WordPress <--> Zen Cart

I’d like to combine WordPress with a decent shopping cart. Not being fluent in either CMS or ecommerce platforms, I thought that Zen Cart would be a decent combination in terms of fair simplicity and flexibility of layout.

My goal is for the site to be an informational site with store feature (rather than an online store with extra information) so, visually at least, I’d like WP to take the foreground. Doing some research on it I found that plugging Zen Cart into WordPress may not yield best results so going the opposite route may be the thing to do from the “engine” standpoint while designing the interface so that the cart does look to be in the background.

I’d appreciate any opinions you may have on this as a whole. I’d like to keep it as simple as possible as the website is a small business with only few products.

Hi Charles, as you know zencart fork of osCommerce so i guess zencart also suitable to integrate WordPress. I integrated osCommerce as theme (and additionally added osCommerce “includes” directory to wordpress root folder).

if you decide this way u have to load wordpress environment variable to zencart
add this line require_once( ‘wp-load.php’); to application_top.php (i dont know zencart equvalent so i wrote to osCommerce).

after this small change you can use all wordpress variables functions and classes in you zencart (if you placed your zencart files correctly.)

for efficient integration use WordPress user routines instead zencart’s, and use WordPress custom post_type as add product.

i hope this short info helps u

Here’s my take. I’ve recently wanted to integrate a shopping cart into a Wordpress site, and evaluated about half a dozen WP ecommerce plugins. Although some seemed good, none of them offered all the functionality, stability or support I desired. So I’ve gone with using Magento, and am currently working on inserting that inside Wordpress. That isn’t complete yet - still getting up to speed on Magento - but I have Googled a number of solutions on how to integrate Magento within Wordpress, which seem useful.

Magento was the first thing I looked at and initial impression for combining it with WordPress (based solely on research, not experience) was favorable. What turned me down a little was the fact that some claim that Magento will only really run efficiently on a dedicated server, the fact that it’s allegedly difficult to configure as far as CSS (would like to hear your opinion on that part) and also some talk that to take full advantage of Magento, many modules are paid ones (not sure if that part is true).

I’d really appreciate having the shopping cart in the background with cart sessions there and accessible even if the blog part is viewed. That is something not readily achieved with Zen Cart (at least not on my limited knowledge of PHP). As far as I see.

I’d be curious to see how you make out with your project. Thank you.

You may use some workpress ecommerce plugin, such as wp-commerce.

Thanks podfan. Yes, there are a number of Wordpress ecommerce plugins.

pelachrum - I’ve not started doing any CSS modifications yet, though I know it can be styled extensively based on articles I’ve read, along with actual Magento sites I’ve visited.

Not sure about the scalability issues, but I think if we do start to experience that, then we can afford to go to better hardware.

And the same with modules, I do see some pricey ones, and again if we’re getting good sales, then such add-ons might be worth purchasing.

zencart and wp combine is a little difficult. We run a zencart site to comebine wp only for a blog.

the ACTUAL solution you are looking for is Sharepoint CMS + Ecommerce

Pelachrum, Span6 is great for this b/c it integrates with any CMS because it uses JavaScript code instead of server side API.

So you just copy/paste javascript into your HTML (much like with Google Analytics) and it just works.

We used to use LimeLightCRM but the integration was a nightmare, buggy and expensive.

i combined Wordpress and osCommerce 2.2 you can test latest demo > WOSCI DEMO | Just another WordPress site