welcomeblog

Having just spent several hours testing and hacking through the promising but woefully under-developed and under-supported wordpress e-commerce plugin I thought I’d share a few links to nicely built shopping sites that I’ve been looking at while working on another design for a different client. It’s difficult to criticise the wp e-commerce developers for what they’ve built as it’s a hugely promising plugin for wordpress but I’d have to say if anyone is looking it up with half a mind to use it. I’d probably recommend something different that’s a little further down the development line than this one.

Some nicely designed e-commerce sites

That said, and while working for a different client, I’ve come across some really nicely designed and developed shopping sites which in no particular order are:

• Uniqlo
• Fox Cubs
• Shoe Guru
• Vorsat
• LightRein
• Carhartt Streetwear

4 people have commented on this entry

1. Stuart Lilley · 15th April 2008
   

   Is the WP ecomm that bad?

   Was thinking of using it for a basic payment system..

   Thanks.

2. James Young · 15th April 2008
   

   Hi Stuart,

   It’s not that it’s bad per-se. I just don’t think it’s really fully finished and I must say I found the support on their forums, apart from one user, to be very slow with little help forthcoming (and their expensive tech support tickets aren’t particularly good value).

   It’s a promising project/plugin for sure and if you’re patient it does offer some good functionality for tying it into wordpress but I’d suggest that if you’re looking at selling only a few products you might be best off with paypal or if you’re looking at selling a lot of items and want something that’s easy to customise you might even consider cubecart (http://www.cubecart.com).

   I did see this the other day which if you’re using wordpress might be an option - http://www.markettheme.com/ although I’ve not used it so I’m not sure how well it works but it does look promising.

   Hope that helps,

   James.

3. Stuart Lilley · 16th April 2008
   

   Thanks for the reply James.

   We have to use Protx payments for this project unfortunately. The other options are a WP blog with a Zen cart, overkill really!

   Not sure if you know about Expression Engine, v 2.0 is coming in the next few months, after thats completed there are hopefully coming with ecom add on. EE is a damn nice bit of kit and we use it for anything more than a site with a news section. (Over WP). Its not free unfortuntely (£130ish), but its like really customizable over WP which is really a blog. Pity it isnt 6 months on as would have used that for this project.

   I think ill give this WP ecomm a try but will start over the next few days to give a lot of overspill time for questions and errors.

   Really like your site, I found the link from DesignMeltdown.

   Thanks for the help.

4. James Young · 16th April 2008
   

   No probs, hope it gave you a little advance warning!

   Like I said, it’s not that it’s a terrible plugin, far from it, it’s just one that having been one of those people who was a little stuck in terms of needing something to integrate with wordpress I jumped in and then dealt with the problems as they came along.

   I’d strongly suggest buying the gold cart files/option for the extra $15 (I think) as it gives you more control over everything and it’s not going to break the bank.

   It’s definitely worth giving yourself a little extra time to work on the plugin though, I don’t know if it was a combination of the site I set it up on or just me but some people don’t report any issues while others seem to have several.

   Thanks for the comments, it’s always nice to hear from visitors to the site :)

   James.

Make a comment