[Plugin: CataBlog] Catablog – great, but . . . ?

I’m not really familiar with e-commerce or shop so I can’t help you compare CataBlog to them. Maybe other members of the WordPress community can? I can say what CataBlog does do though…

• It has a simple admin interface that isn’t cluttered down with tons of form fields, settings and controls switches. The options panel does have a lot of options, but day to day usage doesn’t require using the options panel.
• The template system allows you to to set exactly how your catalog HTML is rendered, down to the tag, class, alt, rel, or any other attributes.
• A store template that is used to make a “buy now button” in the template system. This means CataBlog can integrate with almost any shopping cart system. CataBlog does not have a built in shopping cart.
• The ability to turn your catalog items and categories into single and archive pages with their own permalinks using public custom post types.
• Import and export features let you convert spreadsheets or other databases into catalogs.
• Built in LightBox JavaScript feature for easy integration
• Attach multiple images to one catalog entry and show or hide the “secondary images” whenever you want with the template system.
• Incredibly dedicated developer who offers support for reasonable requests to tons of people.

Some things CataBlog does not do.

• Customizable data fields for catalog items. (if you are doing a online store CataBlog does not have a shipping price field currently, show stopper for some.)
• Sort or filter your catalog by any catalog value. You may only sort by standard WordPress fields like title, order, date or randomly. You may only filter by CataBlog categories.
• If you turn the Public feature on you cannot customize the slugs for the category and catalog item without MySQL knowledge. An interface in admin will be added in a future release.

I’m sure there is more, I am curious to see if other people post their opinions on here and what they have to say. Also, check out the Facebook page and the official blog for more information about CataBlog.

Thanks. Without going into details, can it cope with different sizes and formats on different pages and also different thumbnail sizes within those different formats?

CataBlog has two image sizes you may set. One image size is the thumbnail, which will always be the exact width and height that you set. The other image size is the LightBox, which you may give a maximum height or width in pixels. The LightBox size is different depending on the original image’s aspect ratio.

The thumbnail image is meant to be part of a grid, so it crops or resizes the image into a set resolution.

The LightBox image is meant to display the image in high detail, so it does not crop the image.

Sounds to me like your needs won’t be met by CataBlog. A WordPress developer should be able to modify or create a theme for you that has multiple different image resolutions.