My client is wanting to set up a new website and we want to use wordpress as the CMS as that would enable a site and a blog all in one and he's used to using wordpress as a CMS on his other site, so it's seems like the best solution. The initial purpose of the new site is to advertise a course he's running in Novemeber and he wants people to be able to purchase tickets online. I'm wondering what the best approach is - should I use one of the many e-commerce plugins that come with wordpress, and if so which one would be best, or do I use an external open source shopping cart script. I need to set it up initially just to sell tickets for the course, but in the future he's also going to want to sell e-books and digital downloads so it would be good to find a solution that would allow for all that. I need something simple that's easy to implement but is also very secure as I'm a total novice when it comes to e-commerce stuff - that's why I thought wordpress plugins would be the way to go - but are they secure. I guess they all integrate with PayPal - client says that's OK, but he's also looking into something that the Bank of Scotland offer for online payments as he's just opened an account with them and so might want to use their solution - not sure if I'll be able to implement it and waiting to hear from him about that.

 

Any information/advice would be very welcome from any experts out there - I'd like to hear about plugins, scripts you've actually used and if they work well.

 

Also with selling tickets online - how does the purchase process work? You click to pay, then pay and then what - do you get a digital downloadable ticket or just an email confrimation. I've never bought tickets online for any event, so not sure how to work this.

 

Thanks

E

I just used shopintegratorfor a site selling one tangible good, but it accepts digital downloads.

 

It has a wordpress plugin which I haven't tested as I used the html version. Everything is controlled from your login area on the site including postage, downloads, paypal etc

thanks for the reply - I was expecting more, but maybe not many people use wordpress for ecommerce stuff. Will have a look at the site link and maybe sign up for the 30 day trial and try it out.

Hi!

 

The use of the services of the Bank of Scotland would probably mean some custom plugin development as you would have to code to the API that the bank provides. Using one of the standard payment gateways, such as Paypal, is cheaper for development but going with the bank may be better for the long run since they might offer lower remittance charges. Either approach should be fine since you aren't looking at a complete shopping cart solution to sell over a dozen different products.

WP-ecommerce is very good. Can't advise on the RBS side of things but it's certainly secure for Paypal, tons of options in there too.