WordPress Shopping Cart other than wp e-commerce?

I too have been scrounging for an eCommerce solution that fits with WordPress. None of the existing that are found in the plug-in search are anywhere near acceptable.

…I’m not spending money on anything I’m not sure of

There are a number of free options.

There are a number of free options.

Any favorites you’d like to suggest?

Well there’s mine… atrocious ratings, but seems to work for one or two people. ?? I know there are a few others out there (search for “cart” in WP’s plugins page), but I don’t know enough about them to comment on how good they are.

I imagine your atrocious ratings were from the lack of support, extremely confusing backend and the fact that you have to pay for documentation. I could bang my head into my desk for wasting my time again.

Why is their no decent eCommerce solution for WordPress?!

Lack of support? Erm… I don’t think so. I’ve never not addressed messages on the forum (originally) and in the message groups (now), nor failed to reply to emails.

As for confusing backend, perhaps you could explain what you find confusing?

Finally documentation: there are step-by-step instructions describing basic configuration and setup in the About page. There is also info below each of the fields in the settings pages. I charge for the full docs in the same way as a number of other open source projects. Other developers charge for their plugins, for additional features, or solicit donations. My experience with donations, is that no one does it, and frankly, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with trying to recover a little of my time investment.

I wonder how much time you’ve personally invested in contributing to the WP community yourself? I wonder how happy you’d be giving away your time, for free, as a majority of plugin developers do?

The answer to your question is undoubtedly because of the not-insignificant effort in developing such a solution, the fact that people like you immediately rubbish a project with nary a word of constructive feedback, thus things do not and will not improve.

Everybody really needs to stop getting retaliatory when somebody offends their plugin. If you release something into the widespread community, no matter how fantastic it is, it will get some poor feedback. I’m sure there’s places where people hate WordPress itself, maybe even posted on these forums, but I doubt you’ll see Matt come in here and tell them they’re being ridiculous.

Take the bad with the good, and grow with it, or at least roll with it. ??
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Honestly, some of us are just plain frustrated and speaking for myself only, I’m still frustrated, but dealing with it better now. ??

Here, this is a detailed critique (not that this is based on what I expect from eCommerce, not what I expect this particular plug-in to do):

1) You’re better off having Yak with it’s own drop down section, all in one place instead of in both the Tools and Settings. That way users don’t have to bounce back and forth, and also would know immediately where everything is.

2) The “Basic Instructions” would be better off in a file by itself instead of taking up all of that space and making me look at it constantly.every time I try and edit something. That’s a lot of information and extra load time for something that really doesn’t need to be where it is.

3) I see no information on drop downs. If I don’t see any obvious way to use drop downs, I can only assume I have to pay for your documentation to be able to use it.

4) Way too much short code. This should all be auto generated when installed. It should automatically generate pages for the products, checkout, etc.

5) There should be a way to add products without having to manually create a page or post per product. There is no way a client of mine would be able to use this system by themselves. For clients that would want to just have me handle it would be a different story of course.

6) I see no information on how to input a payment system using a manual credit card machine.

7) If you charge for documentation, I would make that known before people take the time to download, install and fart around. By known, I mean give a run down of what isn’t covered in your Basic Instructions.

By all means, you’re entitled to charge whatever you want for the documentation. But expect people to complain and rate the plug-in low because it doesn’t do much good without detailed documentation.

I hope that helps with your feedback concern! That was all that I immediately noticed with the plug-in. When it proved too complicated to work with I didn’t dive very in depth into it and tossed it out.

A good e-Commerce site takes time to setup because as a seller there are many options you can tweak to optimize and extend your reach.

That said the reality is that you can setup WP e-Commerce in no time at all as you can on the e-Commerce video on the wordpress.tv site.

Here is a look at the latest WP e-Commerce running WordPress 2.8
https://apps.instinct.co.nz/wp-2.8.1/products-page/

It is as they say bloody awesome!!

Also I have to agree with Jason here. Quite often people don’t tend to provide useful feedback – as developers we’re not magicians or mind readers. We need to know specifics if something goes wrong.

I think this is the main reason why developers tend to ignore certain support requests. Especially if the rules of conduct say ‘please provide wordpres version, or php version or whatever else they ask for. Or especially if we know the answers are out there and we “know” people have not searched the forums ??

(I speak on behalf of every major WP plugin developer I have ever spoken too – and I’ve met a lot)

Oh well. Peace guys. WordPress rules!!!
Plugin consumers rule!!! And so do Plugin developers ??

A good eCommerce site shouldn’t be too complicated for it’s non-programmer users to create products. That’s a big problem with Yak I think. I can’t hand over an eCommerce site using Yak to my clients who have no basic programming skills.

While WP eCommerce was swift to setup (if you look at my list, a lot of what I stated being problems with Yak WP eCommerce already does), it doesn’t have basic features that I require which is why it’s already been tossed.

Everybody really needs to stop getting retaliatory when somebody offends their plugin.

I don’t think I’m being retaliatory. I think I’m making a valid criticism of an attack without supporting evidence. Frankly, I don’t care whether people use my plugin or not. Really. I use it on a couple of sites, it’s useful for me. If others find it useful, that’s great.
That said, triplemoons has provided evidence (now), so let me address that… ??

In reply to each of the points:

1) Originally YAK had its own section (back when the WP menu was at the top), but someone suggested tighter integration within the WordPress menu structure, which made sense at the time, hence the reason the pages are now split across multiple menus.

2) Again, this used to be in a separate file, but I followed another suggestion that the instructions should be bundled with the plugin (rather than making someone go to a different site). Can’t please everyone I guess.

3) Valid criticism I think. I’ll add the info to the basic instructions.

4) I don’t like auto-generating pages. I used a plugin a few years ago which auto-generated pages. Horrible. So, I’m afraid the shortcodes will remain.

5) That’s a feature. I want(ed) closer integration with WP — and a lot of users appear to like that ethos.

6) That’s in the handbook. And you’re right — you’d have to pay to find out. Oh the humanity. That said, basically, go to the Payments tab, add a new payment type. Give it a name (such as Credit Card), then select “SPECIAL: Credit Card” from the drop down. Create a landing page (more markup I’m afraid) for successful orders, and select it in the dropdown in section “Manual Credit Card settings”.

7. I do make it known. From the home page:

Detailed installation and configuration instructions can be found in the YAK Handbook, but basic installation instructions are included in the plugin (after activation, in the “Settings” menu, click “Yak” and then read the “About” tab).

But valid point, I don’t actually say you have to pay for it right there. Will fix that.

Yes, you’re correct that you can’t make everyone happy. Everyone has a different idea on what is easier to navigate and understand. As a developer, I need to think of how the client views things and provide the best option based on that. For me, that means I need to have things as simple as possible because most of my clients aren’t the greatest when it comes to technology.

I do like being able to use a page for a product (if I were doing the updating/editing), but I think eShop does this method much better. The only downfall of eShop is it doesn’t offer stock quantity for its drop downs and does not accept manual CC machines.

I wish I could take different features from wp-eCommerce, Yak and eShop and stick them all into one!

in answer to the original question – you can get to all of the tabs in settings by right clicking on the tab and then open link in new window (or tab)

hope that helps
Regards
Web paje
https://www.pje-itc.co.uk

I’ve shifted the instructions out anyway. They’ve been moved to the yak home page (on the WP Extend site).