I need to create an e-commerce website. I am thinking if I can use Joomla and VirtueMart to finish it. I have never used VirtueMart before. I am just worrying about if this solution is great. VirtueMart is a shopping cart… is it easy to link it with payment gateway from different banks? Is it secure? Thank you for any suggestions. Many thanks
Virtuemart is probably one of the biggest shopping carts available for Joomla. It's one of the most comprehensive to my knowledge and I believe that it will accept payment gateway from different banks. How easy that is to setup is a subjective question... it would depend on your level of comfort with those things. In my experience Virtuemart is very full figured, secure and is a great ecommerce platform. Since they've released it for 1.7 it should in theory work with 2.5 (the LTS release). Their support has always been highly reviewed and the user community is large as well.
I've used it before in the past with great success but the sites were much more simple and didn't include working with multiple banks - just paypal support.
Anyhow, I hope this information helps!
Related
Can anyone discuss some of the pros / cons / ease of use for Stripe's test mode vs. Paypal's sandbox testing? Specifics appreciated!
Speaking from personal experience, unless you need to accept PayPal payments, Stripe is way better than PayPal.
PayPal is way too big to really care about small developers. Just look at the number of questions that actually gets answered. In general, whenever I'm faced with a PayPal-related problem, I can expect to solve this on my own rather than asking anyone from PayPal
PayPal still need to support code from 10+ years ago that uses legacy SOAP stuff and meanwhile it also tries to come up with newer APIs. This just creates crazy amount of confusion. I might be exaggerating here but there are at least 5 ways to send a payment in PayPal, and 10 ways to receive a payment. With Stripe, it is just one API and that's all
These two are the main thing that discourages me from PayPal. There are tons of other issues like mystic error codes, slow website and weird restrictions here and there
If you can, just avoid PayPal integration and save yourself hours of pain and headache
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I would like to design an eCommerce website with WordPress. I don't want to do it from scratch so I'm looking for a free plugin. The features I expect it to have are:
shopping carts
shipping modules (Canada post etc..)
payment using Paypal
customizable themes
I came across : WP-eCommerce
it claims to be free, however I found out that some documents require payment. All the payments, shipping modules are not free, am I right?
Actually, I'm not very familiar with Wordpress, if possible, could someone suggest an easy to pick up, but powerful enough eCommerce plugin for Wordpress?
Thanks!
WP-eCommerce is the only plugin for WordPress worth looking at when it comes to eCommerce. You do get a lot for free.
That said, Alex makes some great points about how WordPress is NOT ideal for eCommerce.
However, after having completed 2 websites with WP-eCommerce and 2 websites with Magento Commerce, I can say that there is a HUGE difference in the time it takes to complete.
WP-eCommerce can be set up relatively quickly with very little customization to get it to look decent in your own WP Theme. A full eCommerce system such as Magento, on the other hand, has a huge learning curve and you will spend 3 times as long anytime you want to change anything.
It all depends what you're going for. If you want something simple that can be tweaked a little but doesn't need to be a great robust long-term solution, I would definitely consider WP-eCommerce. Otherwise, go for a real eCommerce platform.
Alternatively: Zen-Cart looks simpler than Magento but without some of the flexibility. Whatever you do, DON'T go anywhere near osCommerce.
Trick question: WordPress, a very simplistic blogging platform, should never be stretched into something as intricate as an e-commerce solution. An e-commerce platform offering a simple blogging module is another matter entirely.
Since you don't know much about WordPress anyway, you may want to consider using a e-commerce platform like magentocommerce.com, zen-cart.com, or oscommerce.com. All of them are PHP/MySQL based, like WordPress.
Wordpress.org has an extensive list of all of the various extensions and add-ons that are publicly available. If you look under all results with the ecommerce tag, you might find something that better suits your needs. If you are already using Wordpress as your content management system, why not just outsource the shipping and order management with something like Paypal or Google Checkout? Just have your catalog and if they like it, the can click "order with Paypal" or some such.
Also, I just went and looked up WP eCommerce and it is incredibly generous what they offer out of the box for free. The things that cost are listed at the Gold Cart premiumm upgrades page, and from what I can tell, most of the features you could do own your own, other than the added payment options (none of which I've heard of).
You should take a look at the PHPurchase wordpress ecommerce plugin. It's got great features to sell digital products, physical products, and even recurring billing/subscription products. There are membership management features built in so you can require an active subscription to see certain content on your site. And, perhaps best of all, it is backed by real, professional support. Check it out here: http://www.PHPurchase.com
wp-ecommerce definitely is not the only e-commerce plugin out there, check some of these out before you go the route of using magento or zencart (both of which are a major pain in the ass)
http://sixrevisions.com/wordpress/top-5-excellent-e-commerce-plugins-for-wordpress/
also I hear shopify is good and can be used with wordpress although I've never tried it out
It is for a small business, looking for the best solution... Did a search and only came up with very specific question related to ecommerce
May be worth taking a look at http://shopify.com/
OSCommerce is a well proven, free ecommerce solution, which is easy to set up
You might also consider just opening up an eBay store :) That way you essentially get free advertising, search engine indexing etc.
I always suggest that a company that is very small start with an open source solution such as DashCommerce. This way you get the development experience of the people supporting that project, plus the tested framework that many other companies are already using. The more people that use the code base the more reliable it is. Also, the more plugin type features that it might support such as tax, shipping, etc.
Take a look at DashCommerce's feature list to get an idea of what a complete ecommerce system should have.
Yahoo! Stores has one of the easiest ecommerce setups and has low upfront costs. The ongoing fees is how they make their money, and it becomes expensive with more volume.
I've got a contract to build an e-commerce site. It doesn't make much sense to build it from scratch (rebuild the wheel).
There's plenty of Open Source platforms such as osCommerce or Magnetocommerce. There's also some commercial platforms (I don't mind a small outlay if it's worth id)
Does anyone have any experience building upon an ecommerce platform like these ?
I've used osCommerce and its ok. But CreLoaded is much, much better. CreLoaded is based on osCommerce, but with all the best of the best add-ins pre-installed.
What can make osCommerce and CreLoaded really stand out as a top of the range products are two things:
Templates
Optional add-ins.
Templates
There are 256 templates for CreLoaded at template monster. Costing only $140 which is cheap, considering the quality and quantity of the graphics.
Optional add-ins.
Add-ins are hard to implement as you have to patch the code manually.
However, the saving grace is that there is CreLoaded. This is oscommerce with all the best Add-ins pre-installed.
Erol
I also purchased Erol v4 for my blank media store. The site looks ok, but its just dreadful. Written in Microsoft Access. Total rubbish. BTW, i've since closed the shop so please don't purchase anything!
I looked at a LOT of commerce packages! And CreLoaded is the one to go for in my own opinion.
I would go for WooCommerce on Wordpress. You get great support with a lot of free functionalities. Also a lot of wordpress themes are Woocommerce ready so you have a wide ocean of options for themes and plugins
You might be interested by answers to What’s the best free and opensource PHP ecommerce solution? (and why?), at least it provide answers for one platform.
A similar question has been asked: MSDN subscriptions on the cheap?, but I am not interested in the solutions provided:
I am not developing a product for sale, I am starting up a consulting company, so Empower is not an option.
I have visited the links to MS regarding MSDN subscriptions and they do not point to a way to get an inexpensive copy.
I am not interested in suggestions that I become a MVP. Frankly, I'm desiring to focus on developing my company, not jumping through MS's hoops.
There are really only a few options available
Buy it at standard price
Become a Microsoft Certified Partner, and get a good discount (Actually much simpler than you would think, I did it in under 2 weeks for my business)
Find a MVP buddy that is willing to share a free giveaway
But in all reality, these are the ONLY legal options. You might also try calling Microsoft, you never know what might happen, they have many special programs that are not necessarily publicly advertised.
What you want is the Action Pack: https://partner.microsoft.com/US/40016455.
(Note, as an employee of Microsoft, I apologize that you have to LOG OUT of your LiveID to see this page if that LiveID is not already attached to a Registered Partner.)
You don't have to be certified to get access to this, just registered (there are three levels of partnership: 1. Registered, 2. Certified, 3. Gold Certified). You do have to pass a fairly simple assessment test, though.
See the pdf referenced at https://partner.microsoft.com/US/40082823 for an overview of the process.
One last thing - if you are a student (I suspect the OP is not), you can get many Microsoft tools free from http://www.dreamspark.com.
Surely your consultancy will need a website in ASP.NET and perhaps your clients would like a widget that talks directly to a web service on your site? There's your product.
Also, look into "Value added Services" amongst the Empower documentation.
I'm on the Empower program - there really aren't any barriers to entry, as such.
I used to go directly through MS, but nowadays, I always order mine through Xtras.net - they have good multi-year discounts and you manage the subscription online through Microsoft's site as normal.
Does Empower require that the 'main' use is developing a product?
You can always develop a product as well - doesn't have to be very sucessfull, perhaps something to display the time in a window?