Recommended by WordPress, I installed one of business blogging plugin – WP Shopping Cart. Although I don’t think it’s a good idea to sell anything on this blog, I wanna try the plugin by categorising under WP Shopping Cart my investigation to hundred brands in Bicester Village.
To my disappointment, this plugin (ver 3.6 beta 7) does not support utf-8. I have to leave the plugin there. I don’t wanna do modification to this plugin by myself.
WP Shopping Cart plugin can work with utf-8 if you can manipulate the database directly.
1. in database change collation from latin1_swedish_ci to utf8-general-ci wherever necessary.
2. in e-Commerce admin create categories, brands, products. Only an entry is enough. Make sure the category/brand/product name field is in English. WP Shopping Cart uses name field to generate URLs for category, brand and product. If name field has some characters other than English, the URL will end up in 404 error.
3. in the relevant tables (three tables involved: wp_product_brands, wp_product_categories, wp_product_list) of database change anything you like into other language. Even the name field can be changed, but the URL would not be changed. I did not find where category/brand URL information is stored (product URL is stored in wp_wpsc_productmeta), so I ask you do everything in English at step 2.
Even WP Shopping Cart plugin can cope with utf-8, I still do not reckon it is business level solution for e-Commerce. It’s alright if you occasionally sell one or two items.
If you run your business seriously, you will find you are limited by the functionalities of WP Shopping Cart. The reasons include but not limited to the following:
1. WP Shopping Cart do not have a report system.
2. You can not manage products in bulk.
3. Neither xml sitemap plugin or html sitemap plugin can generate entries for pages under WP Shopping Cart.
4. Category, brand, product can not be individually commented.
5. WP Shopping Cart plugin can hardly take advantage of other plugins installed. For example, Advanced Excerpt plugin does not work in WP Shopping Cart product description.
6. If you need more functionalities from WP Shopping Cart plugin, you will need plugin for plugin. p4p? Few developers will do that.