I am currently a beta-tester for shopplugin.net. I think this is going to be a great solution. I’ve done some preliminary testing with it on wpmu(no testing with bp) and it worked for the most part, except it installed db tables as global instead of using blog prefix. But that should be an easy fix. I would highly recommend looking at it as I believe it to be well written software and have been impressed with the developer behind it (I have no relation to him). One thing though, it’s not free- it costs about $55
Thanks for the suggestion. Do you plan to test with buddypress? Since the developer has no immediate plans to support wpmu I’d like to know if it works with wpmu and buddypress before shelling out any money.
now that I look, I actually did have bp installed when I tested this and did not see any conflicts. But I did not test enough to be confident. Will try to test more next week
I’m at a loss how you would work a shopping cart into BuddyPress (from a conceptual, not technical standpoint). Are you trying to create an environment where everyone has their own store? If that’s the case, you could easily adapt a standard ecommerce theme into a Buddypress compatible one and make that the one and only blog theme for users. Just curious.
I am looking at keeping the cart in the blog, but I could see using a shopping cart per group.
But where I really would like to see a shopping cart integration is for users to see their purchase history or subscription info as part of their bp account so they don’t have to go into wp dashboard to view that
Hmmm, dimensionmedia, you might be on to something. Yes, I want to offer each user a blog and a store front. The people at instinct who wrote wp e-commerce have already developed something like what I have in mind for my niche. It’s http://getshopped.com. However, from posts I’ve read, I guess they had to rework the plugin to get it to work with wpmu and they’re not giving up on those little secrets. But back to your idea. Can we chat? I’m not sure I’m getting it. I’ll have to research some ecommerce themes. Just never thought of it that way. Thought I’d need a shopping cart like wp ecommerce or eshop (tried it, didn’t get it with the pages setup). Thanks for stirring up the grey matter.
Danf, let me know how you do with your testing. I just can’t fork over 55 bucks unless I’m absolutely sure it’s going to work. It looks pretty slick though.
FYI – you can test out shopp with admin access to test backend at demo.shopplugin.net – click on about link for login info
I wanted to give an update here as I am continually impressed with this shopping cart (http://shopplugin.net/). I would recommend it to anyone needing a solution. (Im not the only one singing its praises: http://lbnuke.com/2008/12/30/wordpress-ecommerce-plugins-shopp-vs-wp-ecommerce/ )
Anyways, its now publicly available as a 1.0 release for $55 standalone, plus $25 for gateways ($300 for developer license – he doesn’t specify where wpmu falls on this)
So, with the latest 1.0 release, the developer behind shopp fixed the global database issue I had previously mentioned. I can now install it in a wordpressmu environment (with buddypress installed, too) and get it running on 2 different blogs, each with their own products/carts! It requires further testing to declare it production ready, but I could not find anything wrong with it from an hour of testing. The only issue I found was doing the automated upgrades causing an error in wpmu – so if/when upgrading the plugin, be sure to do it manually instead of through the automated process (but Im sure that will get fixed in future releases as well)
danf,
That sounds great. Perhaps you can send us some urls so we can see this firsthand. I’m guessing for one to add/edit products, they have to do this in their blog dashboard?
unfortunately my site is just an internal install so not accessable online. But you can go to http://demo.shopplugin.net and see it in action. This is just a single wp install so not running on wpmu but it would be the same thing, just on two different blogs. You can even log into the backend as admin and see how to create everything
I’m also trying to integrate ecommerce capabilities into Buddy Press – but for a completely different reason.
We are setting up a campaign website on the MU platform to use the strength of WP’s CMS for the blog, new, media parts of the site – and then utilize MU and BuddyPress to allow campaigners / supports a place to communicate and interact. (similar to Barak’s “my.BarakObama.com”)
We want to allow supports to donate to the campaign and track there donations on their member pages. I’m looking into a 3rd Party Member management platform called “amember” (www.amember.com) as it has a wordpress integration plugin and offers the ability to sell “subscription” products. It is only tested with the standard version of WP – not MU, so I’m running into some database issues where the wp_1_ prefix is throwing me for a loop. (I’m not the best PHP programmer)
Any thoughts on using these two platforms together? Is there a better solution?
I’d love to know if there’s been any developments on integrating a shopping cart with Buddy Press. I too am looking to do this. Any recommendations?
