Websitetology

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/

We’ve used Owen “RedAlt” Winkler’s Microshop on our site and www.drogrady.com to handle purchases.We tried to install it today on www.bakehousebread.com and kept getting script errors- and we weren’t sure why. So, we searched for another shop- and just found this WP Shop which has a few extra features like a discount box and an interesting shipping option. We’re going to try to use it on Bakehouse and see what happens.

UPDATE: what happened is it didn’t work. We’ve contacted the developer- and will see if he can work things out.

We keep telling people- it’s only a blog if you think of it as such- WordPress is really just a Content Management System- that is very easy to use. With the number of options and modifications that can be made- it can be made to do anything a static site can- plus some- with no need for the person maintaining the site to know code.
We’re in the process of adding a small shopping cart to the site, using PayPal to allow people to register and pay online.
It should be fully functioning tomorrow.
Now- we just have to determine our next seminar dates!
If you have suggestions for date or time- please let us know blogosopher@thenextwave.biz