Now my client wants to add ecommerce

[andre]

Hi guys,

I have built a website with pw and now my client wants to add ecommerce. 

For me being a frontend dev, pw is amazing because it gives me full control of the output just using basic php, but now that I want to add more complicated functionality I am not liking it so much.

Is it possible to add ecommerce to a pw powered website without diving deep in php? Stripe and paypal integration, coupons, shipping tables...
I have seen padloper... it seems basic and not very actively developed.

Thanks in advance.

[renobird]

if Padloper doesn't meet your needs, I would go the Shopify Button route.

[horst]

alternatively this could be interesting:

https://processwire.com/talk/topic/14511-e-commerce-tutorial-with-processwire-snipcart-your-thoughts/

 

[Macrura]

Agreed Padloper is great if you need to keep it all in PW.

There is also FoxyCart - great system, rock solid, flexible, easy to use, and a breeze to implement on Processwire.. (see katonahartcenter.com, ohmspeaker.com for examples)

[andre]

Thanks for all the help... I really have to evaluate this situation better.

[andre]

So, after looking at wordpress theme development, it just feels so wrong compared to pw.
It seems like you are hacking the whole system to do something more than a blog.

In conclusion, for now I will have to use wordpress because of all the out of the box solutions, mainly woocommerce.
But at the same time I will try my best to learn more about php and the pw arquitecture, to build an ecommerce solution.

Expect a lot of topics from me 

[szabesz]

It seems like you are hacking the whole system to do something more than a blog.

It is true. But watch out for this:

https://woocommerce.wordpress.com/2016/10/27/the-new-crud-classes-in-woocommerce-2-7/

"How will this affect existing plugins? If you do anything with product, customer, orders, and coupons, you will be affected in some way. Even if you do a simple update meta call. This won’t break immediately, but your code will not be future proof. As soon as the schema changes in another update, your code will fail."

So choose only those plugins that are likely to be updated in the future. Also, keeping an eye on WordPress I can see that lots of breaking changes are ahead. Sure, they will probably not be introduced without some sort of deprecated code support, but not updated plugins will cause a lot of troubles for WordPress users in the following years to come...

[Vlad]

I think the best full solution is Ecwid. Can be integrated with any CMS or plain html website. You can customise it and make it look as you want.

It's also probably the 3rd ecommerce solution in the world as features after shopify and woocommerce. I use it for 2 years and they've improved it a lot. 

A lot of gateway payments, responsive, flexible, you can build whatever you want to be honest. And is also way cheaper than shopify. 

Basically the admin side is from their web interface and you just copy paste a code into your page to have the products listed.  I tried Woocommerce at some point but is a nightmare with all plugins, bugs and maintenance. 

https://www.ecwid.com/

[adrian]

Hi @Vlad - thanks for your feedback on this. Is there any chance you could provide an example of how to use ecwid in ProcessWire?

[Macrura]

I can also confirm that ecwid is good and could work easily with Processwire; i have used it on several sites.

The main reason why you might want to use FoxyCart or SnipCart over ecwid is that in Ecwid (at least the last time i used it) you have to setup the products within the ecwid interface, as opposed to defining your products within PW.

Part of the reason for using PW as the basis of an ecommerce site would be to take advantage of custom fields, and being able to code your own logic for all of the product's attributes, everything from images to pricing, variants, stock, etc. So if you used ecwid then you'd need to double enter the product details; Where ecwid can excel would be on simple sites where you just need to add a few products and don't care about using custom fields.

[Vlad]

I don't have any experience to be honest with Processwire, just found about it from a friend. I want to make a directory sort of website where users add content and others view and apply for it. What I had in mind was Expression Engine because had this huge flexibility but then I saw PW and was basically the same principles, but atleast I could play with it without buying the core functions. 

Anyway, coming back to Ecwid, Macrura is right you have to add the products from the Ecwid interface. So basically you add them and after you can copy two types of code to display them in your website. 1 - is the whole list of products, like a grid style let's say and when you click on one opens up the dedicated page for that product 2. a sort of widget or buy button that is just for one product. Like the Shopify button if you want a comparison.

Downside is that you have to edit the appearance of the cart and products from the Ecwid admin page, through custom css. Quite flexible I would say but nevertheless. 

Good aspect is that you can place this cart interface in 20 websites if you want and have the same admin page. So you can sell on facebook, on your website, on your blog, or pretty much anywhere. You can create a page from PW I suppose for each product and just add the Ecwid button for AddTo Cart. And when the buyer clicks the shop, pops on top of your page. You can also redirect it to a different page if you want to make it look like is integrated well dith the rest of the website.

Here is my website if you want an idea. I use it with wordpress, but I created some sort of custom pages for products. You can see it best at the Flio Up details page. I believe can be done easily with PW. Loads a bit slow as I have to restructure but anyway, maybe after holidays.

In terms of features they are quite rich as any other big ecommerce. But more importantly is easy to manage your sales. if you start having more than 100 orders/month this becomes annoying and time consuming with woocommerce for example. You can't copy paste properly addresses for labels, can't manipulate or modify orders fast and accurate, 10 plugins to keep track with, is a mess in my opinion. If you focus on handling an ecommerce as a business take a dedicated ecommerce platform like Shopify, Ecwid or even BigCartel, Magento. Saves a ton of time, money and headaches. You can have it for free with up to 10 products. That is really how I used it for 1-2 years just because I didn't need anything, the full features are there. Just recently switched to a paid plan of 15 euro/month to have access to some better SEO and apps. 

 

 

 

 

[elabx]

On 12/5/2016 at 9:40 AM, Vlad said:

If you focus on handling an ecommerce as a business take a dedicated ecommerce platform like Shopify, Ecwid or even BigCartel, Magento. Saves a ton of time, money and headaches.

THIS, so much. I love PW, but I have yet to see something that delivers so much to the users managing the store (in features and experience) as the online services for eCommerce that I have tried.

[Vlad]

18 hours ago, elabx said:

THIS, so much. I love PW, but I have yet to see something that delivers so much to the users managing the store (in features and experience) as the online services for eCommerce that I have tried.

Yeah, this is the problem with many reviews and suggestions on the internet, that they are given from the point of view of the developer. He's not the one that has to do the job of making fluent the shipping, handling customers, orders... On paper might look cool that you have the features but is a whole different thing to make life easier for the owner of the shop.

I was attracted also by many Woocommerce articles and the features you can have through plugins. The result is that I spent two weeks trying to make the plugins work properly, have an easy interface, and most of all be reliable. Is enough to have one of the plugins with some bugs and that messes up all your shop. So I just quit and came back to a dedicated solution. For the price they ask like 15-40$/month, I wouldn't think twice.