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 8. Themes and Design Elements

In Chapter 2, Getting Ready to Sell we briefly discussed a few visual elements of a new WordPress installation, such as installing new themes and toying around with widgets. Now it's time to dig a little deeper into customizing the look and feel of your shop. Dealing with your online store's layout and design can simultaneously be a satisfying and maddeningly frustrating experience. Fortunately, you don't need to be a full-time designer or programmer in order to achieve a functional and tasteful look for your store-front, nor is there an absolute necessity to hire a designer to skin your shop.

If you do possess competent design skills, WordPress allows for full customization of existing themes or even construction of your own theme from scratch. If you are not comfortable with such a drastic undertaking, rest assured that there are a growing number of third-party themes either compatible with or designed especially for WP e-Commerce, and we can still...