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/.