Reader Response: A Simple, Streamlined E-Commerce Solution
Reader Response: A Simple, Streamlined E-Commerce Solution
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Today, dear readers, I come to you with my arms wide open — and my shoulders caught somewhere between a slump and a shrug. I’ve been tearing my hair out over the last couple of months looking for the perfect ecommerce solution for my specific needs and wants. I’ve come up short.
But it occurs to me that I have a lot of smart, savvy readers here on CSS Newbie — and maybe, just maybe, you’ll be able to help me find the perfect shopping cart. Below, I’ll explain specifically what I’m looking for (and a bit about what I’m not looking for, too). If you know of a cart that meets my needs — or even just some of them — please do not hesitate to let me know! I’m hoping that the comments on this article will prove as plentiful as Starbucks on the open prairie. And twice as useful.
I Want a Simple, User-Friendly Cart that Stays Out of My Way.
That about sums it up, really. But for more detail, here’s what I want/need in a cart:
- A self-hosted solution. If it weren’t for this requirement, I think Foxycart would be my #1 contender. Consider that a hint — if you know of something Foxycart-eque, but is self-hosted instead, please let me know!
- Supports everything PayPal has to offer. Specifically, I want something that can support Website Payments Pro and the Payflow Pro gateway. This way I can handle payments on my site, but still take advantage of PayPal’s expertise, PCI compliance, and competitive pricing.
- Flexible, straightforward templating. I am a front-end developer. Any cart solution that tries to stand between me and my code or that makes templating a holy hell isn’t a good solution. I want simple, straightforward flexibility. For example, I’ve been working with Magento a lot recently, and while it has a lot of great features, it’s a huge pain to deviate too far from the standard build. Every small change requires updates in multiple disparate files and hours of time for a five-minute job. My ideal solution would let me build my pages however I wanted, and just drop in the “cart” functionality wherever I cared to do so.
- Good support of downloadable products. The stores I’m building will have both hard and soft goods, so I need the cart to work equally smoothly with both.
- Built for LAMP servers. The ideal solution would run on PHP/MySQL, but I would consider other LAMP-friendly options. Sorry, but ASP/.NET solutions aren’t a possibility for me.
- A single product database. This solution will be running multiple stores, but several of the stores will share some products. In the interest of avoiding redundant data, I’d like to have a single product database that all my stores can draw from.
- Access to the source. I don’t want to have to wait for a team halfway around the world or a community of volunteer developers to get around to building the functionality I need if I think I could tackle the project myself. If I can’t have access to the source itself, an exceptional plugin system would be a good alternative.
- A flexible discounting system. I want to be able to offer (as a fake example) 20% off orders of $50 or more on certain products. I want to discount items if people buy two or more of the same product. I want sales that run for three weeks, and expire automatically. Or at least some of those things.
That’s the basics of what I need, folks. That isn’t too much to ask, is it?
To summarize, I’m looking for a simple, straightforward shopping cart that makes templating a breeze, runs on PHP/MySQL, supports PayPal gateways, allows virtual goods and discounts, and is something I can install locally and modify. I do not need a solution that tries to be everything at once — it doesn’t have to contain a CMS, a catalog, or an inventory system. It doesn’t have to provide a newsletter, it needn’t compare items, and it shouldn’t try to walk my dog on Thursdays. I don’t want a jack-of-all-trades: I want a master of one (or two).
I also want to clarify: this does not have to be a free solution. If you know of a commercial option that does all this, I would be very excited to hear about it.
So! Let me know what you know in the comments below. Even if you know of a cart that fulfills some of these needs, I would be excited to hear about it — there’s always the chance I can customize it to do what I need from there.
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Plugins That Make WordPress Into A Company Intranet
WordPress has become a great platform for a wide range of website needs. Originally designed for blogging it is now a common package for full fledged content management systems and even complete web based applications.
Now we even have great opportunities to use WordPress as an internal communication and back office tool. With these assortments of plug-ins we can use our favorite open source software to improve our businesses, efficiency and offer more solutions to our clients.
Billing
If you are a freelancer or a small company you know how much time can be sucked up by managing your billing. This is a bit of a shame because the billing part of the job should be the most fun, it’s how you get paid! There are a lot of available paid solutions for billing, but they are all hosted on different websites and applications and are not as nice and neatly integrated as doing it through WordPress. Luckily we have WP-Invoice, a full invoice creation and tracking system that integrates with WordPress directly.
It features:
Download WP-Invoice
Contact Relationship Management
As your business grows the amount of clients, leads and strategic partners you have will also grow. It is time to throw out the Rolodex, get rid of your piles of business cards, there are better ways to manage your contacts. The newest solution would be using a Contact Relationship Management system or CRM. There are a wide range of different CRM solutions available (salesforce.com, highrise, etc…) however WordPress can function as one with the simple installation of a plug-in!
WP-CRM features:
Download WP-CRM
Project Management
Still using a pen and paper to manage your projects? You might as well be using a sundial to check the time! Using software to manage and track your projects is a lot easier and more sophisticated. While there are plenty of good commercial solutions available, why not integrate it into WordPress? That way it is easy to use, customizable and open source. With the simple installation of a plug-in you can:
Download WP-Project
Office Communication
Sometimes proper and adequate communication is the most important and most difficult aspects of running a larger company. There are all sorts of tools that attempt to correct and fix this problem, some of them more effective than others. The WordPress team themselves encountered this issue and sought to find a solution that integrated into their beautiful piece of software. Hence Prologue was born – a twitter like tool that can run off of your web server.
Download Prologue
Newsletter & Notifications
Need to send news and updates to your employees? Maybe you want to do some e-mail marketing for your company? Rather than pay monthly or per e-mail using an overpriced and underachieving e-mail marketing solution just integrate it with WordPress. There is a simple, effective and easy to use newsletter tool that will do everything you need and more.
Download the Newsletter Plugin
Calendar
Keep track of all the events and important milestones going on with your business by using a simple and easy to use calendar system. There are a handful of WordPress plug-ins that let you create and manage calendars, I have had the best luck with WP-Calendar. If you want to get very fancy you could also have a members only calendar so that only employees and those with a login can see it.
Download the Calendar Plugin
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A beta version of Apple’s Safari 4 web browser is now available for public consumption by Macintosh and PC users alike. It boasts 150 features, 30 (yes, I counted) of which are marked as “NEW”.
Among these new features, the most interesting ones are:
Speculative Loading
Safari loads the documents, scripts, and style information required to view a web page ahead of time, so they’re ready when you need them.
I wonder how Safari will “guess” which files to pre-load. Hopefully this is something that can be turned off, for those among us who would like to conserve bandwidth.
CSS Effects
Pioneered by Safari, CSS effects help developers add polish to websites by stylizing images and photos with eye-catching gradients, precise masks, and stunning reflections that require only a few lines of code.
Does anyone recall IE’s ActiveX filters? They pretty much all died with the exception of the alpha filter, and even that was just used to fix its lack of support for PNG transparency.
Acid 3 Compliance
Safari is the first — and only — web browser to pass Acid 3. Acid 3 tests a browser’s ability to fully render pages using the web standards used to build dynamic, next-generation websites, including CSS, JavaScript, XML, and SVG.
I thought Opera 10 was the first browser to pass the Acid3 test? Still, kudos to the Safari team!
HTML 5 Offline Support
Web developers can now create applications that you can use even when you don’t have access to the Internet. Thanks to HTML 5 offline support, designers can build web applications that store themselves on your computer, where you have immediate access to them. Along with the application, web developers can also choose to store the application’s data on your system, so you always have the information you need. Applications and data can be stored in a traditional SQL-like database serving as an application cache or as a “super cookie,” which stores data in the familiar cookie format.
What!?! HTML 5 support even though we are 4664 days away from HTML 5? Woo hoo Safari!
Cover Flow
Using Cover Flow, you can flip through websites as easily as you flip through album art in iTunes. Cover Flow displays your bookmarks and history as large graphical previews, so you can pick out a website instantly.
I just hope IE8 doesn’t try to copy this “feature” by adding a Flip3D mode.
History View
Take a closer look at your browsing history in the History view. Search for previously visited sites, drag web pages to your bookmarks, and clear individual items. Safari displays your history using Cover Flow, so you can flip through your search results as easily as you flip through iTunes album art.
This is definitely useful for quickly locating a page in one’s history.
So what are you waiting for? Download Safari 4 for a test drive now.