WP for a non blog website?

typically, the good ‘shopping cart’ software is actually ‘online shop’ software. it handles things like product lists, individual product pages, etc.

wordpress can certainly handle many aspects of what you are looking for, but you might be better served with static HTML pages for the truly static stuff, and a good ‘online shop’ system that takes care of all the dynamic stuff…

Not to say it can’t be done within the context of a WP blog (I do just that with Amazon products…), just that it isn’t really ‘in’ WP at that point.

-d

WP could definitely handle something like that. I’ve actually done the same thing already for my invitations business, https://www.filipinoartisans.com

I agree with Davidchait. You might be better off with static HMTL pages. I only used WP so I can easily change prices, descriptions, and photos… But setting up the “Product Page” is a bit tricky. I had to specify DIV tags within the HTML view of the Write Post editor to make it look the way it is.

Hi, Kutitots
Have you thought about writing an article on HOW you set up the products section of your site? I’d be interested in reading that!

Note I didn’t say “better of with static HTML pages”. I said that if there was already a shopping-cart system (say, in PHP), that already has a full ‘shop’ system, just leverage it directly. That could be embedded off of a blog page to integrate better, but it’s a separate system.

There are a few attempts at WP-as-a-cart… I’ve only poked around a little, but none seemed ready to go. You could roll your own with custom fields off of posts, each post in a given category of “Products”, custom fields like size, price, etc. But then you’d need to have a ‘hook’ between that listing/post and pushing it into the ‘cart’ system properly. Really easier to have one system.

WP is decent for managing a bunch of static pages, plus a ‘news’ system which uses real blog posts, and then have fake ‘page’ that takes you into the shop system. That’d work too.

-d

syncbox: sure, no problem. i’ll have to finish my article on photoblogs first though ??

davidchait: there’s a actually a plugin in development that hopes to do that: (https://www.semiologic.com/software/shopping-cart/). I haven’t seen any developments on it though.

As I said, there are a few WP ‘cart’ projects (I’ve seen three, I think). But compared to the ‘real shop scripts’, including things like payment processing with big vendors (credit card handling direct) rather than just paypal, order management systems, etc., the WP-plugin systems aren’t a real match. That’s not to say they might not meet the need of many people out there, but compare apples to oranges… ??

-d

Kutitots, any further news on that article to teach us how you set up your Products page?

I’m trying to do the same thing: tile posts (which are products) from a category so users can see a product menu.

The way you’ve done it, with a thumbnail, and a border around each one, and a link to the post, is so so cool. Ideal for me, I’m developing my Uncle’s company site using WP and I’d like to teach him to simply add products (as posts) and the product menus (which display post categories) will update etc.

I’d love to know how you did it! ??

Can you tell us how?

To Shesays:
I’ve created a website that does what you say you want too. I’m working on adding an OSC cart on it: https://freedombracelets.net

I’ve also done this at https://LauderCompany.com but it only uses one “intro” page, and has links to the shopping cart categories.

hi gaje… I’ve been quite busy, sorry. Anyway, here’s the basic concept behind it:

The “thumbnails” are actually paragraphs enclosed in DIV tags (I edit the HTML on each post, taxing, but works) that has the border and float attributes. Then right under that DIV tag is <!--more-->

I made the category “archive” pages show the_content instead of the usual the_excerpt. So that way, the float attribute of the DIV tag within the blog post applies, making them seem to “tile.”

You know…I think I might make this into a full post in my blog ?? I’ll update you on it, I just need to get some work out of the way.

yea it can be use like that i have recently set my frineds up with a online shop in wordpress but they need to add stuff to it ( lazy buggers ) lol

Well, theoretically WP could be used in this scenario if you treat each post as a tee-shirt. The front page in WP by default just shows the “latest tee-shirts”, you have categories, the individual “product” page for the tee-shirt is just a post which allows comments, etc.

So, I’d say, yes. You’d just have to plugin your shopping cart and (optionally) online payment code into it.

Hello,

I’ve actually managed to do this for someone – set up WP as an online shop (it’s not my site and we’re still testing and refining the look but it works, so I’m not comfortable sharing the URL yet).

Basically, I use Pages for an about section, shipping/sizes, Contact. I have index.php (which contains news and latest products ‘blocks’), single.php, category.php (which also contains all product ‘blocks’), and in the case where there are child categories, the parent category is defined as category-X.php.

It’s not very plug and play, though, one would need to know and be willing to do a little fiddling. But I think it works well.

It involves the Paypal Quicktag modification
https://www.webmaster404.com/wordpress-paypal-integration/

The Custom Query String plugin

Using 2 Loops

And optionally, WP-Contact Form and Spam Karma.

I think, because WP is not a specialist shopping cart script, a solution won’t be plug and play, especially if one is not a programmer (like me, I know nothing about PHP).