I have been developing for WordPress and OpenCart for some time, and have come to these realizations:
WordPress has some OK, sometimes decent, e-commerce plugins; probably e-shop and wp-ecommerce being the best. But they have their drawbacks, and they have been developed around wordpress for wordpress.
OpenCart is a great, solid, excellently coded, stand alone open source e-commerce system.
I ran across a thread in a forum about the possibility of integrating OpenCart into WordPress as a WordPress plugin, and I liked the idea because WordPress needs a REALLY SOLID e-commerce plugin. So I am now exploring developing that integration.
Here is what I have planned:
- Install OpenCart directly into WordPress as a plugin
- OpenCart would not use its own template system, but instead use WordPress’s theme
- The OpenCart Modules would become widgets
- OpenCart admin login will ride on WordPress admin login for seamless login to both systems.
- OpenCart customers would tie into the WordPress Users table, and that integration would have many benefits
Future Ideas
- Extend OpenCarts plugin-ability with a wordpress powered plugin that would plug into OpenCart
- More?…
Drop me some comments with your thoughts…
Josh
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I have a client website that has been using wp and wp-ecommerce for a while now. I went with wp-ecommerce because my client is not web oriented and needs a simple shopping cart that can handle 5 products with a flat shipping rate and that’s it. Something that integrated in wp (and the wp theme), doesn’t require a ton of customization to get going or a huge learning curve for the client was ideal.
Just recently I got fed up wp-ecommerce and the constant upgrades/bugs and started looking for an alternative shopping cart. I found open cart and think it’s a great alternative that my web client can adjust to easily.
The one feature that I will miss about not having a shopping cart integrated with wp is the cart in the sidebar that displays when the user is on a page outside of the online shop. That enables the customer to think of the entire site as a whole rather than the informational section of the site and the seperate shopping cart section of the site.
Well, I’m rambling on here. I just wanted to request that option (if that wasn’t already part of your plans) and say that I would be excited to use something like what you’re developing. I think it’s needed.
Jennifer,
Even though I am not the owner/creator of OpenCart, just a happy fan, I am happy you found it and liked it. As a developer and designer, it is a very strong and flexible e-commerce system, and VERY easy to use!!
FYI, it also has a very good “pages” feature to have non-shopping cart related content on the OpenCart site, this way the whole site looks the same and you can put some other good content in there.
This WP plugin is in the works….
Thanks for your comment!
Josh