eCommerce Solution for WordPress Blog
The ‘Add/Edit Products’ menu lets you add a new product or edit/update an existing product. Below is a screenshot of the ‘Add/Edit Products’ menu:
Product Configuration Menu Screenshot
The first 2 fields are mandatory to fill out when adding a new product to the database the rest are optional. The optional fields are for additional functionality and customization.
WordPress eStore is not a heavyweight online store/e-Commerce system. It is a simple and easy-to-use WordPress plugin that allows you to sell any kind of products (tangible and non-tangible) or services directly from your own site, with payment via PayPal, 2Checkout or Manual payment. It has the design flexibility to blend into your site’s look and feel, it has a shopping cart facility to handle sales of multiple products, and it provides purchasers with a customized time-limited encrypted download link to maintain the security of your digital assets. Best of all, it can be set up in less than five minutes.
The WP eStore plugin allows you to add “Add to Cart”, “Buy Now” or “Subscription” buttons anywhere on your wordpress blog (eg. posts, pages, sidebars) easily. It allows you to add the shopping cart anywhere on your blog too (eg. posts, pages, sidebars). The shopping cart shows the user what they currently have in the cart and allows them to remove the items.
After the buyer makes a payment, a pre-configured email is automatically sent to the buyer with an encrypted product download link (multiple links if the buyer purchased multiple products). The link automatically expires after a configured time. The seller also gets a product sale notification email. This is why the WP eStore plugin is great for selling digital products (ebook, mp3, photos etc) directly from your wordpress blog.
The encrypted link can be configured so it redirects the buyer to a web page when clicked. This is particularly useful when you want to set up a video on demand (V.O.D) system for example. You can also use this plugin to send membership info (login and password) to the buyer after he/she has paid for it.
With this plugin you can design the way you want to display the product listing (You use the WordPress editor to design the way you want the product listing to appear with images, inside a table etc, then just add an ‘add to cart’ button next/below the product with the trigger text which allows the buyer to purchase the product). You also have the flexibility of showing the shopping cart anywhere (posts, pages, sidebar) on your blog.
Yes, all of our plugins are kept upto date to work with the latest version of WordPress. We use our plugins on our own site, so it is in our best interest to keep the plugins upto date.
No, the WP eStore plugin is a one time purchase software.
See the why buy a premium WordPress plugin page.
No, the WP eStore plugin has no restrictions on the number of products you can have.
At the moment the WP eStore plugin has 7 payment gateways that comes with the plugin for FREE (PayPal, 2Checkout, Authorize.net, Manual, BitPay, Google Wallet, eWay Rapid 3.0).
We also have a premium addon that can be used to add a lot more payment gateways to eStore if you need. See the Payment Gateway Details page to learn more.
Yes the eStore plugin is PCI Compliant.
WP eStore currently integrates with AWeber, MailChimp, GetResponse.
You can use any properly coded theme with our plugins. See this article for more information on what a properly coded theme is. Many of our customers use the following themes with our WordPress plugins.
Yes, the WP eStore plugin is specifically designed to sell digital products securely on Auto-Pilot
Yes you can sell services and subscriptions (recurring and non-recurring) with the eStore.
Yes
Yes, Any of the customer visible text/messages displayed by the plugin can be translated for localization purpose.
The following languages are already included in the plugin:
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes, it can be configured to accept all the currencies that are supported by the Payment Gateway that you are using.
Yes, you can customize the “buy” button. You can use any button image or customize the text of the default button. This can be done on a global or per product basis.
Yes, typically you will make a ‘Thank You’ page where your customers will be redirected to after payment.
Yes
The plugin will send an email to the buyer which will contain an encrypted download link that is valid for a configurable amount of time. The buyer will also be able to download the digital products from the “Thank You” page instantly after payment.
Yes, the downloadable files can be stored anywhere on the web (eg. your domain, a storage site, amazon S3) as long as it’s accessible. Customers always receive a link that allows them to download the file but they never know where it’s actually coming from.
The short answer is yes. However, if you plan to sell large files then you must read the document on Selling Large Files with eStore.
Yes, you can break a large file into smaller files and deliver all the parts upon purchase of the product.
Yes (How to sell digital and no-digital products with WP eStore plugin)
Yes (How to use sales tax)
Read the WP eStore license details
No, you don’t need any specif PayPal account to use the WP eStore plugin but I think PayPal requires you to have a premium or business account if you want your customers be able to pay you using their credit card. Upgrading to PayPal Premium or Business account is free.
No, your site does not need an SSL certificate. The credit cards are accepted on the payment gateway’s site and uses their SSL. However, if you want to use a payment gateway that does on-site checkout (example: Stripe) then you will need an SSL certificate.
No, there is no rush or limited sale for this product. However, over time as we add more features to the product the price is increased to match the development effort. Existing customers get free future updates. The only reason for you to buy right now would be to lock in the current price.
The WordPress eStore plugin is mainly used for selling digital products securely from your blog but you can still sell non-digital products using this same plugin. To sell non-digital content just leave the Download URL field empty when you add the product to the database. This way when the buyer receives the courtesy/confirmation email it won’t have any link there. Instead it will say there is no downloadable content for this product.
Shipping cost is only added to the cart if any item in the cart has a product with shipping cost specified in the “Shipping Cost” field of the product. So for example, if a customer adds a digital product together with a physical product to the cart only then the shipping cost of the Physical product and the base shipping cost (If this is specified in the settings menu) is applied to the cart.
Below is a screenshot of how the shopping cart looks like when someone adds both a digital and a physical product to the cart:
Shopping Cart Screenshot with both Physical and Digital products
And this is a screenshot of what the customer will see in the email or the “Thank You” page after payment:
Screenshot of a Post Payment Message
Please refer to the shipping cost calculation guide to understand how shipping cost is calculated for non-digital products.
WP eStore’s main strength is selling of digital product so we do not offer complex shipping options in the eStore plugin in an effort to keep the plugin easy to use and lightweight. Please feel free to read the available shipping options in eStore from this page so you can determine if it will meet your shipping needs.
If you just want to use flat shipping cost for each item then just enter “0” in the Base Shipping Cost option in the settings menu and add the individual shipping cost in the “Item Shipping Cost” field when you configure the product.
If you just want to use a fixed shipping cost for the cart no matter how many items are in the cart then you can achieve this by specifying this fixed amount in the base shipping cost. Remember, the base shipping cost is only added to the cart if a product in the cart has individual shipping value specified (this way if a customer buys digital product he doesn’t get charged any shipping). Use an individual shipping value of “0.001” for your physical items which won’t increase the shipping cost but will trigger the base shipping cost to be added as a fixed shipping rate.
You can have PayPal calculate shipping charges automatically. PayPal calculates shipping charges based on rates that you specify in your account profile. You can set up shipping rates as follows:
You can specify shipping rate based on the weight of the items too. Within shipping regions, you can specify rates for different shipping methods, such as standard and express delivery.
We have a tutorial on how to setup paypal profile based shipping that you can look at if you have never configured profile based shipping before.
To use PayPal’s profile based shipping simply check the “Use PayPal Profile Based Shipping” checkbox in the settings menu of eStore and the shopping cart will use the shipping options you have specified in your PayPal account profile:
PayPal’s profile based shipping
If you use PayPal’s profile based shipping, your customers will be prompted to enter the shipping destination when they go to checkout via PayPal.
Choose destination for shipping calculation
After the customer enter the destination it will automatically add the shipping amount based on what you have specified in your profile (eg. based on the weight of item and or delivery location).
Shipping is calculated based on the specified criteria in your profile
What if you want to use the simple shipping option but be a little more intelligent with the shipping cost calculation and want to use Base Shipping Cost in conjunction with the individual product shipping cost to offer your customers a better shipping price? You can do that too.
The base shipping cost is added to the total of the individual products shipping cost (The base shipping cost is only applied to the cart if any of the cart item has an individual shipping amount specified for it). So for example if you had two products that costs $50 each and you want to charge $10 shipping for each item then someone buying both the products would have to pay $100(product cost) + $20(shipping cost) = $120(total). That is not a very realistic shipping price since you are shipping both the products to the same address in one package so it will probably cost you $15 instead of $20.
How do you handle this situation?
You use a base shipping cost of $5 and individual product shipping cost of $5.
Now when someone buys both the products the shipping cost will be calculated as following:
$5(shipping for product1) + $5(shipping for product2) = $10(total individual products shipping cost)
Total shipping cost = $10(total individual products shipping cost) + $5(base shipping cost) = $15!
When someone buys one product the shipping cost will be calculated as following:
$5(shipping for product1) = $5(total individual products shipping cost)
Total shipping cost = $5(total individual products shipping cost) + $5(base shipping cost) = $10! (this is the shipping you wanted to charge for one product)
So, hopefully you can see that using the base shipping cost in conjunction with the individual product shipping cost you can be very dynamic in determining the total shipping cost for a purchase.
You can use the shipping variation option field to add more shipping options for your need. For example, you can add a variation called Shipping with the values “Domestic” and “International” that adds different amount to the cart based on the user selection.
Please refer to the WP eStore Shipping Variation documentation to learn how to use variations.
Check the bulk quantity shipping discount addon for details.
The Amount Based Shipping addon allows you to automatically apply a shipping amount to the cart based on a price range.
The simplest way to test if the WordPress eStore plugin is working is to create a test product with the price of 1 cent ($0.01) and purchase that product yourself as a buyer.
It is a good idea to turn on debug (check the “Enable Debug” checkbox) from the settings menu and you will be able to see every step of the transaction process (IPN validation, product verification etc) in the ipn_handle_debug.log file.
You can also use the plugin in SandBox mode (PayPal Sandbox) which will allow you to test it without having to perform a live transaction. To test it using PayPal Sandbox do the following:
Please turn on debug from the settings menu and you will be able to see every step of the transaction processs (IPN validation, product verification etc) in the ipn_handle_debug.log file.
If you need a more detailed guide on using PayPal Sandbox then check the following post:
If something is not functioning as expected after the payment is made on PayPal (e.g. emails are not getting sent out) it is a good idea to enable debug and perform a test transaction so you can analyze the log file to identify the issue. The following URL will help:
Installing and Upgrading WordPress eStore plugin is very easy. The installation of this plugin is similar to all the other WordPress plugins.
First deactivate the WP Simple Paypal Shopping cart plugin if you are using it. WP eStore plugin has all the functionality of the WP Simple Paypal Shopping cart.
Before you ask…
Yes, the plugin will retain all the previous information that you saved. No data (your product details, settings values etc.) will get lost during the upgrade.
Important Note 1: If you have a live site with high traffic where customers are constantly making purchases then you should consider installing the new version of the plugin on a test WordPress site first to minimize any chance of upgrade related issue taking you out by surprise. Most people prefer to have a copy of WordPress installed in one of the sub-directories for testing purpose (you can install it in a sub-domain too). This way if you face an issue due to upgrading, you can report it to us and while we work on it, your main site won’t be affected.
Important Note 2: Some users have this bad habit of keeping multiple copies of the same plugin in the “plugins” directory. This is the source of many problems. Please note that you should only have one version of any WordPress plugin in the plugins directory at any given time. If you want to keep backups then you can keep it in your “uploads” directory or on your computer’s hard drive.
With that said, please follow the instructions below when upgrading the WordPress eStore plugin from an older version to a newer version:
Do the following steps to upgrade the plugin:
Don’t be scared to delete the plugin. It will retain all the previously entered settings and product information (no data will get lost during the upgrade).
Step 1. First add the product(s) to the database through the Add/Edit Products interface. Products can be modified through the Manage Products interface.
Step 2. To add the Add to Cart button simply add the following trigger text to a post or page next to the product.
[wp_eStore_add_to_cart id=PRODUCT-ID]
Replace PRODUCT-ID with the actual product id of the product (example, 1). Product IDs are unique numbers that are automatically created for you when you add a product to the database. All of your products IDs can be found in the Manage Products section.
Step 3. To add the shopping cart to a post, checkout page and/or sidebar simply add the following trigger text to a post or page in HTML view or use the sidebar widget. The shopping cart will only be visible when a customer adds a product in the post or page.
[wp_eStore_cart]
Please leave a comment below if you have any questions.
WordPress eStore allows you to create “Buy Now” type button functionality so your customers don’t have to add items to the cart. The “Buy Now” type buttons take the customers directly to the payment page for payment when clicked.
Adding a “Buy Now” type button is similar to adding an Add to Cart button. The main difference is in the shortcode that is used to place the button on a post or page. To insert a “Buy Now” type button add the following shortcode in a post or page:
[wp_eStore_buy_now_button id=PRODUCT-ID]
Replace ‘PRODUCT-ID’ with the actual product id of the product you are selling. For example:
[wp_eStore_buy_now_button id=1]
Try clicking on the following Buy button to see how it works:
Name: Demo Product Four
Description: Demonstrates the
‘Buy Now’ type button
Price: $1.00
Each ‘Buy Now’ type button can have a unique return URL. When the return URL is used the customer is sent to the specified URL after Payment.
You can customize the buy button image with your unique custom designed image by specifying the image URL in the “Button Image URL” field of the product.
For example I have used the well known “Belcher Button” image for the following buy button. It looks a lot like what you may have seen on may other sales pages, doesn’t it? 🙂
Enter the following shortcode to display the product like the one above (1 is the product id of the product in this example):
[wp_eStore_buy_now_fancy id=1]
You can also use the following PHP function if you want to show the ‘Buy Now’ type buttons from your wordpress theme’s template files (eg. on the sidebar ‘sidebar.php’):
print_eStore_buy_now_button(PRODUCT-ID)
So adding the following line to a PHP file will display a Buy Now button for the product who’s product id is 4:
Check the following documentation to learn how to create a buy now button for the other eStore gateways:
This is a step by step tutorial to setup an ‘Add to Cart‘ button for a Product using the WordPress eStore plugin to accommodate the selling of products from your WordPress site.
After you read this tutorial, you will be able to easily create “Add to Cart” button(s) on your product’s sales page and sell your products.
Step 1) Think about the name, price and a little description for the product you want to sell.
Step 2) Configure the product using the ‘Add/Edit Products’ interface of the WordPress eStore Plugin. Take note of the ‘Product ID’ after you add the product (all the product ids can be found on the ‘Manage Products’ page).
Step 3)Design however you want to display the product on a Post or Page (the landing page of the product) where you want to sell the product from. I want to keep it very simple for this tutorial. So I am going to use the following as my product information:
Step 4) Now, all I need is the ‘Add to Cart’ button next to the product information so a customer can purchase it. To insert the ‘Add to Cart’ button that goes with this product, add the following shortcode below the line ‘Price: $1.00’
[wp_eStore_add_to_cart id=PRODUCT-ID]
Replace ‘PRODUCT-ID’ with the actual product id of the product you are selling in my case it’s 1 because this is the first product I just configured. So I am going to add the following text
[wp_eStore_add_to_cart id=1]
Step 5) The completed product display looks like the following:
Step 6) Finally, I am going to add the following shortcode in the post that displays the shopping cart when items are added to the cart. You can also use the sidebar widget to display the shopping cart. This will allow the customer to view their order and complete the checkout:
[wp_eStore_cart]
Feel free to hit the above ‘Add to Cart’ button to see how the shopping cart appears below this line and allows a customer to purchase the product.
The most common mistakes people make when using the ‘Add to Cart’ button’s shortcode and hence the button doesn’t appear are as following:
If you want to make the ‘Add to Cart’ button look nicer then you probably want to use a custom image for the button. WordPress eStore plugin allows you to specify a custom button image for every product. This way you can have nice call to action buttons on your product’s landing page.
When you configure the product, there is an optional product settings field called ‘Button Image URL‘ that you can use to specify a custom button image for the product.
I have uploaded a custom image to my site and used the URL of that image in the ‘Button Image URL’ field of the product settings and now the ‘Add to Cart’ button looks like the following (I have also embedded a picture in the post so the product display looks nicer):
Name: Demo Product Two
Description: Demonstrates Customized ‘Add to Cart’ button
Price: $1.00
The WordPress eStore plugin comes with a few different ‘Add to Cart’ and ‘Buy Now’ button images that you can use. All the images are included in the ‘images’ directory of the plugin. More style to the button can be added using CSS (stylesheet).
WP eStore comes with a few product display templates that you can use to display your product in a stylish way. Here is an example product display template:
Enter the following shortcode to display the product like the one above (9 is the product id of the product in this example):
[wp_eStore_fancy1 id=9]
Or Enter the following shortcode to display the product like the one above
[wp_eStore_fancy2 id=9]
You will have to fill out the Product Description and the Thumbnail image URL when configuring the product for this type of display.
More stylish display options are explained on the stylish product display documentation page.
WordPress eStore plugin allows you to limit the number of copies of a product you sell. In order to sell limited copies of a product, simply enter the number of copies you want to sell in the ‘Available Copies’ field of the Product when you configure it.
The plugin will decrease that number every time that product sells. When the ‘Available Copies’ number reaches ‘0’ the plugin replaces the ‘Add to Cart’ button with a ‘Sold Out’ image like the following preventing further sales:
If you are having any problems please leave a comment below.