Book Image

WordPress 2.9 E-Commerce

Book Image

WordPress 2.9 E-Commerce

Overview of this book

WordPress is easily one of the hottest platforms for building blogs and general web sites. With the addition of the WP e-Commerce plug-in, it's also a competent platform for easily creating and running an online store, capable of selling physical items as well as services and digital downloads. WordPress with e-Commerce offers every feature that a seller and a customer may need. You can build an online store that makes it easier for the customers to find and buy products.WordPress 2.9 e-Commerce focuses on the integration of WordPress with the WordPress e-Commerce plug-in, covering all aspects of building and developing an online store from scratch.This book provides a simple, step-by-step approach to developing an effective online store. It guides you through your initial planning and first steps, plug-in installation and configuration, building your catalog of products to sell, accepting payments for your orders, and dealing with taxes and shipping. You will also learn how to promote and market your new store, handle customer accounts and staff roles, and deal with essential store security.As you work through each chapter, your online store will grow in scope and functionality. By the time you finish this book, you will have a complete and working store, ready to release your products to the world.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
WordPress 2.9 -Commerce
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
Preface
Free Chapter
1
Getting Started with WordPress and e-Commerce
2
Getting Ready to Sell
3
Configure Your e-Commerce Settings
4
Managing Your Product Catalog
5
User Accounts: Customers and Staff
6
Checkout and Payment Setup
7
Shipping, Taxes, and Processing Orders
Setting Up a WAMP Testing Platform
Index

Chapter 4. Managing Your Product Catalog

Up to this point, we have focused on configuring the settings for WordPress and the e-Commerce plugin. It's now time to dig into the real meat-and-potatoes of any online store: building a catalog of products to sell.

Adding new products to the catalog is a fairly straightforward process, but there are still a number of options to consider. For instance, how does a T-shirt seller account for different sizes and colors? What about selling a digital versus a physical item? For someone with a large number of items, what elements are available to help organize and categorize them?

In this chapter, we will start building a product catalog for our music shop that sells sheet music in both physical and digital formats.

This chapter will cover the following points:

  • Creating new products

  • Groups, categories, and tags

  • Price and Stock Control

  • Variations

  • Advanced Options