• Magento
• WP e-commerce
• Shopp Plugin
• Market Theme
• WordPress Shopping Cart Plugin
• WordPress Simple Paypal Shopping Cart Plugin
• Yak for WordPress
• ArtPal – Paypal shopping cart for artists
• PHPurchase
• eshop – utilizes posts and pages to create products
• ShopperPress – theme and shopping cart all in one

Comparing these is like comparing apples to oranges with Magento being a full robust solution and Market Theme being a  simple solution for a very basic store. A big difference between these solutions is whether or not the solution is really a full-featured store software that has reporting, gift certificates, cross selling, and other options. Which you choose will depend on your e-commerce needs.

For the most part, NONE of the WordPress plugins are full featured e-commerce solutions. They are simplified applicaitons with some of them having more features than others. When comparing WordPress solutions, they fall into five categories:

1. Store products based on WordPress posts and pages. In other words, you create posts within a certain category, and these posts make up the products in your store.
2. Store products managed in separate database table that is managed via the plugin interface. I prefer these solutions, because my clients have many products, and I don’t want to deal with the products in the WordPress Posts area as I want to keep my blog very separate from my store products.
3. Theme based solutions. These work similarly to the post-based products, and perhaps are a good solution for someone who has very basic needs and doesn’t have to have customize a lot.
4. Simply PayPal add to cart buttons that can be created on the fly. This would be for a site with just a few simple products.
5. Full featured online shopping cart (not a WordPress plugin), like Magento, that could be hooked up with WordPress, so that WordPress could handle the overall look of the site while Magento takes care of all the shopping aspects.

Market Theme while touted as being a really great product is too simple for most of my client’s needs. It’s missing a lot of functionality with its lack of variations choices, pricing and shipping options for different variations, integrated shipping, checkout options, and payment gateways.

The Shopp Plugin is very nicely formatted out of the box. The templates can be copied to your local theme file and modified to your heart’s content. I like the way the user is taken to a checkout page after adding an item to the cart and being able to “continue shopping.” It has variations templates that can be used for different product categories and shipping options based on weight or price. However, I don’t like that notes cannot be added per product or that the checkout screen cannot be customized to add more fields. It also doesn’t have reporting. I will be testing this plugin with the integrated UPS module and Paypal Payments Pro and hope that Paypal can provide the reporting we need.

I recently installed the Shopp Plugin at http://www.brigittemars.com if you want to check out her Books/DVD section. Customizing the templates and CSS was easy enough, though I encountered some limitations with not being able to display products within a certain category on a given catalog page.

WP e-commerce has been a source of frustration for me as it is buggy with the variations for downloadable files and generally doesn’t look that great out of the box, particularly the way the checkout “box” is formatted and displayed. I do like that you can customize the checkout page with your own fields. It also has some nice, basic reporting.

Magento is kick ass but may not work well in a shared hosting environment. I did see that someone developed a Magento extension to integrate with WordPress. Smashing magazine reviewed many great templates for Magento recently.

I’m quite interested in Drupal using Ubercart as a great CMS, blogging, and integrated e-commerce solution, but I haven’t had a chance to play with it. I just purchased O’Reilly Media’s Using Drupal book which I’m very eager to read. It provides the first printed documentation of Ubercart with step-by-step instructions.

Many of my clients would like the ability to sell Gift Certificates redeemable in the cart. This is hit and miss with all of these solutions, with Magento most likely to handle correctly now and Ubercart developers working hard to get their GC module working properly. However, with Paypal, we can always sell Paypal Gift Certificates, but users must be logged in with their Paypal account when purchasing in order to redeem.

Generally, I am currently look for low-cost solutions that allow users to take advantage of the great easy-to-use WordPress interface and not necessarily have to leave the site to go shopping. Your feedback, comments, and experiences would be great appreciated.

Here’s another list of 10 e-commerce plugins: http://speckyboy.com/2008/10/23/10-powerful-shoppingecommerce-plugin-solutions-for-wordpress/

Here’s a nice site for e-commerce tips and choosing a good shopping cart: http://www.practicalecommerce.com/

Please see the updated post at:

http://askwpgirl.com/links/

When I first came back from Peru, I would wake in the middle of the night and not know where I was. I would stare and stare into the darkness of the bedroom and swear that the walls were made of adobe and the doorway to the bathroom was really a stone hallway leading somewhere.

This morning when I woke, I wondered what day it was, and realized that it was two weeks ago today that I rose at 4 am to wonder the ruins of Machu Picchu, the evil mosquito bites on my calves still slightly itchy and healing.

In the misty light of that beautiful early morning, we walked up and down and down and up the steep, stone staircases of this ancient city. For awhile, I wondered by myself in and out of labyrinth like rooms and hallways, and I imagined fabric, gold, silver, tables, chairs, dishes, pottery, people, children, and the thatch roofs now returned to the earth. I wondered what it was like to be a peasant here, to be carving and placing these giant stones, harvesting the grain, weaving the textiles, and shepherding the animals. I imagined the wind and lightning and torrential rain and the demand to donate three months labor each year to the Emperor.

When we returned to the retreat center in Pisac, the place we’d first landed and the place from which we’d depart, from all these impressions and experiences, all I wanted was to read poetry. It seemed the only appropriate thing to do, and I craved it like I do a piece of chocolate at times. I wondered Pisac looking for a bookstore and could find none. What I most wanted for some curious reason was Pablo Neruda. I settled on a book left abandoned at the retreat center called, The Dogs of Babel, that was strangely satisfying: me, at a loss for words, seeking the words of a dead poet to fill my heart, and finding instead a story of a linguist trying to teach his dog to speak.

Tonight, as the snow falls and the smell of soup and fresh baked bread fills the house, I climb into a hot bath with The Essential Neruda and turn pages randomly until I find, to my surprise, Neruda’s canon on Machu Picchu. Ah! This is what I had craved in Pisac. Pablo Neruda climbing Machu Picchu, writing of love, the lives of long dead peasants, the power of the Urubamba River and storms and lightning, of bloodshed, and these rarefied heights.

The editor of the book carried a selection of translations of Neruda’s throughout his South American travels and even up to the silver stones of Machu Picchu, finally landing in Chile where he conceived the idea with a young Chilean woman to create a new set of translations in honor of Neruda’s 100 year birthday (in 2004).

The quote at the beginning of the book is:

“On our earth, before writing was invented, before the printing press was invented, poetry flourished. That is why we know that poetry is like bread; it should be shared by all, by scholars and by peasants, by all our vast, incredible, extraordinary family of humanity.” — Pablo Neruda

Only a few poems from the Machu Picchu canon are in these selections, and a later book was written about the craft of translation based on this one translator’s experience with the Machu Picchu canon. That will be next on my Amazon wishlist. For now, I’d like to share with a few passages that took my breath away and one full poem. If you’d like Spanish original, let me know. They, of course, should be read in their original Spanish:

From Heights of Machu Picchu: I

“From air to air, like an empty net,
I went wondering between the streets and the
atmosphere, arriving and saying goodbye,
leaving behind in autumn’s advent the coin extended
from the leaves, and between Spring and the what,
that which the greatest love, as within a falling glove,
hands over to us like a large moon.”

Heights of Machu Picchu: VI

And then on the ladder of the earth I climbed
through the atrocious thicket of the lost jungles
up to you, Machu Picchu.
High city of scaled stones,
at last a dwelling where the terrestrial
did not hide in its sleeping clothes.
In you, like two parallel lines,
the cradle of the lightning-bolt and man
rocked together in a thorny wind.

Mother of stone, spume of the condors.

High reef of the human dawn.

Shovel lost in the first sand.

This was the dwelling, this is the place:
here the wide kernels of maize rose up
and fell again like red hail.

Here the gold thread was fleeced off the vicuña
to clothe the love affairs, the tombs, the mothers,
the king, the prayers, the warriors.

Here in the high carnivorous lairs the feet of man
rested at night next to the feet of the eagle,
and at dawn
tread with thunderous feet through the rarefied fog,
and touched the soil and the stones
until they could recognize them at night or in death.

I stare at the clothes and the hands,
the trace of water in the echoing hollow,
the wall worn smooth by the touch of a face
that with my eyes stared at the terrestrial lamps,
that with my hands oiled the vanished
timbers: because everything, clothing, skin, jars,
words, wine, bread,
was gone, fallen to the earth.

And the air came in with orange-blossom fingers
over all those asleep:
a thousand years of air, months, weeks of air,
of blue wind, of iron cordillera,
that were like soft hurricanes of footsteps
polishing the lonely boundary of the stone.

From Heights of Machu Picchu: X

“Macchu Picchu, did you place
stone upon stone, and at the base, rags?
Coal above coal, and at the bottom, the teardrop?
Fire into gold, and within it, trembling, the heavy
red raindrop of blood?

“Give me back the slave that you buried!
Shake the hard bread of the wretched poor
out from the ground, show me the servant’s
clothes and his window.
Tell me how he slept when he lived.”

Calca, Peru – motorcycle taxi

I woke at 5 am with severe stomach cramps and diarrhea and proceeded to spend the next two hours on the bathroom floor, chewing Pepto Bismal, suddenly dreading the upcoming 5-hour bus ride that would signal the beginning of our three-day trek through the weaving villages in the central Andes.

I had been acclimating with our group of eight women at the very comfortable Paz y Luz spiritual retreat center in the quaint village of Pisac, Peru. Located at 9,000 feet altitude, Pisac sites at the base of soaring mountains on the side of which a vast complex of Inca ruins lies. From the top of the ruins, one has a tremendous view of the Sacred Valley and the Urubamba River.

Our trekking guide met us with a large van in Pisac and gave me a worried look as I boarded and assured him that although I was quite pale, I’d probably be okay. Our journey into the high country started in Calca, where we stopped at the local market to buy coca leaves, snacks and bottled water.

I spent most of the bus ride up the winding, steeply climbing, narrow mountain road with my head pressed against the seat in front of me willing the contents of my guts to “Be Still,” sort of like how Max tamed the Wild Things with that trick of his.

After 4 hours, we stopped at the weaving outpost of Accha Alta. A couple dozen women, a few children, and one man sat quietly in the courtyard on the ground weaving on hand looms, spinning yarn, or crocheting. The building was absolutely remote and still, surrounded by high peaks and a few grazing alpaca. Finding these Quechua weavers in their traditional dress sitting so quietly working was like walking 500 years into the past, except now their woven goods are sold in Cusco to tourists rather than brought to the storehouses of the Inca Empire.

We purchased beautiful, rough feeling textiles that smelled of dung smoke fires and wool and took lots of photos for which we made a contribution to the general fund. We were lucky to find the weavers at home this day as most days they work in the fields. The peaceful, quiet weavers smiled and seemed genuinely pleased to have visitors. We conversed through our Quechua trekking guide and learned the signals for singles seeking partners: if a woman’s hat is titled to the left, she is single (and to the right, married). I quickly scanned the group and was surprised to discover that many of the young girls in the group were married. The only man present was single as indicated by his fetching hat with long ribbons dangling from it.

One hour further along the road, we arrived at Lares (10,100 ft elev.), a natural, volcanic springs used primarily by the locals given its remoteness.  I grabbed my thermarest and slept on the grass beside the springs, so glad to not be moving.

Quechua women wearing traditional felt hats and carrying bundles of  babies and goods passing through Lares hot springs on the way to market.

Our porters set up our tents beside the pools, and we had our first dinner “on the trail” inside the “dining” tent. I’ve done a lot of backpacking, and this was definitely gourmet: having my tent set up for me and a wonderful meal of fresh fish and potatoes cooked poolside! Wow!

We soaked and relaxed and turned in early. Around 2 am, I woke confused about the time because men, women and children were sitting in the pools, talking, laughing, drinking and carrying on as if there were no tomorrow. Apparently, a holiday at the hot springs is a time for celebration. No sense wasting any of it on sleeping!

Our camp beside Lares Hot Springs

The next morning, the members of our group complained bitterly about “Julio.” Confused, I asked, “Who is Julio?” No one knew. They guessed he was an errant child who could not be reined in by his parents and disturbed the sleep of all by forcing his family members to yell, “Julio! Julio!” all night long. Groggily, we packed our gear which was loaded up on several horses who would accompany us along with three porters, a cook, and our charming guide, Domingo. We crossed a small bridge over the river besides the hot springs and officially began the first day of our trek.

Along the trail, we passed through many outcroppings of stone houses among the numerous potato fields with ubiquitous lama and alpaca. We ran into a few boys pushing inner tubes with sticks and two girls walking hand-in-hand down a steep hill. Most of the homes in the valley were built using uncut stone and thatched roofs and were incongruous to the perfectly manicured soccer field nestled in between the potato fields.

Our first day of trekking took us about 2.5 miles to the small weaving village of Huacahuasi at 12,300 feet. We camped near the village and bought more hats, gloves and other weavings and headed out early the next day in the golden morning sun to hike over Huacahuasijasa Pass (14,765 feet elev.). The going was sloooow as several in our group came from sea level and struggled with the altitude. Compared to Colorado, it wasn’t too hard for me, and chewing coca leaves seemed to help with energy.

We were greeted halfway through our day’s hike by three young women at the side of the trail who appeared out of nowhere (two wearing their hat to the right and one to the left) with an assortment of Inka Cola, lemon Fanta, and beer along with woven goods. I purchased one large tapestry and relaxed sipping an Inka Cola and talking to the two married girls (ages 14 and 16) while the rest of the group caught up.

Just before the pass, a storm came in, and we were whipped with wind and rain. Lightening and thunder bounced off the nearby cliffs, and we hustled as much as one can hustle up a 15K pass. Two women got on the horses, so we could avoid getting stuck in the storm. At the top of the pass, we were greeted by the stunning view of Laguna Aruraycocha, a large glacier fed lake. We descended quickly and made it down just a hail storm cut loose above us.

We rounded the lake and descended to the beautiful Laguna Millvococha, where we camped at 13,900 feet. The night was cold and windy. I wore all of my clothes and shivered all night long. In the morning, we celebrated the last day of our trek with a cake baked by our cook. A cake! Baked at ~14K feet, with meringue frosting! We all felt a bit light headed and were eager to get down.

A cake with meringue frosting baked at 14,000 feet beside a glacier fed lake in Peru

We descended through a rare Polylepis forest which is now protected by conservation efforts in Peru. Only 10% of the original forests remain. In the Polylepis forest there are 20 evergreen tree species that are characterized by gnarled shapes as in the photos above. The trees have a thick and dense laminated bark with small green and gray leaves. Loss of high mountain forests is considered the major cause of water scarcity in many parts of the Andes. The trees grew symbiotically with other plants growing in and around them including Peru’s national flower the orange Cantuta.

We finished our trek at the village Yanahuara, where we had a quick lunch besides a field of cows. We climbed aboard a van and headed to one of the many Chicherias marked by a red flag hanging on a stick outside the front door or window indicating that the chicha (a fermented corn drink) was ready to drink. The chicheria offered a variety of popcorn and drink samples, and we placed a few bills in a container (payment is by way of love offering) and hustled onto Ollantaytambo where we would catch the Vista Dome train to Aquas Calientes at the base of Machu Picchu.

Read the next step in my Peruvian journey: Pablo Neruda’s Machu Picchu.

Our flight to Cusco left Lima at 10 am the next morning, which meant little sleep since we didn’t get in until after midnight the night before. We had no time to explore Lima but were excited to be heading straight to the beauty of the high country. As we gained in altitude heading inland, the Andes Mountains revealed themselves through the parting clouds: high and dry with green river valleys and distant snow capped peaks.

In Cusco, we walked around in a high altitude daze. Fatigued from little sleep and the sudden 11,200 feet of elevation gain, I wondered how we would manage to do our trek over a 15,000 foot mountain pass if just walking around Cusco felt like a tremendous workout. Cusco, the former center of the Inca empire, means ‘navel of the earth’ and was laid out in the form of a puma, the animal that symbolized the Inca dynasty. While little of the original Inca city remains except a few walls and the ruins of Sacsayhuamán, the steep, winding cobbled streets and Spanish architecture are charming and worth spending some time to explore.

After a few hours of exploring, we rented a van to Pisac, where we would have our base of exploration at a retreat center below the Pisac ruins along the Urubamba River. Pisac is much smaller than Cusco, but one of three sacred centers to the Inca people: Pisac – the Serpent, Cusco – the Puma (the head of the empire), and Machu Picchu – the Condor.

12►

The small town of Pisac hosts a large open air market every Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday, and we drank our first Pisco Sours (made with Pisco, lime juice, bitters, simple sugar, and whipped egg white) in a restaurant on the square. The food was amazing everywhere we went: quinoa pyramids, potatoes I didn’t even know existed, pomegranates in a sauce drizzled over alpaca ribs, cheeses, and huge, juicy corn.

The retreat center along the river was awe inspiring with towering mountains on either side of us cut through by the Urubamba River. The center is run by an American woman who has studied to become a healer in the Andes. She has fashioned a retreat for spiritual seekers to absorb the magnificence of this place in a quiet setting with full amenities, including a Chatres Labyrinth. Standing in the center of the labyrinth (whose design dates to the 1200s) looking up at the Inca ruins on the mountainside above built in the 1400s, I marveled at how I suddenly arrived at this awe inspiring place.

Carefully brewed for you, this plugin includes:

• No Monthly Fees
• WYSIWYG Editor for all Customizable Messages and Emails
• Registration Cut-off and Start Dates
• Event capacity w/ Waiting List Feature
• Individual and/or Group Registration Options

Read more: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration and Manager Plugin

2 – Events Manager by nutsmuggler, netweblogic

Events Manager is a full-featured event management solution for WordPress. It supports recurring events, venues data, RSVP and maps. Has a sidebar widget and shortcode for an events list, calendars and description, as well as template tags.

Events Manager integrates with Google Maps and provides an RSS feed, to keep your subscribers updated about the events you’re organizing.

Download it here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/events-manager/

3 - EventR

EventR is a simple plugin that allows people to sign up for an event. There are no payment options. It simply keeps track of attendees. It provides a shortcode for inserting the registration form on a post or page.

Download it here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/eventr/

4 – Event Registration Plugin by David Flemming

David updated the interface, so I’m excited to see how the current version works. It accepts Paypal payments for event registrations, has an attendee list, a sidebar widget, CSV export, and more.

Download it here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/event-registration/

5 – EventBrite.com

I have used EventBrite.com which works great, and I’ve pulled their code into posts for ticket sales, registrations, etc. EventBrite provides a lot of management tools and options, along with payment options, including Paypal. I really appreciate all of their features, but I’d ideally like to do this all within a WordPress admin interface — like the wp e-commerce shopping cart but geared toward event registration.

I’m using the Event Calendar 3 plugin combined with Event Brite on Amy Brenna’s Workshop website. This combo works fabulous!

For simple Event display (no registration), these two plugins:

6 – Post Event Plugin

Post Event allows you to define event information (date, location, schedule…) directly in the post edit page. All event information is automatically displayed in the post page (single.php), including Google Maps AND iCal link (integration in your agenda) without any code modification.

Download it here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/post-event/

7 – Event Calendar 3

Event Calendar 3 allows you to add an event date to a post and then automatically posts that event in the event category (which you’ve specified in the settings). This plugin works great! You can display events via the standard Category page, and the events display in date order and are removed automatically when the date has passed. It also has a sidebar widget which works great. I’m using it on BrigitteMars.com, GoldHillTown.com, and Amy Brenna Workshops. So, far, it’s the best Event plugin I’ve used for a simple event list, but it does not include RSVP, registration options. It just posts the event description and date.

Download Event Calendar 3 Beta version here: http://wpcal.firetree.net/ This is the plugin home page. The version at wordpress.org does not seem to be working with WordPress 2.9.2 and has not been updated since 2008. The beta version at wpcal.firetree.net does seem to be working fine.

More

Be sure to read my post on Calendar plugins for WordPress (not necessarily to be used for registration or event management).

Here’s the line of code to change:

The Category Posts Widget is very good for showing a certain # of posts in a particular category using a widget that displays on every page. However, if you only want to show the posts for the current category in the sidebar, then add this code to your sidebar.php file:

<?php
$sidebar_related_query = new WP_Query('cat=' . $sidebar_cat_id . '&showposts=5&offset=0&orderby=post_date&order=desc');
while ($sidebar_related_query->have_posts()) : $sidebar_related_query->the_post();
$do_not_duplicate = $post->ID;
?>

<div id=”post-<?php the_ID(); ?>">
<a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" rel="bookmark"><?php the_title(); ?></a>
</div>

<?php endwhile; ?>

I got this from: http://www.finaldesign.co.uk/blog/wordpress/displaying-the-latest-current-category-articles-in-the-sidebar.html

To modify what displays in the default Meta Widget in WordPress, you can use a plugin (which is probably the best option) or  modify the source code.

Meta Widget Plugins

The following plugins are worth checking out:

• Customize Meta Widget
• Enhanced Meta Widget

Modifying the Source Code

If you’d prefer not to use a plugin, you can modify the default-widget source code by opening the default-widget.php (wp-includes directory in the root directory of your WordPress install) and look for the Meta section and highlight and delete the links you don’t want. Be sure to have a copy of the file in case you make a mistake and delete more than you should.

It turns out that map mistakes actually need to be reported to the map’s copyright owner. Google just serves up these maps created by Tele Atlas or Navteq.

You can look at the bottom of the map to find the copyright owner and then report the mistake via their websites:

For Tele Atlas: http://www.teleatlas.com/Support/MapFeedback/index.htm

For Navteq: http://mapreporter.navteq.com/dur-web-external/