Which E-Commerce Software To Use With Variations?

[djstevieb]

Hi all

I'm trying to make an online shop for a friend of mine who sells specialist lingerie.

I'm pretty new to e-commerce, but I managed to make her a site using wordpress (because she wanted a blog as well as an online shop) and used the WP e-Commerce plug-in with their Gold Cart plug-in too (which gave me extra functions). However, I'm not impressed with these plug-ins as there's been so many updates since I started and they've all messed up a lot of work I have already done. I searched through their forums and it seems I'm not the only one having issues and there doesn't seem to be any fixes. An Admin did try to help me but only got so far and said there are a lot of problems with the updates.

So now the WP e-Commerce and Gold Cart plug-ins are gone and I'm looking for alternatives.

The problem I have is there are a lot of variations to the products. For example, one bra may come in 5 different colours and 10 sizes in each colour making a total of 50 different variations of the one product. When there's over 100 individual products to add, it makes for a lot of variations and WP e-Commerce couldn't handle them all.

I loved the variations section on WP e-Commerce. I set up two Categories of Variations one called “Size” and the other called “Colour”, within them I added all possible sizes and colours. Then when I came to add a product, I selected which sizes and colours were available and WP e-Commerce calculated the variations for me, instead of me having to do them one by one.

WP e-Commerce would have been perfect IF it had worked.

Are there any other programs (preferably free or little cost) out there which will do that?

[seamus]

zen cart or prestashop will do exacty what you need (both free)
I would run a zen cart as the shop and add a wordpress blog onto the back of it, I've done that many a time, works well

and with a zen cart or prestashop, adding different size options and colour options to products isnt too difficult, ish, Im not too keen on the zen cart attributes system, but it does the job

[scotserve]

I agree the gold cart is a bit buggy and the updates tend to screw up - I am currently evaluating new e-commerce add ons for WP
But do you know you can integrate Prestashop into WP
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-prestashop/ Not tried it but going to

[djstevieb]

zen cart or prestashop will do exacty what you need (both free)

I've looked at Zen Cart before, its the same as OS-Commerce and is a pain to add variations as you have to do each one manually and will take me forever with the amount of variations needed.

I just had a quick look at the prestashop demo which looks easier to implement variations, Ill download it and have a further look.

do you know you can integrate Prestashop into WP

If prestashop is ok for me to use then I'll look at intergrating it with wordpress

Thanks guys

Any other recommendations gladly received

[pcbob]

This is a personal choice but I have been using Joomal for sometime - it is a CMS (content management system) and is very flexible. Lots of mods available both free and paid. (version 1.5 has the most but version 1.6 is catching up)
If you want to have a play http://www.joomla.org/

[JhnStcks]

I agree the gold cart is a bit buggy and the updates tend to screw up - I am currently evaluating new e-commerce add ons for WP
But do you know you can integrate Prestashop into WP
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-prestashop/ Not tried it but going to

Thats not free Scotserve, you have to pay for the Prestshop module.

I would personally use Prestashop for your situations as I think it does variations better than Zencart.

[djstevieb]

I would personally use Prestashop for your situations as I think it does variations better than Zencart.

I just looked at Prestashop which looked good, until I got to the variations (or attributes as its know in Prestashop).
It looks to me that I have to put each product variation in individually just like OS-Commerce, and for the amount of variations I need to do its gonna take me ages.
I was looking for something similar to the plug-in I was using on wordpress where when I came to add a products variations, I selected the radio buttons next to which separate sizes and separate colours that were available and WP e-Commerce calculated all the possible variations for me, instead of me having to do them one by one.
I tried to look for a screenshot of it but I cant find one and I don't have it installed anymore.

[crismarie]

You can also consider the Avactis Shopping Cart software, they have a  WordPress Plug-in for WordPress and Avactis integration.