Long before I’d even heard of WordPress I designed and customized osCommerce online stores for clients. osCommerce is one of the most widely-used stable e-commerce platforms. Like WordPress, osCommerce is an open source (available for private or commercial use free of charge under the GNU Public License) platform.
When I started using WordPress I was instantly impressed. WordPress is very user-friendly, customizable and extendable. I won’t continue to sing the praises of WordPress now… I’ve done it often enough on this blog and to anyone who will listen to me. I will just say that the one thing that WordPress doesn’t do very well is e-commerce.
I have spent many hours searching for a good WordPress e-commerce plugin. There are many options out there but when I’ve talked to other developers the consensus has been that none of the plugins is good enough. My solution up to this point has been to use two different applications. Install WordPress in the root directory to run the website and install osCommerce in a store sub-directory. The drawback of this is that for the client to update their own site they have to learn two platforms with two separate administration areas. Clients haven’t complained about this but it isn’t ideal. This is why I can’t stop smiling! I’m so excited about this new free osCommerce plugin for WordPress – WPonlineSTORE.
With the WPonlineSTORE plugin you can run an osCommerce store from inside your WordPress site. You don’t need a special theme, you just put the store short code in a page and presto the store will run in your theme. I installed WPonlineSTORE twice this week. My clients are busy adding their own categories, products and product descriptions. When one of them is ready to go live I’ll update this post with a link. For now you can have a peak at the demo store in the twenty-ten theme and test-drive the demo admin area too.
The team is still working on some great features. Like running your store from within a Facebook page! Yes! – this tool will allow people to view products in Facebook and actually click a buy now button.
I’m so happy that these two wonderful open-source platforms have come together. The WPonlineSTORE plugin is still beta at this point but by the time you’ve entered all your products and setup your site it will be ready to power your WordPress osCommerce online store!!! I know that’s a lot of exclamation marks but I’m really excited!
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I remember using osCommerce way back when; and I remember thinking this is a great platform for an online store. This is even better news to learn someone is finally bridging the gap between osCom and WP. I’ll be putting this on my Priority TO-DO list for testing right after I click the “Post Comment” button below.
Edward Caissie recently posted..WordPress 3.3-beta1
If I already have OSCommerce installed in Root directory, and it is loaded with products already, as well as about a dozen custom features that don’t come standard with OSCommerce… can I move my whole OScommerce database over to the one WPonlineStore without losing any of my database or customer features?
Hi Eric,
There is a transfer service available from the WPonlineStore Plugin developers. Any custom modules added to osCommerce would not transfer but the standard data would be fine. Just go to AddOns and order the $89 migration service. http://www.wponlinestore.com/store/order/index.php. You’ll need to compare the features you have with what is currently available in the plugin.