While many bloggers are cashing in on paid advertising and affiliate fees, the options for setting up small shops is limited by “plugin†store solutions. WordPress is great for building community, the ideal way to target your customers, but when it comes to adding a simple solution you are limited to the three main options available now:
MicroShop
by Owen Winkler (RedAlt) which is currently down. It is the shopping cart I use on Websitetology. Current link: http://www.websitetology.com/wp-content/uploads/microshop.zip
Paypal or checks only, it has some issues with data entry in the phone field, and has limited tax, shipping, and notation options.
Note: June 08 This solution was pre WordPress 2.0, it’s highly unlikely that it still works.
WP-Shop
http://cregy.net/small-business-software/wp-shop/
Last time I installed this, there was no payment gateway. It was the nicest integration of the three, but without checkout, it was worthless. Since I haven’t tried to use it since June, I can’t tell you what the status is now.
UPDATE: June 08, this plugin seems to be abandoned.
WP e-commerce lite
http://www.instinct.co.nz/e-commerce/
We’re using this on www.londonbaystationery.com. It has no way of setting tax per order, or shipping charges. The only included gateway is PayPal, for a fee you can add authorize.net and dps.co.nz
UPDATE: Jun 09 This plugin broke again with 2.8. It’s been a constant headache.
We broke down and purchased the Shopp plugin http://shopplugin.net/ it works flawlessly with 2.8.
We also looked at e-shop, http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/eshop/ but, we failed to rename the product page, and were in limbo for a while. It requires a page per post, which may or may not be a graceful way to handle things.
E-commerce with a WordPress shouldn’t be that difficult. While most of these solutions are limited to using WordPress with a PayPal solution, the ability to use other payment processors like 2checkout.com or google checkout should be available. WordPress is the easiest way to build a community- so shouldn’t it be just as easy to sell to your community?
A more complex option is to build a ZenCart site and add a WordPress blog to it with this module:
http://zencart-module.s-page.net/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=2&products_id
JUNE 08: Another open source option that looks good for a cart is Magento: http://www.magentocommerce.com/features
There isn’t a WordPress module- or integration- but, it’s getting rave reviews as a well written piece of code.
There must be other shopping cart plugins out there- but this is what we’ve found. If you have any others, please leave a link in the comments.
UPDATE: Jun 09 found this link with 10 shopping cart tools for WordPress http://speckyboy.com/2008/10/23/10-powerful-shoppingecommerce-plugin-solutions-for-wordpress/
UPDATE: Apr 8 2010: Here is a comparison chart of carts: http://www.briggs.net.nz/log/2009/09/13/warts-and-all/
On WP e-Commerce.
First of all some history on WordPress e-Commerce plugins; A few years ago we built and integrated a shopping cart solution into a wordpress site for a client, we looked at MicroShop but found it too complicated (i.e. anything that isnt a one click instal ;)) so we just made one ourselves. It was really simple but it was the first and we’ve been slowly upgrading it ever since. I turned it into a plugin because first of all I am a WordPress evangelist and I thought that the WP community should have it and second of all… I just wanted one. So WP e-Commerce lite was born. A few weeks later I got an email from Cregy saying he was he was going to make his own… and thus the cregy cart was also born.
I am slightly biased – I’ve made that perfectly clear by giving you my version on the WP shopping cart history so I feel guilt free saying this. Contrary to your opening comment I personally think that too many cooks spoil the broth, I don’t think that we need more shopping cart solutions I think that we (not just us developers but other people in the community that have benefited from our work) need to support the ones that already exist so that they keep developing and get even better.
WP e-Commerce is getting a lot of positive feedback from the WordPress community, we’ve been listening to people and because I’m passionate about web standards and web 2.0 trends the latest version does not deserve to be branded as simple. Perhaps a year ago but certainly not now. Of course if you are referring to it being simple to install and use then I thank you.
The latest beta version comes with all sorts of new features including purchase log RSS feeds and .csv downloads for administrators, we have upgraded the shipping engine so that you can set a base shipping fee and additional shipping fee’s per product, we have product variations, multiple payment options, and we’ve nailed the need for a collaborative blogging solution as the latest beta version works with WordPress MU, and it also integrates with WP Campaign Monitor so you can keep in touch with your customers and send them email newsletters (and sms messages in New Zealand). What more could 99% of the people want?
Version Four is going to focus on aesthetics, a few more merchant account for gold users (we have to eat damnit!), and of course we plan to release a number of other little feature requests just for you guys. There will be a few treats for musicians wanting to sell their music online, and as for the rest… you’ll just have to wait and see…
Ciao,
Dan
Dan, thank you for your comments. I agree, we don’t need more options, just one that works well. I wasn’t saying any of the carts were simple- as a derogatory statement- I just meant simpler than a full blown e-commerce CMS like OScommerce or Zen Cart.
If our client agrees, we will upgrade their install of e-commerce lite and look at the new features. Your mail list tool looked very interesting- but their were no screen shots or a real description- that would help.
Shipping and tax options are always the difficult part. In the US, you need to charge tax in states you have a physical presence in- no others- so some sort of optional check box- or zip code look up would help.
Thanks for the great work- I’m just trying to help guide people to the right places.
That little pitch for e-commerce did not answer the challenge as to wether or not google checkout could be easily intergrated in the free version.
Micah-
I’m sorry you didn’t find the answer you were looking for-
this isn’t a pitch for e-commerce- just a post about the WordPress solutions available.
Sorry I meant the creator of ecommerce didnt answer the question in HIS post about wether stuff like google checkout could be intergrated in the free version
I think some competition is a good thing. It would be a miracle cart if one could meet the varitiy of needs/wants of the internet commerce community. Merchants that rely on dropshipping have different requirements than merchants that stock and some have needs for customizable products, some require indepth inventory tracking the list goes on and on. BTW I am shopping for a cart for my blog too.
I’m currently looking for a cart myself, and it looks like the best option for WordPress right now is WP E-commerce, but I’d really like to know what payment gateways are supported.
The website has a brief list of features, this being one of the list items: “Multiple Gateway Options including authorize.net, and dps.co.nz”. Does that mean only those two, or are there more? Anyone know what gateways are supported?
I’ve emailed Instinct but have yet to receive a reply. I may have to change my plans and go with some non-Wordpress solution as bad as I hate to. I also hate to pay money for a product whose seller didn’t bother to “sell” it to me very well.
Hi Jeff-
They are in New Zealand- so it sometimes takes them a while to get back. We’re using WP E-commerce exclusively now. But only with the PayPal gateway (it’s free).
It handles Authorize.net- for the pay version- not the free.
$15 gets you these three gateways now:
– authorize.net access
– paystation.co.nz access
– dps.co.nz access
The details are here: http://instinct.co.nz/blogshop/products-page/
I too am looking for a WP shopping cart. So far, E-commerce wins and it’s not because of extensive features or processors. For me, it’s about ease of use. From all the wonderful and full featured available carts, all seem to want to dictate the website design/structure. WP is much more flexible and E-commerce integration doesn’t get any easier.
My only complaint about E-commerce is the size. Am I too optimistic to find a shopping cart that can be integrated into a WP site for around 100K per page?
Instinct has been quick to respond to me and stated that they will focus on optimization.
I’m anxious to see what they deliver!
—
Marc
great article!
i run a small coffee roasting business and have been using a blog from day one to tell the story, build community, raise awareness of farming comunities. i also searched hi and lo for a cart that would work. the problem i ran into is the lack of response from an email for support. if i ran my business like this, i wouldn’t have a business.
my solution: went with an off-the-shelf freebie. at least i’m selling on line…but i’ll drop it in a heartbeat for a cart that can integrate with wordpress and use authorize.net or google check out.
don cox
http://www.baldguybrew.com
Don, I hear your pain. We’ve been using WP e-commerce lite more and more- and it keeps getting better. It’s open source – so you can hack it if you need to. As far as I know- if you are willing to pay Dan down under in NZ- he’ll custom hack it for you.
Glad you found it a useful post.
Update on WP e-commerce lite. I had 2 Firefox plugins installed that seemed to play havoc with WP when using this plugin- I’d get blank pages saying “done” after posting, or editing- by uninstalling both Tails 0.3.8 and VideoDownloader 1.1.1 I could get everything back on track.
Hope this saves someone else. BTW- this was on a Mac- and the site still worked fine in Safari.
I’m a bit skeptical on using wordpress for my shop’s website. But it may be worth trying it out.
🙂
I was (and still am using on one or two the WP e-commerce cart but found it to be so buggy that many of myfavorite themes would not work with it (or it wouldnt work with many of my favorite themes!)
I created this shopping cart for photographers who want to sell images, but it can be used for most any industry, its a stand alone from WordPress- however it can be customized- I customized it for several of my own WP blogs http://www.iproofonline.com and it uses paypal, authorize.net or just securely stores the information for manual processing. I hope to add google checkout (they have the lowest rates!
Note- iProof isn’t a open source shopping cart- and isn’t specifically for WordPress- but it is an option for photographers who wish to sell their work- and it can be used with WordPress. They want to host your site- or install it on your server. They don’t charge a percentage of sale like other photo shopping carts- it’s a onetime thing- which always leads to “upgrade” costs.
I started a flowers site using WP e-commerce at http://hellosingapore.info/singapore-flowers/
I did my own theme etc and there is not much problem. I got the originator of this plugin to install 2Checkout payment gateway for me. Working well …
Site running alright.
The only issue I am seeing is the page loading speed is slow. I tested other sites using the same plugin and also realize the same issue.
If they could improve or optimize on the page size and loading speed , then I feel this is a great plugin for WordPress Shopping Cart.
Ciao
I’ve been using the WP E-Commerce Lite shopping cart from Instinct for a while over at http://www.circlet.com, where we sell books via mail order (and I’m trying to add ebooks, too). It works pretty well, but the promised stuff of integrating with WP Campaign Monitor has not panned out. I want to be able to use it to manage my customer email blasts and so forth, but the Campaign Monitor is buggy. Although the cart has gone through several upgrades in the past year, the “Communications” module is still on version .9. Once they fix that, I’ll recommend it wholeheartedly.
I just wanted to say hi to everybody and say how really grateful I am for all the positive comments regarding WP e-Commerce.
We’re about to launch a new version soon. It will be 3.6 full stable release. The plan is to release 3.6.1 optimized and running much quicker. Our abilities as programmers have come a long way since 2006 when we first started this project and now we’re ready to start speeding things up some what.
So stay tuned for a faster sleeker WP e-Commerce coming soon to a blogosphere in a galaxy near you!!!
Ciao,
Dan
I have a client at http://www.precisionsurgicalsupply.com who wanted a store built. I personally love working with WP which lead me to looking for a shopping cart plugin. WP e-Commerce turned out to be a great solution and I’d say it has come a long way since 2006. I did find it lacking in terms of how search engine friendly it isn’t and so I wrote out a brief 4 page pdf on seo tht you can download free at my Web site http://www.dewpointproductions.com and I have also had several conversations with Dan about what he can do to make it more search engine friendly which I can assure you he’s moving towards. I’d suggest using it if you are looking for an ecommerce solution to plug into WP.
I am currently working on developing my first webstore, I use WP e-Commerce and many thanks to Dan for the great work.
However, as a newbie, I found it difficult to customize the presentation – given that the plugin comes with tons of php and css files I have no idea which codes to alter.
I would be grateful if someone could point me a forum I can join to get some answers. I already checked Mufasa’s flickr but need some more helps. Thanks in advance!
ullie
Ullie,
The best forum for this is on Dan’s site http://instinct.co.nz/blogshop/forums/
Thanks David for your prompt help, I checked it out and it is exactly what I need 🙂
Have a great day!
I use Yak shopping cart a it works for me very well. It was easy to integrate and the author is updating it regularly.
Another option out there that hasn’t been mentioned yet is Market Theme. (www.markettheme.com) It seems to have a few advantages over wp-ecommerce such as search capability.
WP e-Commerce has search functionality if you buy the upgrade. The upgrade costs less then Market Theme… Do the maths 🙂
In which case you should probably use WP e-Commerce if you want a serious e-Commerce solution… problem is if you goto the effort to get setup on Market Theme and then decide you want all the e-Commerce features supported by WP e-Commerce you’re going to have to do everything twice.
It would make much more sense for the Market Theme guys to collaborate with WP e-Commerce like other e-Commerce themes have. Unfortunatly they have not responded to requests.
Other great news on the WP e-Commerce front is that UPS and USPS Shipping options are just around the corner. So is a new table rate shipping option as is a weight rate shipping option. And stay tuned for the new WP e-Commerce Affliliates module.
Soon you will be able to do everything e-commerce in your WordPress site.
Dan,
It would be nice if open source people worked together- but every once in a while people want to take a different tack. The Market theme has some cool features too. One of the things I’ve been looking for in WP-ecomerce is the ability to take things in and out of inventory without having to reenter them- also, the date of the posting of the product should be irrelevant (our seminar products change dates- but keep the same links- however they also keep the original date of posting).
Keep up the good work on WP-Ecommerce.
Thanks
Hey David. Yes I understand what you’re saying… Sigh. It would just be so cool if everybody played nice together all of the time.
Anyway please email me about these things you are working on – or want us to work on for you. We might get some time next week to help your developers 🙂
Ciao, Dan
An alternative plugin that will be entering the marketplace soon is Shopp. It is currently in beta and takes a bit of a different approach than Instinct’s WP e-Commerce plugin. You can read up on it at http://shopplugin.net
As David mentioned earlier, Shopp is an effort to take a different approach than how WP e-Commerce does. It too won’t suit everyone, but I think it will open up new options for people.
We have been monitoring Shopp progress for sometime and I think the only real differences are User Interface differences. I personally think that WP e-Commerce is still ahead in terms of functionality. But I am of course rather slightly biased…
We are gearing up to launch another version too. The most obvious improvements will be UI enhancements, shipping functionality, and templating. Behind the scenes the update code has been overhauled and many a function has been written from the ground up to improve speed and performance.
Also check out the Crafy Cart theme. It is a new WP e-Commerce + WordPress theme that makes online business a breeze….
craft cart theme info can be found here:
http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/nice-clean-wordpress-e-commerce-theme-for-free-crafty-cart/
I have spent the last day trying to understand the WP E-Commerce plug. I want to first say how much I appreciate the effort and comprehensiveness of this plugin.
However, I am experiencing difficult with this and am unable to find the answers — I tried to use the forums, but was unable to register, I did not receive the registration email.
The issue I am having is that the shopping cart appears empty if I use the paypal option. It will allow me to submit the order if I use the manual/test — however, the sales show as empty carts in the administrative pages. This is a fresh install of WordPress.
Anyone have experience that can help?
@ Michael, You “should” have been able to register. The email may have been lost in transit – unfortunatly not all legitimate emails get through all of the spam bots out there 😛
I don’t think that helping you here is the purpose of this thread and you have not really provided us with enough information to help you further anyway. Also that bug does not happen for me running on a new install (a vanilla linux server) so it sounds like either you have your settings wrong, JS is turned off or perhaps your php is not setup right.
Your best bet is to send me an email and I’ll put you in touch with somebody who can help you. But if you do email me then make sure we know what version of wordpress + what version of wp e-commerce + what server you are using 🙂
I for one have been lucky enough to try alot of carts and sadly wp-ecommerce looks great but doesnt deliver on many fronts.. its biggest problem is the product varations has never worked for more than 1 variation and they coders from what i could tell didnt even know. Only now they are trying to fix it from their blog, and their support forums are hopeless.. no doubt it looks great, but for alot of us, its useless.. having tried the “excting” new shopp beta, it seems like it is really progressing along well, and i hope this solves the gap in the market.. heres hoping, we have been waiting long enough,so i hope that this will be the answer.
I don’t agree with Jimmy. In fact after hearing Jeff Waugh on the weekend from the Open Source foundation I would simply say “Ignore the Vocal Minority”… and if you are not basing your comments on the latest version then you’re just not telling the truth. And it is rude to lie on other peoples blogs 😉
Not only has the WordPress e-Commerce plugin compleatly rewritten Variations but variations now support exactly what you say and for people selling digital goods you can now associate differnet files with different variations. The new WP e-Commerce variations are totally awesome. So if you don’t like em then feel free to use OScommerce 😉
Dan-
We’ve had a hell of a time with your plugin lately too-
We installed it on http://www.hockeysensei.com and http://www.boomersandagingparents.com to handle the digital download of a book.
After the last release- it no longer worked.
We had to spend a full day re-working things- and then switched to e-shop: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/eshop/
Frequent releases are fine- as long as the plugin is tested and doesn’t break things.
David- Are you talking about RC2 or one of our development versions?
We recently fixed some bugs with digital downloads and variations when we were making the new functionality but they have been well fixed now.
Dan, If you have fixed them I congratulate you, and stand corrected, because it was a long time coming.
The Variations were broken from the beginning and nothing was done about this until now? why is that?
Why didnt you post on the forums about this? many people had posted threads about the problem and nothing was said about the solution that was coming. Maybe you are too busy promoting your plugin on pages like this to care about “the vocal minority” who are willing to pay for a good quality product.
@Jimmy, Thanks for the reply.
We did not fix it earlier because at the time it was not so much a “bug” but more of a missing feature that we were to scared to look at. Also we had not visualized a good user interface, we didnt even know the best way to display these sorts of variations. We have now.
We had to pretty much overhaul variations and start from scratch… it was a big job due to the complexity of variations (anybody that has made an e-Commerce solution would contest to variations being particularly complex). Now that we have done the overhaul it will be considerably easier to add new features to the variations functionality in the future as people request them…
Oh . Yeah. The “vocal minority” are more Trolls and you don’t really seem to be one of those – and like I explained it didnt happen sooner due to complexity, knowledge and resource… we don’t work nights unless we really really have too ;-P
Ciao,
Dan
I am considering using the the Instinct WP e-Commerce Plugin for my online store, and I would like to know if there is support for uploading a large number of products (10 to 500) at one time. A friend of mine developed this for Zen-Cart, but I don’t want to deal with the complexity of Zen-Cart at this time. It could also be used to turn on/off inventory availability, price changes, or any other product component.
Data upload would be done by using a .csv file created in Excel with columns of information for each product. You would need to upload this data to the WordPress e-Commerce database.
Is this data upload solution available for the Instinct plugin, or are there plans for it in the near future?
I found this REVIEW of Instinct WP e-Commerce shopping cart: http://blogsessive.com/blogging-tools/wp-e-commerce-wordpress-plugin/
It tells The GOOD and The BAD, so it’s the best review I’ve found so far on this particular shopping cart. Some interesting, if not grave, issues are discussed regarding the plugin.
The are no grave concerns for the wordpress e-commerce plugin.
I too have read that review and feel as though most of the concerns have either been resolved in the realease since that article was written. Or if you are into the theme / template engine and API then a beta of that has been uploaded too.
At the end of the day it depends on what you want though. The WP e-commerce plugin helps people sell online. It’s that simple. The latest releases mean it’s only getting better, faster and more industrial.
Use the http://www.instinct.co.nz wordpress e-commerce plugin to start selling today!!
@Pololo. Took a look at your cart but it’s not a wordpress shopping cart. That leaves it looking like fastcommerce hired a firm to go around and spam blog posts that have anything to do with shopping carts. Is that what’s going on here?
@David W. Pololo’s post was considered spam since it was off topic- I’ve deleted it.
The wordpress shopp plugin looks good so far:
http://shopplugin.net
WP e-Commerce Update: The WP e-Commerce Plugin has had a nice upgrade and we’ve launched WP e-Commerce Plugin 3.6.12 which is much much nicer then the rest of the Plugins available we have tested.
Video Tutorial
http://wordpress.tv/2009/03/16/getting-set-up-with-the-wp-e-commerce-plugin-settings-and-configuration/
With the WP 2.8 update, WP e-Commerce Plugin is busted again. Frankly, at this poing, we’d recommend anything else.
We just paid $55 for the Shopp plugin http://shopplugin.net/
and it seems to be pretty robust and actually works.
We’ll be updating this post with some of the other options, but for now, with 2.8, Shopp is the only one that seems to work.
Anybody wanting to use WP e-Commerce with WordPress 2.8 should download and use the Beta 3 version from here which works with WordPress 2.8: http://www.instinct.co.nz/e-commerce/
You can see it working in action here:
http://apps.instinct.co.nz/wp-2.8.1/
That said I still feel our latest version with all the new fixes and features blows shopp away – regardless of whether the old version of our Plugin does not work on the new WordPress 2.8 release.
Sorry we’ve lost you David but life has to go on – all we can do is keep on trucking, stive to make things better and hope that the bells and whistles in WP e-Commerce 3.7 when it is fully released entice you back to the light side of the force 😉
Hi, great post, i found another very useful Shopping Cart theme for wordpress called ShopperPress., you can see the online demo here:
http://www.shopperpress.com/shopping-cart-demo/
or download it free at;
http://www.shopperpress.com/download/
Hello.
I just tried ShopperPress.
I installed everything following instructions and it blew my WordPress 2.8 website apart. It may work on older versions of WordPress but I’m not prepared to find out.
Urghhh. I wish I hadnt wasted my time!!
WP-Ecommerce is certainly a powerful plugin, especially if you have a lot of products you want to sell. If you are only selling a few products (less than maybe 20), or want a simpler plugin, check out PHPurchase http://www.PHPurchase.com
Unfortunately WP-ecommerce is blowing up on a clients site again. It’s been a major headache. And while Dan keeps offering to fix it- you have to wonder if the code base is just borked from the getgo. We’ve never had as much trouble from a plugin.
David thats a shame mate because its working for us. It worked on the wordcamp.org MU server. All we did was put the files in the correct location and click activate. BAM it worked and New York WordCamp sold over 700 tickets…
I would argue that the new code base is freaking awesome. If it was bad then the wordcamp organizers would not have chosen WP e-Commerce and pakt publishing wouldnt be able to release the WP e-Commerce Plugin book.
I have not got an email from you in months so I have no idea what you’ve done wrong or what you’ve done. I get the feeling you’re using an older version OR you’re judging our Plugin on one or two features that you want that don’t work 100% the way you expect them too OR you have other conflicting Plugins / themes. Without looking god knows…
I’m pleased to annouce a few more sites though.
People keep making stable strong and kick ass sites with WP e-Commerce Plugin. And here you can see a few good ones in action.
New site launched today:
http://www.pedalplay.co.uk/
Other recently launched:
http://www.altsurfshop.com/
http://revpar.nl/webwinkel/ (dutch store using idea)
http://barcodes4books.com/
http://www.icondock.com
If you want a hand then let us know 🙂
Opps. I meant a store using the iDeal payment gateway. Not the “idea” payment gateway – sorry to clutter up your comments!!!
Turns out- it was a theme issue that was interfering with WP-ecommerce. We had built the site a long time ago- with what was then the state of the art in themes- K2. Unfortunately- K2’s developers haven’t always been keeping current with the latest changes in WordPress (or we haven’t updated the theme). Dan had one of his people identify the issue- and we’re back up and running. We still use Wp-ecommerce on this site- and it does the job.
Thanks David. We try our best 🙂
I used to be a big K2 fan but yeah they stopped developing it. Now we use Thematic for everything – in fact I’m about as fanatical about Thematic as I was about K2 back in the day!
Ciao, Dan
Short 5 minute install demo of doing ecommerce with WP-ecommerce:
http://wordpress.tv/2009/06/08/create-an-ecommerce-website-with-wordpress-in-under-5-minutes/
interesting to read the comments.
Updated this post again: Here is a feature comparison chart for WP e-commerce plugins:
http://www.briggs.net.nz/log/2009/09/13/warts-and-all/
We’ve switched our Theme to Thesis on this site- and switched the e-commerce to Shopp.
It is a real shame that you moved. That comparison chart isnt full by any means nor does it reflect the latest build of WP e-Commerce.
I think that the latest version released last week is cool, like way cool. But the upcoming 3.8 version in the SVN blows shop to smithereens. It uses posts for products uses WP 3.0 taxonomies for cateogories etc. It is very very nice.
I think that the comments on the wp.tv site reflect most popular pieces of OS software – when there are hundreds of thousands of users of course a small handful will get it wrong or wish for a feature that isnt available!
Anyway I like your new design David. Well done.
@Razaq
Nothing stopping us from going back. I’m pretty sure that sooner or later e-commerce will make it into the WP core. The new 3.0 architecture is something that makes a lot of sense.
What I really need is a way to sell an event-
Here is the event- and here are the multiple dates you can buy it-
Shopp is planning it pretty far out- haven’t seen it in WP e-commerce-
but, for now- what I have works.
Thanks for the comment- look forward to trying the new version.
No e-Commerce will never make it into WordPress core. You’re dreaming on that one – in the same sense that events won’t be core. Twitter Plugins won’t be core. Mail forms will never be core.
Automattic is talking about supported / core / canonical Plugins – I forget which term they are using today. I’d say that because of the latest 3.0 integration in WP e-Commerce and plus the fact that WP e-Commerce is already being used to sell tickets to WordPress events right now you’re probably better off in the long run sticking with them. If anything is becoming close to core its WP e-Commerce.
Reading your comments it looks like you already have a relationship with Dan. Why don’t you ask him about the TikiPress Plugin that is already being used. See it in action on the wordcamp site:
https://2010.sf.wordcamp.org/tickets/ (sell tickets)
http://2010.sf.wordcamp.org/attendees/ (view attendees)
And I know from reading online that it gives you tools to manage your event. Like ticket generation and visitor lists etc and apparently there is some pretty mean BuddyPress integration underway too!
Just found Fat Free Cart: http://www.fatfreecart.com/wpplugin.html
and will consider updating this post soon.
Right now, we’re once again having difficulty with WP-ecommerce, and questions posted on the support board are going unanswered. It’s only showing UPS Air options- no UPS ground for shipping.
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.