Can a shop be attached to an existing website?

[silvaah]

We are thinking of expanding our small business (a piercing studio and shop) because it is so specialist we are very limited to where we can advertise! We already have a website www.darkhorizonstudio.co.uk that was custom built and as we have a small shop I guess the next step is to sell online.

My question is 'can you bolt on a web shop onto an existing site?' and if so 'what would be the best route to take'?

All comments will be much appreciated 

[scotserve]

Hi
It looks like at least part of that site is running under Wordpress - if so I can provide you with a licensed shopping cart addon that will use your existing design - simply just add products and off you go

PS you need to fix your domain - showing as not a trading site and registered to the trading name not you.

[silvaah]

Would there be any implications for not changing the domain? as doesn’t affect anything as far as I can tell... it has been registered under the company name of Dark Horizon Studio. I can’t see how we can just change that, and I’m not sure why we would want to... I can see the logic in changing it to a trading domain, which would require an address to be visible. Will definately look into the domain thing if it’s really deemed important and necessary.

Very observant to realise part of the site runs on WordPress  However, I think you may have the wrong idea of how it’s been implemented. Technically, the site doesn’t run under WordPress at all... WordPress is running in the background purely for blog posts and nothing else, and it’s only used on the front page. The posts are parsed from WordPress manually and displayed by written code  so accessing anything within WordPress itself would not use the existing design, I don't think it will be that simple 

[seamus]

why was it set up that way?

really there is no reason why the whole site shouldnt run using just wordpress, it would be simple to transfer the design over to the word press and run the whole site through that. It would look and function in exactly the same way, seems you've went an extremely over complicated way when you really didnt need to.

If you are intending on selling products through a shop on your site, you will need to unmask your address, it needs to be visible on the domain registration details if you are using that domain to trade through. It can be left as registered to dark horizon studio but it cant be left as a UK individual with the address masked, its law Im afraid (although scotserve would know more about that than me, seeing as it's part of his job really)

another option would be to install a cart on the site, style it the same as the main site and run it that way, I still think stripping the site back to just the wordpress and just using that with an ecommerce plugin would be the best option.

Either way, in answer to the original question, yes you can bolt on a shop to the existing website, plenty of different ways you could do it though

[scotserve]

Would there be any implications for not changing the domain? as doesn’t affect anything as far as I can tell... it has been registered under the company name of Dark Horizon Studio. I can’t see how we can just change that, and I’m not sure why we would want to... I can see the logic in changing it to a trading domain, which would require an address to be visible. Will definately look into the domain thing if it’s really deemed important and necessary.

Very observant to realise part of the site runs on WordPress  However, I think you may have the wrong idea of how it’s been implemented. Technically, the site doesn’t run under WordPress at all... WordPress is running in the background purely for blog posts and nothing else, and it’s only used on the front page. The posts are parsed from WordPress manually and displayed by written code  so accessing anything within WordPress itself would not use the existing design, I don't think it will be that simple 

OK deal with the domain first
1) Under Nominet terms and conditions you cannot mask the whois of a trading site - it is grounds for suspension of the domain
2) Dark Horizon Studio is not a legal entity, again ownership of the domain should be a legal defined entity i.e. a registered company or a individual, say for example your name was Joe Bloggs then the correct way the domain would be registered would be Joe Boggs then T/A Dark Horizon Studio, the reason for this is I could set myself up as a company called "Dark Horizon Studio" tomorrow since it is not a legal entity and create confusion on your domain name. I am a Nominet member and believe me I deal with issues like this on a daily basis due to people not understanding the correct procedure in setting up their domains. Its a comon error people make but it is one through experience that can come back and bite people. The registrant name can only be changed through Nominet directly.

As Seamus has said you seem to have ( or your designer has) overcomplicated the design of the site, Wordpress is an excellent CMS system its way past being just a blog and could have encompassed the whole site - however because you have WP running for part of the site there "may" be an easy way to integrate the shopping cart in via the existing wordpress structure - this is something that would need to be tried out - it probably would take a bit more setting up than usual but pretty confident it could work.

[silvaah]

Thank you so much for the advice, it has been a great learning curve and shows just how easy it is to get it wrong and I sooooo want to get it right  

We have updated our domain details (the address and phone number to the shop, basically) and made them visible to WHOIS, but now not sure what Registrant Type we should be using? These are these options:

    Foreign Organisation
    Other Foreign Organisations
    Individual
    UK Limited Liability Partnership
    UK Limited Company
    UK Entity that does not fit any of the above
    UK Public Limited Company
    UK Partnership
    UK Registered Charity
    UK Sole Trader

I’m not sure which one we should pick. From reading what Scotserve said, it seems we may need to change the registrant name to for example “Joe bloggs T/A Dark Horizon Studio” and maybe do UK Sole Trader? If we do need to change the name, through Nominet thats a little annoying  

[scotserve]

Strictly speaking yes the registrant should be your Name and then trading as, the company will be sole trader unless you have a limited company or a partnership.
Unfortunately the only way to change the registrant is through Nominet directly the cost is £10 + VAT - while it makes no difference to the operation of the domain it is a breach of terms and has the propensity to bite you in the future - to me the possible issues far outweighs the minimal cost to sort it.

[silvaah]

I totaly agree so will get that sorted and paid for asap, We are now looking to redo the site in wordpress and can't wait to start selling online. Thank you again