OrderStorm WordPress e-Commerce Sponsors WordCamp Chicago

OrderStorm will be sponsoring WordCamp Chicago on July 30-31, 2011 to show support for the WordPress community and showcase our new WordPress e-commerce plugin.

Come talk to us and get some OrderStorm swag if you need a robust WordPress e-commerce solution that takes credit cards securely.

Ed McCaffrey uses OrderStorm WordPress e-Commerce to Check in Campers

Football legend, Ed McCaffrey, used OrderStorm WordPress e-commerce to sell event registrations and check in campers for the Eddy Mac Football Camps this year.  Here is a photo Maria Sallis of OrderStorm at the registration desk on the opening day of football camp. (Notice her spiffy white OrderStorm t-shirt.)

Using OrderStorm WordPress e-commerce, the camp takes orders and processes credit cards.  Campers can also use the OrderStorm WordPress e-commerce software to pay by check.  In addition, each order gets a special registration form that must be filled out.  In the case of the Eddy Mac football camps, the registration form is for t-shirt size, position, school, age etc.

The OrderStorm WordPress e-commerce shopping cart sells products, services and event registrations.   In this case, each camp is just another product in the shopping cart.  OrderStorm software shows a list of all orders (campers) for each camp to generate a list of attendees.  Contact us if you want to use WordPress to do something similar.  We can customize the registration form to take whatever special data you need on your event-goers.

Inner workings of the OrderStorm WordPress e-Commerce Plugin

Excerpt from a conversation between Dan Sallis and Jase X, a WordPress developer.

“Ahh, the ever needed customization.  This is the part that is really huge.  Yes, the plugin uses an API with webservices to get data from our servers.  All that work is done at the PHP level on the WP site.  Our plugin code is GPL and comes with a basic template but we would expect developers to hack the code to do whatever they want and even resell really cool e-comm templates they create from our code base.  The basics: the PHP is making API requests to our webservices and returning JSON data and a developer can do whatever they like with the data.

What is really cool too, is that the actual checkout process (collecting name, address, cc data, etc.) opens in a modal window that is loading a page from our servers in an iframe using OrderStorm’s SSL. The WP site does not need a SSL cert to accept credit cards on their merchant account/gateway and the end user will not really know that they ever left the WP site!  We will support the use of SSLs on the WP site too.

The back-end application, system administration, and where the products are set up and orders are managed takes place on the OrderStorm site.”

Very cool, Dan. Bordering on genius!

Developers and interested customers can sign up for the next round of beta releases here http://www.orderstorm.com/wordpress-e-commerce-sign-up/.

OrderStorm WordPress e-Commerce Called ‘Missing Link’

I went traveling last week to promote the launch of the OrderStorm WordPress e-commerce plugin. The first place I went was to a conference in Silicon Valley to watch other tech companies pitch to investors and to meet the investors in the room. I pitched our plugin to Gavin X at the opening night cocktail party and very impressed by his knowledge of both our space and the folks at WordPress.com. He called our plugin ‘the missing link’. Very flattering!

Then I went to WordCamp Kansas City. OrderStorm was sponsoring the conference and we handed out lots of pens, pads, and flyers. Sitting next to me in one of the sessions was Jase X, a WordPress developer. So I pitched our WordPress shopping cart plugin to him and lo and behold, he called it ‘the missing link’!

Coincidence? I think not. OrderStorm WordPress e-commerce is the missing link for businesses that want to use WordPress but have held back because SaaS software has not previously been available. Go to our Features page to read all about it.

Installation and setup instructions for the OrderStorm WordPress e-commerce plugin are now available on the website in the User Manual

Installation and setup instructions for the OrderStorm WordPress e-commerce plugin are now available on the website in the User Manual.   The plugin is simple to install and set up.  It installs like any other plugin from the management dashboard.  It has several features that I should explain.

1. The Category page.  You must create a Category page to hold the category short code You can name the page anything you want ex. Training DVDs.  This page will display all of your root categories.  Since the categories are a widget that you can put in any sidebar on any page you like, you don’t necessarily have to display the Category page itself if you don’t want to.  If you are using menus, don’t add the page to the active menu.

2.  The Product page.  You must also create a Product page to hold the product page short code.  Unlike the Category page, this page will be blank.  You will definitely want to make sure this page does not display.  You can, however, set SEO page titles, description, tags etc.

3.  The .css files for the plugin allow you to set the appearance of your WordPress
shopping cart any way that best displays your product or service.  While it comes in a
standard product display configuration, you can change how many products display in each row, how large the box is for each product, the background color for the box (including white), text colors, category and subcategory colors and fonts fonts, bullets etc.

Keep your eye on our updates.  We have some GUIs planned to make it easier to set fonts, colors, and styles on the drawing board.

OrderStorm launches beta release of WordPress e-Commerce Plugin

At last! The OrderStorm WordPress e-commerce plugin has been released in beta. Anyone interested in the free beta release can sign up on the website at http://www.orderstorm.com/wordpress-e-commerce-sign-up/.

OrderStorm is committed to supporting the open source community and will always offer a free version of our WordPress shopping cart for smaller customers.  However, we do have to eat so we will be offering some paid subscriptions as well.  We will make sure you get lots of features and functionality for your money.

We are limiting the beta release to 30 sign-ups a day.  Once you sign up and we have space for you, you will get the download file and the key to start using our cloud services, SSL, and PCI compliance.