Of course we all already know that WP e-Commerce is a hugely extensible piece of software – we know this because more e-Commerce themes and modules made for WP e-Commerce then any other WordPress extension. Not such a shabby claim eh – but its true.
So to make sure our Plugin is truely the best canonical e-Commerce platform we’ve decided to take a few things out of the Plugin and make them add-on modules instead. To begin with I personally think we could afford to remove the following from core;
- Personalization Options
- Shipwire Shipping
- QR Codes
I strongly believe that by removing these features from core and by us providing documentation on how they tie back into the Plugin as modules / Plugins will make WP e-Commerce a little and faster Plugin. It will also work as a resource that you will be able to use to base your own add on modules.
What else do you think could be removed from WP e-Commerce core and replaced by an additional Plugin?
58 Comments
Possibly the thickbox/lightbox. The built in one is pretty ugly so i usually find myself overriding it for something else. Would be nice for us to be able to go and find a lightbox plugin we like and easily add it on as you say.
We are using the personalization text box as a comments field (and resized it accordingly).
The ability to add fields (via plugin or whatever) including datepickerui (jqueryui) for date selection, or other fields added to the product page would be fantastic.
Hey Dan,
Clearly, we would love to stay in the core product :-) If you do make it a module please let me know so I can help update documentation on our site.
We have a bunch of new api’s available now as well. Including a shipping rate API that streams shipping rates from our warehouse locations straight into checkout. http://www.shipwire.com/api That helps with conversions and you should expect it to get more powerful over the next 6-9 months.
As you go through this redevelopment process, let me know how I can help. Good luck Sir.
Nate
Shipwire
Ok cool. Do you have any stats on the number of users?
I can see removing shipwire from the core, and leaving Shipwire to develop the code to interface with WPE. While a fine service, I believe then issue is that it doesn’t belong in the “core” of WPE.
I would agree that the following could possibly be moved from core to plugins:
Personalization Options
QR Codes
Intense Debate comments
Would also be great to consider allowing payments gateways etc to be added via a WordPress plugin rather than having to be in a specific folder.
… to expand on that last bit, anything that may change independently of WP e-Commerce (like how a payment gateway works) might be best handled by a plugin so that you can just upgrade the plugin, rather that core? Just an idea
Hi Dan,
Some thoughts:
- While I think the core plugin should provide the main Payment Gateways it should also be possible to implement a payment gateway via an external plugin
- Same again for “Shipping methods”. Include core methods like flat rate, but make it easy for a plugin to implement an alternative
- The core needs to include more action hooks (Product added, product updated, product removed, basket updated, checkout complete, payment complete, order status changed, product out of stock) etc. to really encourage external plugins
- On the back of that you probably need a documented public API that 3rd party plugins can depend on – e.g. so they can look up product details / purchase details etc if they need to.
- It would be great to extend products in a similar way to WP’s “custom fields”, e.g. I can define what attributes are relevant to my products. This should be accessible to plugins (e.g. so they can make custom fields that they use available)
We’ll get those Plugin hooks in for you Lee.
There are already two places people can put new merchant files. We just probably need to document this better.
Thanks for the comments :)
Proper Custom Fields support would be great. The current custom meta data fields is a start. But it doesn’t replace real custom fields.
Being able to manually set related products (not the automatically generated ones) would be an important feature.
Dear Instinct,
i am trying to buy the gold cart but paypal telling me that i have to use another credit card , my credit card is working i just buy somthing via 2checkout and it is working so can i buy it using another gateway ?
regards
Hey Moe, I’ve had this issue with some of my credit cards too. I think PayPal are investigating this. Contact Instinct directly.
Nice work Dan and team. Fast is good, extensible is better!
please provide me another way to buy the gold cart plugin or another gateway
mmm my suggestion would be to take all the bugs out and then make them available as additional plugins eh eh ;)
(just kidding)
Beppe! Are you kidding? you made me smile anyways :)
Lightbox
Sharethis
Intensedebate
+ your 3 original suggestions Dan
Should definitely come out and be added as pluggins
When is instinct going to include built in marketing campaigns/newsletters/contact form/? This should really be part of the core as they are absolute necessary minimum to run a store.
Keep up the good work and am ready to “get my socks blown off” with next release!
i love the look of it,very hawt
Hi Veronique, give the Campaign Trail plugin that they’ve been working on a shot.
Thanks! I’ll definitely take a looK! Just upgraded to 3.7.1.2 and can’t load my site! When I did earlier, I was getting 7 Jquery errors in status bar!!! Woa! I’m going back to 3.7.5.1 presto illico…
Ok tried again and Yupee! SO far so good 2.9- ! Permalinks were damaged but got that fixed in MySQL by emptying the cache…THanks instinct for providing what seems to be the first slick and almost painless upgrade!-You’re really getting good at this!
We sometimes build sites using WPEC, but don’t use the commerce functionality and just use the product part of plugin. WPEC and its brilliant templating system allow us to build really extensible product sites. More often than not these sites end up turning on the ecommerce later down the line.
We would like to contribute some extentions/modules that we have been working on:
* Brand/Category user filter – allows us to set a user to a specific wpec brand or category, they can’t see or edit anything other than what has been allocated to them
* Category and Keyword Search widget
* Wishlist system – allows a user to create a wishlist basket and allocate the basket to another user, system sends other user an email with a link and presto they have a basket filled with suggested product
* South African payment gateway modules – VCS, Netcash, MyGate
We are big fans of WPEC and look forward to contributing our work under GPL so that the whole community can benefit.
SIDENOTE: Thanks to Instinct for today’s new version! ;-)
Look forward to seeing these as it sounds like you are masters of the trade!
I agree with this statement
Hi Ashley
I loved your suggestions for contributions.
How are you guys going with those contributions so far? I’m looking for a VCS payment gateway module but have only found this non-GPL one at http://www.michaelbain.co.za/2010/07/plugin-vcs-payment-module-for-wp-e-commerce/
Thanks!
Justin
Hi, juste to say that the french translation isn’t complete. Some define in the french file are missing :)
Byebye
GlotPress will solve this very very soon :)
I am stuck with a checkout page that doesn’t display much of the French translations. Something must be corrupted somewhere, but I can’t figure out what, my php knowledge is very limited right now.
The checkout form at http://www.padparadja.fr/boutique/checkout displays the form details in English even though all the translations are in the .po / .mo files. Must be something wrong with my FR_fr.php file?
v.frustrating – would appreciate some insight from knowledgeable people out there..
Many thanks
Hey Dan,
Here’s the fruits of Lee and my own work, linking WP E-Commerce to Google Analytics E-Commerce Tracking system:
WP E-Commerce Analytics
http://www.visser.com.au/blog/wp-e-commerce-analytics-is-alive/
Send us some feedback!
Removing personalization options would remove one of the main reasons this particular software was right for my client’s site (in the instance that i bought it-and the gold module). With all of the ridiculous bugs and quirks in WPEC, it would figure that you’d see fit to do away with one of the features that works. Lame.
Ridiculous bugs – Bah hum bug!
So anyway we’d just be removing it from the core Plugin. You’d still be able to download it right away and put it into your e-commerce Plugins folder. Then BAM it would be working just as good as before if not better. It would preserve the functionality and always be backwards compatible.
Do you think that would still be lame just because of a slight inconvenience? I’m curious. Thanks for writing in.
Rather than making the removed features separate downloads, they could continue to be distributed with WPEC. That way the features we’ve come to expect would already be there, but we could completely remove them or enable them as we see fit.
I would like to find out, how do you organize (or in other words move around) the items you’re selling by placement and not in the order that they are uploaded? I ask this because in my “tactical lights” section I would like to have certain companies grouped together even though they are all on the same page. I hope I’ve made sense.
Select / Filter just a category on the products page (top left hand column) – then drag and drop the products around.
I think at this point we should finally be able to arrange categories how we want them to display on the website.
Yup. We’re actually overhauling the categories very soon and its going to amazing :D
On the other hand, reconsidering my comment, if such a thing allowed the core of the system to actually function more smoothly, i suppose stripping “features” would make sense.
LOL – opps… okay we don’t need to carry this on. I can just promise we’d make it backwards compatible :)
Hey guys, here is an idea for a feature… It would be nice to be able to batch update pricing and stock quantity for a large number of items (or all of them). Any thoughts to including this as an enhancement?
Also, any thought on making the packing slip editable in the WP admin panel?
I like your ideas :)
I think these would add a lot of value to the cart!
Good ideas,.. I’ve tried many times to figure out the file where I can customize the packing slip. But, no result till now. Can any body help?
I second that on the batch or mass changes. I’ve been trying to mass change things directly in the database and even that’s difficult to pull off smoothly. An ‘edit all’ on a category would be awesome for adding tags, prices, etc.
Its all about shipping for me. I need to be able to assign a weight (numerical value) to each item, add match the total weight value of the order against a zip code zoning chart containing a dollar value per incremental pound against each zone. I need to be able to create a 4 zone table based on US zip codes and a 5 zone table based on Canadian Postal codes. This should be fairly simple, no? Not for me, but for some clever coder out there. I need such a plug-in NOW. Without I cannot include shipping charges.
We have the need for the custom Flat Rate Shipping Zones. Where can I activate this like shown here: http://www.instinct.co.nz/blog/2009/08/flat-rate-shipping-zones/ ?
Thanks for your answer.
I am still finding my feet when it comes to code. Simililar problem as above, I need to be able to insert tables for carraige purposes and am trying to avoid paying large ammounts to have this implemented into my site bespoke. This plugin looks like it will take care of my problems and give me a few more cool functions.
i like this software but for some of my clients it is a little bit too obscure … maybe there is a more easier way to make products payable …
please provide me another way to buy the gold cart plugin or another gateway
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tnk
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The extensions are great. Thanks again.
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Why don’t you try and fix it first?
Nothing works as it should – Google e-commerce tracking, Google Merchant Feed, etc.
Your site is also a complete mess – I continue to get 404s when looking for old threads, your documentation is patchy and your forum is moderated by a couple of smart-arses that have no real interest in helping anybody at all.
Complete rubbish.