WordPress e-Commerce Plugin FAQ Frequently Asked Questions

We work closely with Nick La from N.Design Studio, Shayne Saunderson from S-Tastic, Dan Fris from Device Studios and many other well know WordPress fanatics to ensure that we work on the best themes out.

Here is a list of some of the themes we know work well with WP e-Commerce. Not only do these work but they are some of the best most respected themes in the WP community:

• Copyblogger
• Thesis
• Sandbox
• K2 RC6
• iTheme
• Glossy Blue
• Cutline
• Hello Theme
• Light Theme

Installation

I put the wp-shopping-cart directory into my plugins folder, but I can’t activate the plugin because it’s not appearing in my WordPress plugins screen.

You need to check that your plugin files are not two folders deep. When you downloaded and unzipped the WP e-Commerce files, the directory structure was as follows:

wp-shopping-cart/wp-shopping-cart/[WP e-Commerce files]

So if you uploaded the topmost directory into your plugins folder, WordPress will not be able to find the actual plugin. Upload the second wp-shopping-cart directory to your plugins folder instead.

Customizing your store

How can I make the products page my home page?

This is a WordPress setting. Go to Settings > Reading and then select the Products Page as your home page. Select another page to be your blog page.

How do I remove countries from the drop-down list on the checkout screen?

Back up your database! Personally, I like the WordPress Database Backup plugin.
Go into phpMyAdmin and select your database in the left sidebar.
In the sidebar, select the table “wp_currency_list”
Make a backup of the table by pressing the “Operations” button, scrolling to “Copy table to”, and making a complete copy (structure and data) to something like “wp_currency_list_long”.
Return to “wp_currency_list” by clicking on it in the sidebar.
Click on the box for “Currency” and press the “Browse” button above.
Change the display settings to “Show 250 rows starting from record # 0″
If you’re only shipping to a few countries, it’s probably best to check all (using the link at the bottom of the list) and uncheck the countries you want to keep. Once you’ve checked the countries you want to remove, click on the X (delete) button at the bottom.
Confirm, and then you’re set. Your checkout screen will list only the countries you didn’t delete.

How do I remove/customize the PnP line for each product?

To remove the PnP line, go to Shop Settings > Presentation Settings and set ‘Show Postage and Packaging’ to ‘no.’

To customize the text, go into the languages directory, select the appropriate language file, and make changes to the TXT_WPSC_PNP definition.

How do I customize the e-mail that’s sent to the customer when an order is placed?

Just change the text in the language file. The English language file is found at

wp-shopping-cart/languages/EN_en.php

You can find the e-mail text by searching for some of the text you want to replace (e.g. “any items that can be downloaded can be downloaded using the links on this page”). Be sure to leave the single quotes intact, as they are necessary for the PHP to work. If you use single quotes in your new text, be sure to ‘escape’ them by preceding them with a backslash, as in ‘We\’re sorry for any inconvenience’.

Note that you can change any text you don’t like in the shopping cart by editing this file.

How do I indicate that an item is sold out?

In the Product Details, under ‘Price and Stock Controls’, tick the box that says ‘I have a limited number of this item in stock…’ and set the stock number to zero. Note that if the product has variations, you will have to go into Variation Control and remove the variation set(s).

I want to use WP e-Commerce as a gallery rather than as a store. Is it possible to hide the ‘add to cart’ button?

Yes it is. Add the CSS property ‘display: none’ to the button in your CSS file.

I want to replace the ‘add to cart’ button with an image.

Switch to the iShop theme and upload the new image to

plugins/wp-shoppingcart/themes/iShop/images/buy_button.gif

Then change the style for the “buy_button” in the iShop css to reflect the correct size of the new image you uploaded.

How do I style the products page?

There are a whole heap of presentation settings in the Shop Settings. First things first – you need to play with these.

How do I “really” style the products page?

You need to know a little CSS. Just the same way you would if you wanted to edit your WordPress theme. Most of the styles though are kept in the themes folder. If you know CSS then jump in and have a play.

What if I don’t know CSS?

You can e-mail Instinct your design idea and pay us by the hour to integrate your design the way you want it.

What about editing the layout?

Well, you’ll need to know a little PHP. Just the same way you need to know a little PHP if you want to modify they way WordPress looks.

Editing the layout in the PHP is not as hard as you might think. There are good old-fashioned HTML tags among all the PHP, so with a bit of trial and error (and an editor that supports multiple undos) you can tweak your layout quite nicely.

To edit the product screens, start by having a look at product_display_functions.php.

How can I place any “promo products” anywhere on my site – such as a page or post?

First, go to the Product Details screen, scroll to the Advanced Options, and check the box that says ‘Display on front page’. Then just place this tag in any page or post, within square brackets:

homepage_products

How do I change the number of items in the Latest Products widget?

You can change this by editing the file latest_product_widget.php. Find the text

ORDER BY id DESC LIMIT 5

and change the 5 to whatever limit you want.

How do I place the shopping cart anywhere on my site template using PHP?

<?php echo nzshpcrt_shopping_basket(); ?>

How do I use custom graphics for the product ratings stars?

If you’ll look in the directory wp-shopping-cart/images you’ll see ‘24bit-star.gif’, ‘blue-star.gif’, ‘gold-star.gif’, ‘grey-star.gif’ — those will be the images you want to replace. Then change the URL for the stars in your CSS, and your custom stars should display.

I don’t want the sidebar to show in my products page?

You’ll need to use a theme that allows this level of functionality. I cannot possibly comment.

Shipping

How do I implement quantity-based shipping, in which the first N items cost increasing amounts to ship, until a threshold is reached where shipping is free?

Some stores, particularly those selling fairly uniform items, charge shipping based on the number of items sold. For example:

1 book = $2 for shipping
2 – 5 books = $5 for shipping
6 – 10 books = $6 for shipping
11- 15 books = $7 for shipping
16 or more books = No charge for shipping

You can implement this by adding the custom PHP described in http://www.instinct.co.nz/forums/topic.php?id=782

Troubleshooting

I changed the page name/title and everything is broken now – what do I do?

Easy. Just go to Shop Settings > Admin Settings and click on the ‘Update Page URLs’ link at the very bottom of the screen.

My admin site crashes when I upload files for digital download.

Some web hosts will time out and appear to crash when you try to upload large files. If this happens you can upload files using your FTP client and then associate them manually. All files in the files folder are displayed in the product manager regardless whether they have been uploaded via the form or via FTP.

Upgrades

I upgraded WordPress, and now a bunch of the links in my store are broken.

After an upgrade, sometimes the links within the store need a little ‘kick’ to sync back up. Go to Shop Settings > Admin Settings and click on the ‘Update Page URLs’ link at the very bottom of the screen, and also ‘Fix Product Group Permalinks’ if necessary.

Using the Gold Cart

How do I install the Members Only module?

Copy the members directory to your gold cart files folder, do not simply place the files within the members directory in the gold directory – the file structure must be like this:

I moved my site and now my API key doesn’t work?

First thing to try is hit the Reset API Key button in the gold options page. Remember, the API key will only ever work on one site at a time.

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