just irritates me.
Dan had done a commendable job, and must consider partnering with someone in India to get the bugs cleaned out for cheap.(let me know if you need help Dan, buddy we are counting on you!)
I really would prefer WP based because of all the free plugins.
One can easily spend a $1000 dollars for plugins on CRE Loaded and still not have enough functionality as WP.
Dan Milward (instict),
Ive just been to your site. It is not clear we will get the same software for bloggers ($25) vs Commercial ($195)?
If it isn’t the same software, I think you should let your customers know what they are getting.
And, if it is the same, the price doesnt make any sense… because anyone making money with a shopping cart is using it for commercial reason.
while a blogger like me can use your plugin on a hundred sites, while a purely ecommerce website … limit is 5.
I am planning to build a 100 mini sites with ecommerce in the next 1 yr. I just paid $125 C** *****d, for unlimited license. For a wordpress user who is used to getting some of the finest pluggins for free, to come up with $4000 for your plugin is absurd. (based on 20 licenses @ $200 for 5 websites)
If making big bucks from each install is your goal, WP is not the best platform.
Sean
Alex,
Sorry to post yet another comment, but I find your post to be the best on the internet on the subject.
If you would be kind enough please address thoroughly one other product. Surprisingly, it is not even a WP plugin, yet, you can have an e-commerce site with WordPress!
it called Market Theme,
http://www.markettheme.com/tour/comparison
here is a comparison with WP Commerce on their site. cant say if its accurate, so, your input will be greatly appreciated.
(neither markettheme nor wp commerce integrate well, with Authorize.net, however, markettheme integrates with Paypal, you will be able to accept credit cards with paypal pro.)
Not only that, your post will be not only the best, but also complete, so when a person reads this posting, they will be able to walk away with a solution to the e commerce problem using wordpress !
Any input from users of markettheme will be greatly appreciated!
I can vouch for how poorly coded the wp-e-commerce plugin is…
Spaghetti code, I can’t figure out how to make anything work.
Great post, I really thought that this wordpress plugin was a great solution, but once I have finished reading your posts, I finally changed my mind and realised that this might not be the right plugin for me.
I’d have to say I totally agree with what you say. I’ve just purchased the optional plug-in called the gold cart.
There really is so much lacking when it comes to documentation it’s an understatement.
This is a plug-in that as you say needs to be plonked in or modified with maximum patience.
There are so many things missing one of the things I’m really missing is the ability to display all the categories in the search I’d think this would be obvious since just about every e-commerce site includes something like this…I’ll just code it myself in the end less stress at the end of the day.
When trying to contact them I got an email that was about really was useless and unhelpful.
I’m at a point now where I am wondering whether or not it’s worth the effort. Or perhaps looking at a totally different product.
Greg.
Hello there,
Going to keep this short. I am in no way a php programmer, but have done my fair share of scripting / coding. I pride myself on making my code compliant. ( heh, like that means something ) Here’s the scoop.
I think this plugin is OKay. What this means is that the plugin works, kinda.. Unfortunately it seems like we are always running into small fences, while just trying to make things work with these 3rd party plugins.
Not for nothing, but usually going to the forums for any plugin and seeing that there are over a few hundred RECENT UNRESOLVED threads, does not give me a warm and fuzzy. However, chances are that a couple hundred are people that have no clue, another hundred are just complaining about how stupid the plugin is cause they have no clue and the rest have a clue but are finding out just like me that it does not work properly and now I have to wait 3 months for a potential fix, that never really does what I want anyhow, IF it comes out.
What I don’t understand about plugin developers is that their code just blows.. I mean it really sucks.. No formatting, no comments.. There are a few people out there that do it right and to be honest, if I was going to create something that I was going to sell. I WOULD BE DOING IT RIGHT.
This plugin REALLY has a LOT of POTENTIAL. I don’t like the interface that much, there are no balloon popups indicating what certain things mean. I don’t like that when you deactivate it, it does not delete the pages it created or remove the link from your site. I don’t like the fact that you have to fiddle for days ( not knowing where the code actually exists ) to try and change the look of the forms. And what’s with the checkout page. EVER HEAR of SPACING?
The plugin needs work.. Seriously.. If you ironed out all these little things. I seriously think you would have a winner on your hands.
Believe me.. I know that finding all the bugs and fixing all the problems is a pain.. and for what? I would rather see you fix your plugin and stay in the runnings then fade away to other carts that have the resources and the time to do it right.
We know you are trying.. believe me… You really do have a winner here.. You just need to focus on making it clean.
I am trying very hard to like this product, but once I finish fixing one thing and head on to the next part of the task, I just seem to be hit with another wall that I need to climb over.
So much for keeping this short. I just want to be clear this is not a bitch session. I really do like this plugin ( fix the product image addition area ). Unfortunately at this time and with spending about 30 hours yesterday fixing the problems I was having I have to seek another option.
This is not ready for prime time selling. Maybe if I had the developers working on the site with me it would be perfect. But that’s not an option.
Keep up the good work. It will all come together one day.
PS. I did get some support from the guys over at WP-ecommerce in the forums. I just wanna make a suggestion to ANY moderators out there. IF you are going to answer a persons post. ANSWER ALL THE QUESTIONS THEY ASK, no matter how silly. Just don’t answer the parts you feel like answering.
We are going to try this plugin so will let you know how we get on – does look like a very promising plugin.
About bugs, you will always have them, even multi million pound companies release software with known bugs.
I will say that this plugin had its heart in the right place, but implementation was so poor it really doesn’t matter.
The path the developers took to develop this plugin was probably the worst possible. The system is horribly programmed and impossible to update unless you plan on never using their updates again (might not be a bad idea).
Personally I got pulled into using this system by another development company and doing just a little bit of research would have removed this product from my list of solutions. I will also never purchase this system again, and will actively turn down any work pertaining to this system.
At this point the only solution I see for this software is a total rewrite, and at the pace it took them to develop this one (4 years) I would give it another 10 before they could get it right.
@Sherry – I agree that the largest and smallest companies will release software with bugs, but being a developer myself seeing the glaring bugs present in this software its apparent almost no testing was done. The fact that some of these bugs have also survived through multiple release cycles tells me these guys are eating up the $$ and not fixing the product.
Hello, Im newbie in eBiz. i want to learn about wp ecommerce, i hope admin of this blog or some one can help me…
P.S : My english not to good..
Thanks one and all for the input. I had just set my site up to use the WP e-Commerce Plugin and have learned more about it here than anywhere else. My needs are pretty basic so I think I’ll give it a go. Does anyone have a preferred payment option though as I have heard that sales are lost when one uses paypal?
Recently been fiddling about with this plugin coz the girls I did a site for are cheap as**s and want it all for free, so wp e-commerce is great in that sense.
I myself am very new to this, even to wordpress and at first I found it difficult to figure out, still do in some cases. Not sure if it is my brain that’s illogical so can’t blame wp e-commerce straight away.
Overall I’m very pleased with it, as are my friends whose site I set up. It’s not live yet so not had chance to test the payment option and I stumbled across this review while trying to troubleshoot a glitch in the price range widget which returns items not in the correct ranges – so there are definitely still problems.
But, I will figure it out and there are some open questions on their forums that may help me do it.
Overall what do you expect for nothing. But would I pay for it? No, not yet.
Cheers Alex, good job!
Hi,
Any chance you’ll review shopp? This is what I’ll probably be going for. There is the same thing at every forum I stumbled upon – wp e-commerce is cool…. if you’ve good skills and loads of time. I have none:) Some solutions are not for everyone – I like shopp from what I see, but some good review would be helpful…
Thanks
JJ
@JJ: If the plugin author approaches me and submits a review copy, yes, I will.
The Good:
- Easy as any wordpress plugin to install.
- Has more features than anything else I’ve seen for WP E-commerce.
- Actively updating the software.
The Bad:
- Granted this is a large plugin but this has some of the sloppiest spaghetti code I’ve ever seen, so you’d better know what you’re doing when you dive into it and expect to spend many frustrating hours looking for things to tweak. FIREBug can help with styling. It’s unbelievable to me this was built to be sold to the public with the code looking like this…
- The support forums have hundreds upon hundreds of clueless users with unanswered questions, some of them dating back for months. I’ve purchased plugins before that promise support and never receive any, so this makes me very wary to pay for anything.
I hope WP e commerce better than joomla, coz right now i used joomla as my website. I heard that WP is very SEF, but WP e commerce???? if it’s so i will willing to moved my site to WP ecommerce.
I agree with almost all the comments here. All credit to Dan for getting this as far as he has, but I’m just more than a bit frustrated by the shortcomings as it is. I have the very latest version but I am finding that after having invested several hours integrating the plugin & adding products that I am now finding that things that I will have to get working before going live JUST DO NOT WORK!
I am really hoping that Dan can take the proceeds from the Gold version (which I bought!) & just invest that in getting everything that is in place working correctly, with tidy code, before spending any more time on other features.
My latest problem: all I want to do is edit my product thumbnail sizes. I have to do this product by product(!), as the default settings do not allow you to set a max width x max height option.As all my products will be very different shapes and sizes, some high portraits & some wide landscapes, it is important that I can control this more than just setting a fixed size. But even when using the edit product thumbnail window, for some reason I cannot get the popup window to close & accept my changes! It just hangs there & I have to quit the page! AAAAGGGGGHHH!
I really want to love this plugin, which I kind of do, but I have that sinking feeling I have invested a lot of wasted time & will just have to try something else, coz at the moment this just isn’t going to work for me.
Thanks for the awesome post…
I’ve been spending the past few days trying to get the WordPress Ecommerce plugin to work for me.
After four more frustrating days, I’ve concluded this wins the award for the buggiest WordPress plugin I’ve ever used. I’d glady pay the $40 if I could just get the hours back I’ve spent discovering its bugs and scanning the Support forum.
The Support forum speaks for itself – over 120 pages of unresolved issues and about half of that in resolved issues. Some folks are just trying to get an answer on why their features broke as a result of upgrading their WP-Ecommerce!
There are a lot of appealing features in this software… but it needs a LOT of work. And I mean a LOT before I would spend a dime on it.
After reading positive reviews for wp ecommerce, I forked out the money for Gold Cart.
WordPress 2.8.3 and WPSC 3.7.1 with Gold Cart
BAD MOVE! Who wrote those good reviews???
This software has more bugs than a cupboard full of cockroaches. I have spent 4 days trying to get it to work as expected. Still more bugs to fix.
Support from Instinct (the developers) is ZERO!
They do not respond to email, I have tried a few times. They do occasionally pop-up in the forums but you get more help from other end-users who are also trying to debug the software.
My advice – find another product and don’t believe all the things the Advertising says because most of the features don’t work without putting a lot of hours in finding/fixing buggy code.
Try the free version if you must but DON’T PAY FOR IT!
Good review.
I have known e-commerce for some time but have never actually use it before. Since it is free, I might as well get it and see what it can do.
Thanks for the valuable info.
abufaris
I’m glad i read this reviews about wp ecommerce. I’ve decided not to use it for my client’s site. I only wished someone will tell me a good alternative ecommerce plugin for wordpress which is not too buggy and has good support. Price is no a problem as long as it functions properly. thanks.
The most honest and transparent review I’ve read so far.
@Ecommerce Portal, you forgot to add interesting, i actually read through quite a number of the comments. Nice one Blogsessive
Interesting point of view. Planned for a long time to make a premium eCommerce wp theme but i’ve invested a lot of energy and time in something else
Dan, I think the lack of a decent weight-based shipping module is a serious flaw. I cannot charge local rates for international shipping, or international rates for local shipping, but your module only allows one set of weight-based prices. I’ve been on your forums regularly, and people have been crying for this for ages now! #brandfail
I just use this plugin hours ago, after some setting and customization, i still get unsatisfied with some 404 error that suddenly appear on products-page/….., that is normal before
Thanks for all your reviews, correct me if I’m wrong but it just seems like open source E-commerce solutions have tons of bugs.
Thanks for trying, maybe I’ll be interested in a year or two when the kinks are worked out.
Current user of ecommerce plugin and I wished I came across your review before I signed up for it. Am having a hell of headache, not only the documentation is a huge mess, no official support at all. Worst is I rely on forum exchanges and I can’t even log in to the forum (technical error) after a while. Great, Dan if you’re developing more…perhaps you want to look at helping your current customers’ needs first. Focus on what you’re SUPPOSEDLY good at before expanding. Thanks.
Thanks for saving me time for testing. I will go with eshop or shopp.
Another option out there that some of your readers might want to take a look at is “Market Theme”.
http://www.markettheme.com/
Market isn’t a plugin, but an entire self-contained theme that’s got the shopping cart system already built-in. Just connect it to Paypal or Google checkout, and you’ll have an operational store up and running in around 5 minutes.
It doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of the wp-ecommerce plugin, but it has the basics of ecommerce and allows you to customize colors, logos, and layout proportions.
And since it’s a theme, and not a plugin, it also doesn’t have a lot of the integration frustration and errors that so many people have commented on.
It’s best suited for two types of sellers.
1. Those who want to avoid getting too technical, and learning code in order to integrate.
2. Those who want to setup a good online store quickly, populate the products, and move onto their next project.
I encourage your readers to play around with the online demo at the Market Theme website.
I was considering using the WP e-Commerce Plugin for an upcoming shopping cart project. I’ve heard good and bad things about this plugin and am still mostly neutral in my opinion of it until now.
After doing more research into the import features of the cart, it has little to no support for XML/CSV import. Unfortunately, this is a deal breaker for me. Hopefully this will be addressed soon by the dev team over there.
I ended up going with Shopperpress. The import options for CSV are pretty good (could be better) So far I’m pretty happy with how the development is going. I’ll keep everyone updated on how it goes.
Very interesting comments and discussions within this page.
I’ve had my share of experiences using Wp-Ecommerce and plenty of other systems, but glad to say at this moment I’m relying solely on the plugin Artpal with my online store here.
Artpal’s by no means flawless but it serves its purpose and for the moment, it leaves me satisfied — and till another plugin with rave/monstrous review arrives, then I guess I’m happily stuck with Artpal.
I’m having trouble getting the Google checkout to work. Whenever I check out it redirects me back to the check out page. Any suggestions?
I wouldn’t even bother with free WP-ECommerce solution. If you read the forums then there is a known bug with Google Checkout (the feedback says only 3 stars on WordPress). Some say they have fixed this or don’t experience it, but there are as many who say they have problems. From my experience, there is no support on the offical forum, but I see the developers blogging elsewhere. After 3 full days of frustration I figured it was something to do with setting up the shipping countries and gave up. I purchased Shopp and it was working within 20 minutes. Good on them, I say! I appreciate that WPeCommerce offer a basic solution for free, but for my money its not worth the hassle. Maybe the paid one is better, but I’m sticking with Shopp and am very happy with it.
Worked like a dream. Check out http://www.edwardsharpeandthem......com/merch
If anyone needs help with their WP E-commerce, I can surely be of some assistance
Currently using the E-commerce…good idea, but a lot of stuff acts weirdly or doesn’t do what is supposed to. Also, would be curious to see examples of Gold Cart on a real website, there is no example to view that I can find…how do you know if you want it if you can’t look at it?? Also, is the charge to upgrade a one-time or an annual fee?
Graphic Agenda – not a great example, clicking more details takes you to a blank page.
I had this thing sort of working, then i swapped from its default theme.
Now i cant see my categories. In the end i deactivated, deleted everything and deleted all its entries from the db – cart is still in the sidebar…
Im sure this has potential.
I too would like to see a demo of gold, im not paying for something i cant see.
Or anyone had any luck with a better store. One of my clients likes to show a video of the product in use? Any ideas, been hunting and trying different ones for days now.
Well, I downloaded it, opened up the readme.txt file and read “drag the e-commerce file to your plug-ins folder” So I did that and my site started timing out with no response from server. I take it out of the plug-ins folder and my site is back to normal.
Thumbs down.
@Graphic Agenda, awesome shop site man!!
@Cathy, the site made by Graphic Agenda (above) does use the gold cart files. I know this as a fact – otherwise there wouldnt be a Grid View working.
Also @Alex / @blogsessive; we’ve overhauled the plugin since this post. And we’re about to launch another new version…
Also to top it off the WP e-Commerce Plugin has a new home. It is now hosted on the following site:
Browse to http://www.getshopped.org where the support is better. The documentation is better (yeah we’re still workin on those dev docs) and there are lots of video tutorials.
Its the best
If you need a cart to process sales via google checkout then give wpe-commerce a big miss. There are numerous posts on their forums requesting that it be fixed.
Paypal works ok though.
Is this something that you use in place of shopping cart software? If not, does shopping cart software work with WordPress?
I have to give this wp-ecommerce a GIANT thumbs down. The main reason is the absolute absence of any sort of helpful customer service. They have forums but if you are lucky enough to get a moderator to talk to you their suggestions are mostly boiler plate and rarely help you work through or address the issue.
We have found many bugs in this cart and have posted these bugs on the forum (I can provide links) that never got a response. Months would go by and nothing. We ended up having to rewrite a lot of the code in order for the cart to function properly (product variation errors, admin cp viewing errors, download links errors and front end pricing errors). So we ended up spending more money on this free cart then it would cost to buy something working out of a box.
Advice? Stay away. There are PLENTY of other really good shopping carts out there that work. There is no need to combine WP and shopping cart software into one. If you have to have a blog + cart just install WP along side your cart software. Much simpler.
wp ecommerce was initially recommended but having read the reviews I am so glad i went down the path of using a standard e commerce solution rather than play with an addon which just seems so buggy.
Thanks for the information! I just started researching the different E Commerce plugins for WP and am considering this one or Shopp.
I’m considering Shopp aswell, and would love to see a review. I want to make sure that it’s optimised enough, I don’t want to end up with a sluggish site or something that keeps crashing on me, and the only way to test it out properly is by buying a license.
Shopp looks like it could be a major contender in the ecommerce world, It just needs the users to back it. I need to migrate my brothers existing site to something more modern, and I want to use WP because that’s what I know and love.
If someone out there has hands on experience, let’s hear from you.
I’ve lost a week and a half of my life trying to accomplish the most basic things with wp-ecommerce plugin…
don’t use this plugin unless you’re a php expert, and live near their headquarters in New Zeland…
There is a support forum, but getting an answer is limited to the three or four dedicated people that may or may not see your question…after all there’s a ton of posts about this thing not working…
I bought the 40 dollar gold cart upgrade so i could use a grid style layout, but I cant even get widgets dropped into my sidebars…this plugin is causing a conflict that is preventing any widget from being used….
I’m frustrated to say the least…
however, a fair bit of respect needs to be given to the instinct guys for trying like crazy to make this thing work…
although it really seems like a plugin written by developers for developers, not designers.
be very wary of using this one…I’m searching for alternatives…
Woah. I’m glad I came across this article before putting in MY 6 hours of headaches. I might still give it a shot, but with your knowledge in mind. Thanks for the tips!
I wish I’d been privy to this review before I paid for the Premium Upgrade to the Gold Cart Module. Have spent far too many hours trying to make the Gold Cart work well, not to mention look good. Since the latest upgrade and after following their instructions to remove the fatal error that was occuring, when i view my item in the shopping cart and try checking out, the same fatal error message occurs. If I hit refresh, it goes away… unlikely to win any confidence in a potential customer. I want my money back Dan.
I also recall reading on instinct.co.nz quite a few rude comments posted to clients with quite valid or reasonable questions, as well as what I saw as patronising statements in the scant documentation about their users being l-a-z-y. Pot calling the kettle black?
Hi,
How can I get site visitors to receive a download link through email for a free product from my site (without going through PayPal)?
Kalyani
Sorry, I forgot to mention…
How can I get site visitors to receive a download link through email for a free product from my site that uses wp -e-commerce(without going through PayPal)?
Kalyani
I would have to say in regards to WordPress and taking online orders WordPress e-Commerce Plugin wins hands down over any other similar plugin.
I think if your needed a exact design then your going to have some tweaking with any e-commerce solution.
I was able to get a entire shopping system up in a day! That’s pretty great.
ps: I meet Dan from Instinct at a recent WordPress WordCamp in Chicago they are continuing to make things better!
I wish the guy who set us up as wordpress store had read this.
I have been struggling to figure out why the various search widgets weren’t working and now you have laid it our for me I am gutted!
I am a novice in the web design world and working around this is beyond me. But how can we have a online store without a search?! ARGH!
I am so over this plugin. We have a couple of the commerical add ons for it, but the main problem I have is performance.
One page, the customer wanted all the items on the same page, so there are about 20 or so on one page. It takes 444 queries to build it. There is no re-use of results, the SQL interaction is horrible.
Officially looking for another solution at this point, tired of making excuses for it.
Now, that said, if you have a small site, not much traffic, and a small shop..GO FOR IT! It will do just fine. But if you go above that, be ready.
Having a good support forum is worth it’s weight in gold.
Finally, I got fed up with both the market theme and WP commerce, I just decided to post a job for the freelancer at http://www.ofreelance.com to customize a wp plugin.. real cheap.
We just released DukaPress: http://dukapress.org and I believe it is a new and refreshing option.
I found the following comparison site, which looks at the alleged leading eCommerce solutions for WordPress. http://wp4im.com/wordpress-eco.....nd-themes/ An unbiased review of the recommended ShopperPress solution would be most welcome.
I’m deciding to build a website selling textbooks. I’m trying to decide to use which ecommerce builder.
Currently im using Cubecart for my Website. And it works great.
Im not sure if i wanna try using WordPress. Can anyone suggest me?
Documentation is definitely lacking but that’s no different than most plugins I’ve found. The Search functionality is definitely buggy. Some things just don’t come up even though the search terms are associated with a product in the database. Overall it’s Ok – but far from perfect.
I was just getting into WP Ecommerce, and this is exactly the experience I had, and what you suggested in your comments is just what I was looking for. Thanks for posting this, I wish I had read it before I paid for the Gold Cart.
Thanks Josh for the website comparison page. Since your post there hasn’t been any more comments. Either you directed the energies correctly or WP-ecommerce has improved immeasurably since.
Anyone here used the MarketPress plugin yet? WPMUDEV seem to have a good pedigree but I haven’t yet found any independent discussion/comparison/review of this new plugin.
Shopp is buggy. It is waste of time and money.
Difficult to understand all that fuss about that product.
Saw this post and thought i would throw my hat into the ring so to speak. My team are about a week away from creating the “holy grail” of wordpress ecommerce a fully functional and secure osCommerce plug in for WP.
Yes it is a monster task, but thankfully i have a genius running the team and we are 80% with no issues to date.
We are also looking for beta testers..you can sign up at http://www.wponlinestore.com
Cheers
Garf
Glad to have found this post. I will tell you the story of my WP-Ecommerce experience.
I’ve been using this plugin for years now, but whenever WordPress upgrades, I have to always do something with this plugin. I understand compatibility, but even while updating from version x.x.1 to x.x.2 something breaks whether it’s the plugin or WordPress itself.
Today I was working with WPEC’s product categories and it completely broke the site. It is in production, but all parties (David, the client, and myself) are becoming impatient at this point.
– The home page doesn’t use it’s template anymore.
– Some category archives that are supposed to use category.php ignore it.
– Some pages work, others don’t.
– Single posts are fine.
– Single product pages point to the most recent post.
I have always been a fan of this plugin, because it’s the best one out there, but it being the best is a shame for the entire WordPress community. I don’t know how many unanswered questions are on the WPEC forum, but it seems atleast 80% or more go unnoticed. Websites and web apps in general shouldn’t need an install guide.
It’s all about making things convenient and simple. I can’t figure out what’s going wrong, there’s rarely any structure in the code base, and things are everywhere. If someone is up for a 60 day challenge, I bet $5000 I could create something with basic UPS integration, variations, and products (including templates).
All I’m saying is that it seems everyone has issues with all E-commerce plugins at one point. How much company and freelancer time has been wasted working on these monsters? I won’t compare it to IE6, but atleast IE6 answers are readily available via Google. Quit trying to pack it with all these features it doesn’t need. It should be as easy as an admin creating the product and the customer buying it.
Google Checkout is suppose to work with this plugin. Apparently it doesn’t. There is zero support and even worse documentation. It’s a horrible program.
Bureau 24 – If you are getting into issues with lack of support, head over StorefrontThemes.com and visit their support forums. They have some pretty awesome themes and also do a lot of support for the plugin.
I had a terrible experience with the support group on this product. I bought it and it was buggy out of the gate. It had a strike through on every price in the system which they fixed somewhat quickly, couple of days. But the worst was a little piece of code that automatically marked everything as a home delivery. My client was B to B and needed FedEx ground. I recognized it had to be their code right away sending the command for FedEx Home Delivery. The FedEx API doesn’t even require it.
Two support personnel just could not get it. They gave me every lame excuse in the book that had nothing to do with the problem I was reporting. Terrible customer service. Finally, Jonathan Davis, the owner, was included in the conversation and it took only minutes to correct the problem that his support staff took 6 hours to fail to identify! Then because I demanded to speak to a manager and threw a fit about the poor customer service, Jonathan Davis banned me from all further support! What a goober! Don’t buy this product.
Shopp is terrible! Just say no.
I am still a big fan of this plugin. The admin interface is far more intuitive than the likes of Zencart. Inexperienced users are able to operate the day-to-day functions easily.