TxP + E-commerce

mrdale · 2005-03-10 21:19:14

> This is something that would greatly benefit a broader appeal for txp. I think a plugin “ransom” would be paid off in days if not hours…

Yup, I’d contribute…

raveoli · 2005-03-10 21:21:41

bluearc21

Nope. I’ve tried them all, tested them etc, and found:

The drupal ecommerce script was a bit too basic for my use. It has no “top 10 bestselling products” feature, and I really need that, since I’m gonna sell independent mp3 music and sample-packs.

phpShop (the original flavour) has no built-in option for selling downloadable products, so it was a no go for me. However, it will probably be my first choice (if I can’t by then make a shop in Textpattern;-) when in the nearby future I’m designing a shop for my girlfriend, selling fashion clothes and accessories.

phpShop is simple, not bloated but has most of what one would need for a shop, and easy to skin, according to users, and the portfolio of sites designed with it.

Mambo phpShop is very featurerich, yet it is not as bloated as Zen Cart and osCommerce and the like, which is very important to me. I’m actually currently using Mambo phpShop for the development of my current project. That said, I must say that I really miss the lightness of Textpattern, when comparing it against Mambo. Mambo is IMHO one of the best portal cms’s out there, but still too big and bloated for my taste.

And it is definetely not as easy to skin as a TXP-site…

Hmm…

Anyway, if you visit the phpShop website, linked to in my earlier post, and then visit their forum, there is a section there that shows some REALLY GREAT shops, built on phpShop… I was very impressed. Go have a look;-)

Last edited by raveoli (2005-03-10 21:30:00)

bluearc21 · 2005-03-10 23:33:42

At the end of the day, my thoughts also dwell on an “Admin > Shop” tab in TextPattern, with “Products”, “Customers”, and “Orders” sub-tabs (maybe a third level?).

I’m considering hiring someone to write this.

zem · 2005-03-10 23:54:34

Don’t underestimate the complexity of this kind of thing. There’s no such thing as a simple online store package.

Sure, any one particular store might only have a few simple requirements for things like pricing, tax, shipping, product attributes and customer details. But each and every store has a different set of “simple” requirements. Creating something flexible enough to handle even a modest set of those simple stores is very complicated. Check google and sourceforge for the hundreds of dead shopping cart scripts and you’ll see what I mean.

E-commerce software projects tend to fall into one of three categories:

1. Simple but dead open source projects. They start off with a simple design, and get to about version 0.6 when they realise that it’s far too limiting, and they’ve painted themselves into a corner.

2. Full-featured, big, complex unmaintainable messes like osCommerce and its derivatives. Building the code is only half the job; you have to build it in such a way that it can be maintained in the long term. Open source projects that succeed at this scale are rare.

3. Commercial products. This is where the developers who know what they’re doing all go.

Destry · 2005-03-11 08:32:54

Considering we all think of zem as a developer who knows what he’s doing , I guess we can forget about ever seeing this in TxP.

On the other hand, zem says it’s complex, not impossible, so if somone has the gumption to produce some other solution, go for it. There is obvious interest.

EDIT: Not to get off-target, but frankly what I would really like to employ zem for at the moment (yes, contribute funds to) are the littler things that everyone needs/uses, not just e-commerce people; such as the integration of zem_contact into TxP, with a few <a href=“http://forum.textpattern.com/viewtopic.php?id=6510”>improvements</a>. That sort of thing.

Last edited by Destry (2005-03-11 08:52:24)

bluearc21 · 2005-03-11 22:55:23

Before TextPattern, there wasn’t a lightweight, open-source web publishing software that I thought could be used effectively and intentionally for a broad range of designs and sites.

I feel the same about eCommerce. It doesn’t exist yet, but it’s possible to have an open source, tight package that does the essentials really well, and can be extended easily with a simple plug-in technique.

What better community to take it on that the TXP community? And what better publishing software to extend into commerce than TextPattern?

King Rat · 2005-03-12 00:57:57

Hear, hear~!

raveoli · 2005-03-13 18:38:15

bluearc21 you’re right:
The simple, yet very flexible, quite unusual way Textpattern works, could be applied to a shopping cart solution. The back-end of TXP is so simple, yet really powerful. It’s very progressive.

Of course the shopping cart would not have to be a flully fledged shopping cart framework – but “just” a bare bones approach. Start with the essentials.

I can’t program PHP, so naturally I can’t do it – but if one starts the job, I’m sure there are some people willing to join the effort?

But until that happy day;

I’d like to know what the best way to go would be, according to Zem or Dean or Kusor?

They are all well known for their creativity – so it would be a bliss to get some input =)

raveoli · 2005-03-14 21:59:32

As a little curiosum I found a small (VERY compact) shopping script for WordPress, called MICROSHOP.

http://www.asymptomatic.net/wp-hacks

It can also be integrated pretty nicely into WordPress by using another script found on the same page, called exStatic (kind of a wrapper I guess)…

If there was something like that script for Textpattern, and it could additionally link a virtual product to a file, uploaded through the newly added “files” tab, it would be if not pure genius – plain * pure * bliss =)

Try downloading it – it is AMAZING performance from such a small script – only 104 KB unpacked;-)

aboswell · 2005-03-18 22:24:28

This is a very interesting topic for me. I have used TXP 3 times so far (with 2 more sites backed up). On every one I have used it a a CMS not blog. I love it. I love this community! Mary has helped me to extract the urls out for a custom pulldown, and others are so free with advice and help. I hope I can be the same when I have a few more sites under my belt.

On to eCommerce:

I (and partners) have a few sites. One is a fairly static site that I am converting over. The other 2 are ecommerce.

ScreenGuardz is a hybrid HTML (tables, sorry) /RTML (yahoo merchant solutions). Yahoo is a good solution for a shopping cart because they handle the merchant account.

Headhound is a pure osCommerce site. ON ACID. As far as I am concerned, we have taken osCommerce to a new level. We got a pretty good programmer on-board and he set me up with some rockin templates so I could change everything about the look and feel (I am a geek/designer, not a programmer).

I am hoping to use TXP/Yahoo for the new Screenguardz site that I am working on. I host everything off of the Yahoo stores so the solution I am suggesting probably wouldn’t work for me but…

Yahoo has a great system of store tags (php includes). If you could get everything TXP running on Yahoo Hosting and set up a merchant account, you could use the store tags in your articles (or vice-versa).

Sorta like this: Yahoo uses an id number for EVERYTHING. so set Custom Field 1 to be that number. Then in your article template you can set all the Yahoo code up to call said Custom Field. i know there is more that I am leaving out, but it really ins’t a formed idea. Just a thought…

Baseline_Benny · 2005-03-18 22:51:48

bluearc21 wrote:
<blockquote>
Before TextPattern, there wasn’t a lightweight, open-source web publishing software that I thought could be used effectively and intentionally for a broad range of designs and sites.

I feel the same about eCommerce. It doesn’t exist yet, but it’s possible to have an open source, tight package that does the essentials really well, and can be extended easily with a simple plug-in technique.

What better community to take it on that the TXP community? And what better publishing software to extend into commerce than TextPattern?
</blockquote>

Amen.

I’d happily test it….

Ben.

bluearc21 · 2005-03-18 23:45:41

zem:

Don’t underestimate the complexity of this kind of thing. There’s no such thing as a simple online store package.

Agreed. There’s “no such thing”, yet. Zem in your quietest moments of contemplation, could you envision a commerce admin plugin for TextPattern? If so, being a programmer currently working on TextPattern source, what would you consider a reasonable scope and scale for such a project?

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#37 2005-03-10 21:19:14

Re: TxP + E-commerce

#38 2005-03-10 21:21:41

Re: TxP + E-commerce

#39 2005-03-10 23:33:42

Re: TxP + E-commerce

#40 2005-03-10 23:54:34

Re: TxP + E-commerce

#41 2005-03-11 08:32:54

Re: TxP + E-commerce

#42 2005-03-11 22:55:23

Re: TxP + E-commerce

#43 2005-03-12 00:57:57

Re: TxP + E-commerce

#44 2005-03-13 18:38:15

Re: TxP + E-commerce

#45 2005-03-14 21:59:32

Re: TxP + E-commerce

#46 2005-03-18 22:24:28

Re: TxP + E-commerce

#47 2005-03-18 22:51:48

Re: TxP + E-commerce

#48 2005-03-18 23:45:41

Re: TxP + E-commerce

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