PayPal or ZenCart or Both???

[_Mickey_]

Hello everybody,
Im new to this site and just starting out and am hoping I can learn a lot of useful information here and hopefully one day give some of my own back to the community.

At the moment I am currently trying to raise my stock levels as most items are hand made or customised and while doing this I am slowly trying to get a website up and running.

I was just wondering what people thought was the best option, using PayPal and Zen-Cart together or just using PayPal on it's own? For those of you that have used it, is it easier to control stock on Zen-Cart as we will offer lots of accessories as well.

Thanks in advance....

p.s
do I have to get a host so I can test Zen-Cart on the server or can I do it on Dreamweaver?

 

[domains]

Neither and / or

Wordpress shop + multiple payment gateway plugins = profit for a small business with no time to mess about with off the shelf carts like Zen

 

[_Mickey_]

Thanks for the response.
Would defiantly be a simply solution!

Sady I think I'm going to put myself through the hardship of doing a site...

 

[zookx]

If you are only selling a limited nuber of products then as sugested above there are several free plug-ins for wordpress that work well with paypal, or you could just use paypals own cart in a standard html based website.


I'd tend to avoid Zen Cart just to poor experiences of it in the past, and having two clients who were using it who had their own, admittedly outdated, installations hacked. There are a lot of off the shelf carts out there, some are better than others but I've yet to find a free one that I'd recomend.

 

[domains]

Thanks for the response.
Would defiantly be a simply solution!

Sady I think I'm going to put myself through the hardship of doing a site...

Hardship is using an off the shelf / cart provider that you end up paying trillions to every month as its not working!

WP (10 mins) Install
Shop Plugins (10 mins) Install
Upload XLS/CSV stock sheet (2 mins) Install

Then get on with the PR/Marketing!

Are you ok with any code?

 

[bargainmania]

Wordpress is fine if you have only a few products.
Better off with a purpose designed software like zencart for
a decent number of products. Would you go into a furniture shop
to buy food? Get the kit thats made to do the job.

Alistair

 

[polygon]

Wordpress is fine if you have only a few products.
Better off with a purpose designed software like zencart for
a decent number of products. Would you go into a furniture shop
to buy food? Get the kit thats made to do the job.

Alistair

when you say a few products, how many products would you regard as only a few?

why is wordpress only good for a few products and something like zencart good for more. I thought the WP ecommerplugins etc were so that it was meant to handle an ecommerce store for anything?.

 

[domains]

Some WP plugins cannot handle decent import details from csv/xml etc etc but most are fine...

As stated above, it really depends on your products and how many you have, never had a problem with using WP regardless of totals, obviously if it is a big ecommerce project you need BIG ecommerce power

 

[bargainmania]

Just try using a plugin to manage 100 products even.
It is an absolute nightmare to even configure, There is a reason why
wordpress is a blogging tool and why Zencart, opencart etc are not.
Simply a plugin does not have the same functionality as a shopping cart.

The same comparison would be going into a garage to buy a book. Its fine if the
garage only stocks a few books and they are all niche related but as soon as you try to run a bookshop from a garage you have lots of hassles.

Sure wp is great for seo and should be utilised for this purpose via integration.

Alistair

 

[_Mickey_]

Already gone the eBay route but looking for something that people will take more seriously and also cut down on the eBay fees.

Would you say open cart is better than zen cart?

 

[jimmyjimmerson]

Has anyone got any examples of sites using wpshop?

This could be what I am looking for to be honest.

 

[bargainmania]

There are quite a few, just google wordpress shops and you will
find some demos.

Alistair

 

[jimmyjimmerson]

I had a look and it looks like they were mainly just an added extension of the website.

You couldn't just create a basic ecommerce store from scract, you still had all your posts etc on the home page.

Or have I tested wrong and just looked at the wrong examples?

 

[ecterra]

my 2cent.. better to have a shopping cart with built in CMS than a CMS with shopping cart plugin

cheers
Nonny

 

[jimmyjimmerson]

my 2cent.. better to have a shopping cart with built in CMS than a CMS with shopping cart plugin

cheers
Nonny

I think I will agree with you there to be honest after seeing some of the examples around.

I will probably go along the line of uploading a magento skin/template using a magento hosting company.

 

[Cris]

Has anyone got any examples of sites using wpshop?

This could be what I am looking for to be honest.

Avactis Shopping Cart has a plug-in for WordPress, you could even have a free shopping cart on your WordPress site.

Install Avactis Shopping Cart
Add plugins for WordPress
Upload your products
Start selling

You can find some screenshots here:
http://blog.avactis.com/search/label/WordPress

 

[Andy0018]

Already gone the eBay route but looking for something that people will take more seriously and also cut down on the eBay fees.

Would you say open cart is better than zen cart?

Magento is good!