[Plugin: WP E-Commerce] So completely full of bugs …

I don’t talk about this here too often, but since you brought it up…

I’ve worked with that plugin a few times. At first, I though, well, it’s beta-ish, and they’ll eventually get it right. And then many months later I get another project using it, and still, replete with bugs, stuff that would never make it out of alpha testing with most scripts. And then I try to put it in perspective, well, it’s free… but OOPS… people are paying for it. Well, I’m out of excuses. ??

If someone comes in with a very solid competitive product, they will eat WP E-Commerce’s lunch. I wonder if they’ve thought of that. I worked for a small software company years ago, where their head developer would code at light speed, test once for a couple minutes, and then release it. Maybe it’s something like that. I’ve been occasionally checking out a few other WP ecommerce scripts, and they’re getting better rapidly.

I can’t say anything nice, really, so I’m out of here!

IF everything worked properly it would really be a superb product. I guess that is what I find so utterly disappointing.

I agree with the rush idea, that looks true. One issue I have is with the Goldcart product and Linkpoint/First Data. There are no instruction telling you to ope n ports or upload .pem file. No info is sent to the gateway to double check orders besides a long transaction string and they have said they don’t have an account to debug. There is free testing gateway available for just that reason. I believe you hit the nail on the head.

Actually we paid $40 each for two upgrades, one I can’t use…

I’m not a real WordPress shopping cart user, but I tried to make a resource to help people select the best shopping cart plugin available. I have tested all the plugins out there. There are MANY competitors for WP e-Commerce/GetShopped and no body has eaten their lunch yet. In fact, the plugin keeps improving. There are a lot of sites in the showcase of the plugin and being one of the earliest movers in this field, the plugin is very popular and even has its own list of consultants.

I don’t get a kickback for recommending this plugin over any other. I’m just saying this ’cause I think it’s the truth.

I agree they keep improving but that does not stop them from being buggy and releasing too early.

When everything finally works it works well, but reading the forums there it takes a lot of work that should be done. For example one of my clients sells mp3s as well as cds. Right now on an approved transaction they have to wait until a store manager changes a setting on the back end before they get the download link. Not good for the buyer to have to wait for this.

Yes they have consultants that are very knowledgeable, that will gladly go on the clock to modify code for you, but I should not have to pay a consultant to get basic function from a plugin whose developer I have already paid.

I’m not a programer so I can’t code a new competitor, and looking at the code that is there it is not an easy task. However, if you sell something it should work.

In a research for a working eCommerce solution I’m also aware of the topics related to all *shop and *cart and *commerce WP-related plugins. Every single plugin has a few open threads for some bugs more or less critical and annoying and I can’t find even one stable plugin to count on setting up a client site.

I do enjoy WP a lot and I know it is not an eCommerce platform, but the other CMS-alike systems have if not good, then at least acceptable extensions to set a working system on. If the eCommerce team has issues supporting the major product there should be a community ‘call for arms’ for group bug fixing or something. Or if it is critical, better to know we have nothing to use than to fool ourselves with a alpha product.

I just took another look at WP-Ecommerce’s page here. I got a chuckle from a guy who called it WP-Crap-Commerce – his comments were like mine, but much blunter. “beta quality…” “a month working around errors…” and so on. My experience was nearly identical to that.

Can someone install it and very lightly test the basics and have it work? Obviously, yes. But if you have to develop with it and use a large number of its features, you’re in for some $%$%$$, and don’t say I didn’t warn you.

I can’t recommend that with a straight face. The one thing I’ll say in anyone’s defense regarding ecommerce for WP – because of WP’s infrastructure, and many users’ very heavy reliance on plugins, it’s a wonder anyone can get it working at all. So it’s a tough job.

But if you have a plugin with over a million downloads, but a rating of only 3 stars, that speaks volumes. WP is so popular that there is a demand for basically anything that will “kind of” work for ecommerce, and they cruised into that niche. Do they have consultants? Sure, how else are you going to get more than the simplest functionality to work?

If I were going to try any sort of WP ecommerce, I would most likely try the plugins that use FoxyCart, a nice 3rd-party shopping cart. I know Foxy works well from having made sites with it. Because it’s really separate from any system that’s calling it, there’s a very good chance of it actually working. They support loads of payment gateways, are adding features all the time, and if anything goes wrong, they’re on it really fast. What a concept! Nothing like WP-Ecommerce. I won’t say that WP users are cheap, but many will balk at Foxy simply because it does cost some money per month.

That said, if I were going to do serious ecommerce, like a really complex store, I would never consider WP for that. And I’m a huge fan of WP.

As far as I know, FoxyCart is not a real WordPress solution. It’s a hosted shopping cart. Your products, customer data, and everything else is on FoxyCart’s servers. This model is restrictive compared to when you have that data stored in your own database and you have total control of it.

Latest update.

I have resolved my issues and now have a functional cart. It took close to a month but once Cameron and Michelle were able to work directly with me we resolved everything quickly, a new bug was found and the issued we worked on will be in the next upgrade.

They are working on things and there definitely are people there who care, it just took way to long to get to them.

I have another 4 item cart running wp-ecommerce and it is fine, big projects I think I will be using a e-commerce platform not plugin.

I’m glad to hear that there’s a happy ending for MDI! That’s great.

@mk, Nope. Your products are not on Foxy servers. It’s a secure shopping cart, and yes, the secure cart itself is on their server. Your products are on your site, and that’s where you control them. (In fact, Foxy has a plugin for products that works on WP itself) Does this sound terrible? Well, that’s largely what Paypal does, too, if you use their shopping cart.

His commment is a very good illustration. People want control, and thinking that you’re hosting the whole thing yourself sounds attractive for that reason. This may be a very big reason for WP-Ecommerce still being popular. But it’s an illusion – WP Ecommerce also uses gateways, so ultimately you send your transaction through some third party anyway, whether using Foxy, WP-Ecommerce, or other systems.

I have wasted countless hours trying to get WP E-Cpmmerce plugin working. At the moment whenever I activate the plugin it removes all pages from my website, including the Products page. I am not prepared to waste any more time on this plugin and am looking for an alternative.

I’ve tried other plugins but none are satisfactory. I have very simple needs – to add electronic products and sell them on my website. It would be a bonus if I could also give away free electronic products. I really don’t care if it is a WP plugin or a third party solution. MDIWade mentioned Zen cart but unfortunately he didn’t say why this was not adequate or preferable, why not just use Zen cart if it works? Others referred to Foxy.

I was wondering if anyone else has successfully installed a third party commerce solution like Foxy or Zen cart?

Which works best and why?

Why would anyone persist with this buggy WP E-Commerce plugin if the other 3rd party ones work?

Thanks.

Zen Cart is a very robust (for being a free cart) system. We are working on a site that is e-commerce only and when development starts hat is where I will go for the shopping portion.

I wanted to stick with wp-ecommerce because I developed 3 sites for the same client who will be self managing. I did not want them to have to learn another complete system for one of them. Plus we had paid for gold cart as it worked with an existing merchant account, however this was the feature that required debugging.

When I got wp-ecommerce working on the larger site it works great. I have installed it on 2 or three sites that are smaller and don’t need anything more than a basic install, it worked as good as can be expected, Just that a couple of the paid plugins that I feel should have worked properly after being part of a paid product. Michelle will be taking what we figured out and putting it in their next release.

Improvements are being made, but that is what beta releases are for not major releases.