There seems to be a growing interest in integrating an eCommerce function in Atahualpa based sites...

At the risk of opening up this forum to discussion of non-Atahualpa related issues, I'd like to see some feedback on:

1. What, if any, eCommerce plugins have been found to work in Atahualpa and...
2. Any Atahualpha specific workarounds that might have been found useful.

In my own experience, I've implemented a Zen Cart site before, but besides being a very complex package, any 'integration' or even association with the main Atahualpha site is a thankless task. This seems to be the case for every external eCommerce package I've looked at. Prestashop looks like it might be easier to re-skin to look like the main site, but I'd really prefer a fully integrated solution.

As already mentioned here - the less said about the wp-commerce plugin the better -- a monumental waste of time and effort.

I've purchased a copy of Shopp, and it looks like it might provide the best option - a reasonable feature set for any small to medium online operations, and so far no apparent conflicts with Atahualpa or any of the other plugins I rely on.

Anyone else with opinions and/or experience to share? -- for the sake of Flynn and others here, directly related to Atahualpa please...

Jack

I just wanted to add my VOTE to the idea of establishing an ongoing eCommerce discussion here in the BFA Atahualpa Forum.

Like you, Jack, I've sort of arrived at the Shopp plugin as being the best horse to get on at this point. My previous eCommerce experience is more limited: offline we've had an old-fashioned merchant account through our local brick & mortar bank. Online we've historically asked our customers to phone us with their credit card information. Our current site Hatchtown Farm goes as far as having a PayPal "Buy Now" button in a text widget in the right sidebar. I have secured an SSL certificate (a Shopp requirement) from GoDaddy, but we're not ready yet to un-veil a catalog and cart.

I do run ShepherdJim.com as my test site. I've just gotten to the stage where, following Shopp's fairly friendly documentation, I've installed a set of Shopp's php templates in a "/Shopp/" sub-directory inside of the "/themes/atahualpa344/" directory. These templates can be modified and will survive upgrade downloads of Shopp. I'm guessing that when Atahualpa is updated I'll have to copy the whole "/Shopp/" directory to the new Atahualpa installation.

BTW: If you want to put Shopp through its paces, it's safe to put stuff in the cart at ShepherdJim.com and then "proceed to checkout". You can provide fake name, address, etc ...thought you might want to submit a real email address so you can see what the plugin sends out confirming your "purchase". Note: You will have to provide something close to a real credit card number. Shopp does some "checking" to see if the account number is "real" -- I tried to use "1234123412341234" and it immediately told me it was "invalid".

Like Jack, I'm hoping a few Ata lurkers will come forward to discuss and share their eCommerce experiences.

Jim

Hi All,

An update. After some time of trying to work with ecommerce solution on WP, I deceided to look further afield. Unfortunately WP does not have a decent OS commerce solution

Ecwid is pretty but just doesnt have the feature set in place yet. Very useful for a small sized online business though.

For my main business website (the others will remain with WP) I am now going to be using Drupal and Ubercart. Ubercart so far seems to be working a treat, and is a lot more useful that any of than WP ecommerce which seemed riddled with bugs.

Keep checking back to ukbarbell.com (still on WP) to see the progress of the site. A little test can be seen at anotherworldscuba.com

Perhaps after Themeframe, Flynn could work on a competant ecommerce solution for WP?

John

Glad to see some interest in eCommerce with Atahualpa. People's requirements for an eCommerce solution run the gamut - from a simple PayPal button to a complete major business system with inventory, reports, etc. BTW, I hope Flynn continues using his talents developing these wonderful web building tools - eCommerce systems are another world entirely and are best built by business experts who can specialize around their talents.

What I'd really like to see is some workable system that is an add-on to a Wordpress site, not a separate, online sales-only solution. One of the major attractions of Wordpress is the rich set of plugins to chose from, but... not all plugins play well together and not all play well with certain template systems. Atahualpa has done a better job of this than many others I've used, but too many plugins assume they're the only one installed, and tend to step on others that act the same way. Flynn has done a super job easing some of these problems, but he can't accommodate every plugin writer.

I'm hoping that users here will report their success, problems, work-arounds, etc. that relate to implementing eCommerce within an Atahualpa site. To start with, are there any Atahualpa sites currently using an eCommerce system that we can see and evaluate?

Thanks, Jack

I'd like to also chime in on this subject. I am in the process of completing the basic layout of my site. Next on the list is e-commerce.

I have created several sites using other themes but have been very impressed with the Atahualpa theme. I currently have an online store running for our company. It is a dedicated online store through Network solutions.

The new site I am working on isn't geared for a dedicated online store but blending in e-commerce to my existing pages would be great.

I used WP eCommerce to build this site: http://www.leanns-design.com , using Atahualpa as the theme.

I had no problems integrating the Atahualpa theme with WP eCommerce.

There is limited support on their forums, which slowed me down a bit. But once I got used to the settings there, I was able to implement the store for my client.

...Rick...