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WP-Ecommerce has three stars because the owner (who isn't a developer) aggressively marketed the plugin and left it's users hanging out to dry. Updates were don

by omd 14y ago

WP-Ecommerce has three stars because the owner (who isn't a developer) aggressively marketed the plugin and left it's users hanging out to dry. Updates were done by several hired developers who ended up making a mess of the code. Anyone who wrote a negative review about it was met with an abusive comment from the owner. This was two years ago since I last tried the plugin so I don't know how support is now, but the way it's written is unsuitable as a reliable ecommerce platform. I tried to set up a jewelry shop for a client who had bracelets in different colors and designs. It wasn't until the website slowed down to a crawl that I found that the system created 30 bracelets x 8 colors x 15 designs = 3600 records in the database. Every time you tried to update a price all 3600 records needed to be updated. And as most people know doing anything 3600 times in WordPress is a pain. Woo-commerce and MarketPress are much better, but at the moment there are no good e-commerce solutions for WordPress. WordPress has become decent for use as a CMS but if you're looking for an e-commerce solution your best bet would be a stand-alone system like OpenCart or managed like Shopify or Magento Go.

ChrisNorstrom 14y ago
A lot has changed in 2 years. There have been a lot of updates with a major architectural ones just a few days ago. As well as 5 star ratings from developers who have seen the project grow. I tried opencart a while back and I just didn't get it. There's theme templates in multiple folders, it's over kill for a store with just 4 or 5 products, and its design and layout was too set in stone. I never found a theme I liked. I wanted something that I could install, strip down to the core, and build my really simple, really minimal store from. Open cart wasn't flexible or minimal in that sense. The user has to click, click, click, to get anywhere. It felt like all the products where categorized and tucked away and the user has to find them. Maybe it's possible to change via heavy template modification but I haven't seen any template actually do that. It's easier for me to start with something minimal like wp e-commerce and build it up with modules, than to start with something overly templated and featureful and try to tear it down to simplicity.

by omd 14y ago

ChrisNorstrom 14y ago

A lot has changed in 2 years. There have been a lot of updates with a major architectural ones just a few days ago. As well as 5 star ratings from developers who have seen the project grow. I tried opencart a while back and I just didn't get it. There's theme templates in multiple folders, it's over kill for a store with just 4 or 5 products, and its design and layout was too set in stone. I never found a theme I liked. I wanted something that I could install, strip down to the core, and build my really simple, really minimal store from. Open cart wasn't flexible or minimal in that sense. The user has to click, click, click, to get anywhere. It felt like all the products where categorized and tucked away and the user has to find them. Maybe it's possible to change via heavy template modification but I haven't seen any template actually do that. It's easier for me to start with something minimal like wp e-commerce and build it up with modules, than to start with something overly templated and featureful and try to tear it down to simplicity.