So many options out there – how to choose? First, educate yourself on the difference between a plugin vs a dedicated solution (like magento or zen cart) vs a hosted solution (like shopify or bigcartel) and decide what features you really need before you select a product. Each option has a different cost structure.
If you want a fully integrated solution then a WordPress plugin might be a great option. You get all the power of a WordPress site without having to tack on the store with a separate software package (like Magento).
WP e-Commerce (WPEC)
This group is doing something great by offering the basic code as a free plugin. You’ll need to pay to have a fully featured store but by offering the free option they are sticking closer to the spirit of Open Source software and, most importantly, the plugin will get more community testing and input so that’s a good recipe to grow strong over time. I have
I have used WP e-Commerce for 3 projects. It’s far from perfect. There are bugs and the code is rapidly evolving so that takes time to keep up with. But to me it seems to be the platform with the most momentum behind it.
Some useful features I’ve come across:
- Different pricing (and stock control) for variations of one product
- Tax options are strong but do not support tax variations by city. That is a big issue here in California. there is a new paid subscription option to solve this issue offered by TaxNOW but it’s really expensive at $.50 per transaction – that is what they charge to calculate tax for you.
- there are 18 free plugins and more paid ones out there.
- Lots of shipping integration options
- Lots of gateway connection options
Other Options:
Gravity Forms
If you just need an order form but not a whole shopping cart then this is a really simple solution that can easily accept and manipulate other kinds of non-purchase information since it’s got all the easy-to-use form building elements right there. You can even make ‘buy now” buttons that will prepopulate the form form other pages (although not like a cart where it will remember those settings from one page reload to the next). Gravity forms can do fancy things like connect to a MailChimp account so users can automatically sign up for a mailing list. Or even turn a purchase into a post – that would take lots of work to do in a real ecommerce system. This solution is limited to a fairly small number of products although if you can design a compact form or split the form into pages (a built in feature) then “small” could mean hundreds of products. Payment gets finalized at PayPal.
Examples of how I’ve used this tool:
- A simple Gravity Forms order form/store
- A donation form that allows for extra information to be captured
Shopp
Seems to be the main competition to WPEC. There is no free version. I see an equal number of complaints about bugs but I have never used it.
PHPurchase
This one lets you enter some products and easily add a “Buy Now” button you can put on any page. It doesn’t have category-based layouts so it’s not really for managing a full store. There are a few plugins out there that will automatically generate PayPal buttons also.
Jigo
This is a new offering. These folks were tired of working with Shopp so made their own system. Seems feature rich for a 1.0 version but I have no experience with it.
Some lists to learn more
- 10 best WordPress Plugin for ecommerce via Gaea
- Another top 10 list via speckboy
- 5 nicely detailed reviews via sixrevisions.com
- Compariosn notes on WP ecommerce plugins
1Password vs RoboForm
Remembering a different password for each site is an impossible task. If you use the same login credentials at most every site you are just asking for trouble that will eventually catch up to you. I started with a text file that had passwords that were partly obscured with a clever formula that was actually too easy to figure out. Eventually someone will steal your laptop or hack into your computer and do an automatic search across all your files to find that goldmine of passwords.
Encrypting a text file as a Word doc is a step above. Using a Google doc is an interesting option since Google docs are encrypted in the browser but still doesn’t offer many features compared to a real password manager.
A password manager is a simple concept. It is software that stores all your usernames and passwords to web sites, applications, and more in a local encrypted database. That database is protected by a single “master” password.
Enter 1Password. The Mac OS X Password Manager
Here’s the key list of features:
This software works really well. I can’t really say if RoboForm or 1Password is better but I think 1Password is more actively maintained and provides broader support and a wider range of features. They both get the job done without having to think about them.
I learned about RoboForm years ago but they didn’t have a Mac version. My brother used it and I was really impressed. RoboForm is free for up to 10 saved logins – then you need to by a license for each PC you use. Now it’s $10/year – not alot of money but of course you have to keep paying. 1Password starts at $31.99 but that’s a one time payment and you get a regular stream of free updates that give you access to lots of new features. The team at Agile that makes 1Password is very active about staying on top of all the changes in operating systems and browsers so everything works everywhere all the time.
Make sure and search Google for the terms 1Password Coupon — you can sometimes find significant discount coupon codes (Desktop apps or bundles only, generally these are not available for iPhone/iOS apps)