This is a subject I've been exploring over the last week to decide whether or not to use a blog with an add-on shopping cart, or to use an e-commerce system such as Zencart or Oscommerce. I have a few clients who will be using my services to design their e-commerce website and I'm deciding between using a blog with shopping cart add-on functionality or running an e-commerce system with blog integration. It's been quite interesting reading comments from forums and on other blogs about this topic and here are my thoughts.
My Previous Blog / E-commerce Experience
I've been using Wordpress for a couple of years now and have tried integrating it for a ZenCart ecommerce site. It worked okay but it wasn't exactly what I wanted. The issue was that I have to create a WordPress site and an ecommerce site with matching themes, so that the end user would have the experience of a single site. This solution was not ideal because the site administrator would have to login to different backends to update information.
On the other hand, installing Wordpress as the main system and installing an e-commerce add-on sounds like the ideal situation (for now, I'll call this an eBlog). Everything will be in one system and on one database and no need to log into two different systems as I previously had to. I have tried this method and so far it works okay as well, but there are a few issues such as payment methods, having large product catalogues and limited reporting. The Wordpress plugin can't handle these things as yet compared to e-commerce systems which have been designed for this. Read Full Story
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