Incompatibility between Ecwid Shopping Cart, Atahualpa, and WordPress SEO

On my WordPress site, I have been using the theme Atahualpa, the plugin “Ecwid Shopping Cart”, and the plugin “WordPress SEO by Yoast” together for about a year with no problems—until this week. Within the last 14 days, “Ecwid Shopping Cart” 1.4 stopped working on WordPress 3.5.2 when Atahualpa 3.7.12 and “WordPress SEO by Yoast” 1.4.12 are also installed and activated—specifically, the Ecwid store does not load, apparently because one of the Ecwid shortcodes stops working.

Today is 2013-6-29. Based on the info at www.ads-software.com, here are the dates when the plugins/theme were last updated:
Atahualpa: 2013-04-15
Ecwid Shopping Cart: 2013-6-17
WordPress SEO by Yoast: 2013-6-28
Since this problem started in the last couple weeks, I’m assuming the problem is related to a change in either Ecwid Shopping Cart or WordPress SEO.

I was able to reproduce the problem on a fresh installation of WordPress just now; here’s how:

1. On InMotion shared hosting, I used Softaculous to install a fresh installation of WordPress 3.5.2
2. I logged in to WordPress.
3. From Plugins / Add new, I searched for, installed, and activated Ecwid Shopping Cart 1.4
4. Ecwid Shopping Cart invited me to “Please visit the created page”. I clicked the link to view the Store page that Ecwid has created. The Ecwid store loaded properly. Viewing the html source of the page, I found the following code: <!-- Ecwid code. Please do not remove this line otherwise your Ecwid shopping cart will not work properly. --> <div><script type="text/javascript" src="https://app.ecwid.com/script.js?1003"></script></div> <div><script type="text/javascript"> xMinicart("style=","layout=attachToCategories"); </script></div> <div><script type="text/javascript"> xCategories("style="); </script></div> <div> <script type="text/javascript"> xProductBrowser("categoriesPerRow=3","views=grid(3,3) list(10) table(20)","categoryView=grid","searchView=list","style=");</script></div> <!-- Ecwid code end -->
5. From Plugins / Add new, I searched for, installed, and activated WordPress SEO by Yoast 1.4.12 (Note: I have not tested with the development version of WordPress SEO; so it’s possible the problem has been fixed in the development version.)
6. WordPress SEO asked “Help improve WordPress SEO”. I clicked “Allow tracking”.
7. I reloaded the Ecwid Store page; it loaded properly.
8. From Appearance / Themes / Install Themes, I searched for, installed, and activated Atahualpa 3.7.12
9. I reloaded the Ecwid Store page; this time, the Ecwid store did not load. Viewing the source for the page, I found: <!-- Ecwid code. Please do not remove this line otherwise your Ecwid shopping cart will not work properly. --> <div></div> <div><script type="text/javascript"> xMinicart("style=","layout=attachToCategories"); </script></div> <div><script type="text/javascript"> xCategories("style="); </script></div> <div> <script type="text/javascript"> xProductBrowser("categoriesPerRow=3","views=grid(3,3) list(10) table(20)","categoryView=grid","searchView=list","style=");</script></div> <!-- Ecwid code end -->
10. Comparing the code for the page that did not work to the code for the page that did work, I noticed that the following Ecwid code had been stripped from the page that did not work: <script type="text/javascript" src="https://app.ecwid.com/script.js?1003"></script>
11. From Plugins / Installed Plugins, I deactivated WordPress SEO.
12. I reloaded the Ecwid Store page; it loaded properly.
13. From Plugins / Installed Plugins, I activated WordPress SEO.
14. I reloaded the Ecwid Store page; the Ecwid store did not load.

I was able to work around the problem as follows:

1. From Pages / All Pages, I clicked edit for the Store page. In Text view, I found the following code: <!-- Ecwid code. Please do not remove this line otherwise your Ecwid shopping cart will not work properly. --> [ecwid_script] [ecwid_minicart] [ecwid_searchbox] [ecwid_categories] [ecwid_productbrowser] <!-- Ecwid code end -->
2. I replaced [ecwid_script] with <div><script type="text/javascript" src="https://app.ecwid.com/script.js?1003"></script></div>
3. I clicked Update.
4. I reloaded the Ecwid Store page; it loaded properly.
5. Note for other users: edit the store page in Text view (not Visual view), and do not switch back to Visual view. Also, replace 1003 with your Ecwid store ID.
6. From Pages / All Pages, I clicked edit for the Store page. I used revisions to revert to the original (non-working) version of the Store page, so you can see the problem for yourself on my test site if you visit within about a week. (I will take my test site down after a week or so, for security.)

To summarize, the Ecwid [ecwid_script] shortcode stops working when both Atahualpa and “WordPress SEO by Yoast” are installed. Users can work around this problem by doing the shortcode replacement manually in the wordpress editor. This is not an ideal solution because it may break when the Ecwid plugin is updated in the future—so I hope the developers of Ecwid, Atahualpa, and WordPress SEO will investigate this problem and solve it.

Jacob Gotwals

https://www.ads-software.com/extend/plugins/ecwid-shopping-cart/