Using WordPress as a Shopping Cart

I’ve just spent the day setting up an e-commerce website for a new business I started this year called Oh My Mirror, so I thought I’d take a moment to share my experience which may be of interest to those considering using WordPress for this purpose.

I’ve been avoiding setting up this website for some time because I have an awkward relationship with many e-commerce platforms. I find them too labor intensive and complicated to set up and maintain. They’re also pretty darn ugly and require a lot of time and patience to customize… two things I’m short of right now. There’s always the option to dish out some money for a pre-made template, but I wanted to find a more cost effective way to get the job done.

Crafty Cart Theme and WP e-Commerce Plugin
The answer to my dilemma was found this morning when I stumbled across the Crafty Cart theme for WordPress released for free by King Cart. Crafty Cart features a super cute design which is perfect for my pocket mirror business. The theme requires the WP e-Commerce plugin which has undergone a number of improvements since I last tinkered with it a couple of years ago.

Problems with Autosave and Permalinks
The installation and set up went quickly and smoothly until I opened the ‘Products Page’ and subsequently encountered problems with the permalink structure for product listings and categories. Instead of the URL for a product category looking like this: www.ohmymmirror.com/products/pocketmirrors/, the autosave revised the permalink and the URL became www.ohmymmirror.com/2008/10-104revised/ and I had no means to edit the permalink.

The Solution
After searching the WP e-Commerce plugin forums it was apparent this was not an uncommon issue and attributable to WordPress’s autosave function. To fix the problem I had to login into the database and delete the Products page revisions. To prevent the problem occurring again I installed the Disable Revisions and Autosave plugin. I recommend you do this before you install WP e-commerce.

It’s All Good!
Apart from that frustrating hitch, I found the installation and set up for WP e-Commerce very straight forward. Within 30 minutes my new website had products listed and was ready to take orders. Due to the problem with the autosave function and WP e-Commerce plugin the database is now running a bit slower, so I still need to do a little work to restore the quick page load time, but otherwise I’m pleased with the speed and ease with which I was able to set up the website. It’s a much more attractive alternative to complicated e-commerce platforms that are a bit over the top for a small venture like mine.

Visit:
Oh My Mirror!

Downloads:
Crafty Cart theme for WordPress
WP e-Commerce plugin
Disable Revisions and Autosave plugin – Install this first!