I’m sure this is in here somewhere.  I’ll probably look after this posting, but let’s face it… I’m lazy.   

I’m a designer with a teeny bit of PHP.  Most of my PHP experience has been with hacking WordPress.

I’m in the early stages of planning an online store.  I’m building the brand, hunting for products, etc.  I’d like to build something incredibly “custom looking”, and figure this is where EE shines best.  One thing I’d live to do would be to blog about each product.  I’d love to have reviews and blog postings appear next to each product.

I’ve used ZenCart in the past, and while it’s great to be free, it just looks and acts like poop.

Can you give me links to EE Shopping sites and links to Shopping discussions on the forum?

Thanks!

Hi, CC -

You can use the Simple Commerce Module, but depending on how many features you need, then you might be best with an external shopping cart solution, and potentially using aMember to integrate it with ExpressionEngine.  I’d recommend searching in The Lounge and General forums, and forum-wide, for “shopping cart” - there are lots of threads about this that should help you out. =)

A month later, I don’t see many people using EE for e-commerce.  Am I wrong?
There’s been 149 views to this question, but only one response.  To me, this means that lots of people are also seeking e-commerce solutions with EE.

Can someone post site examples?  Thanks!

There’ve been quite a few in the Site Intros forum, and you can also check out the Showcase =)

Yes, you said that before.  Truth be told, all I see is e-commerce confusion in the forums.  No-one has a definitive answer.  It sounds like we all want to use something that’s more powerful than Simple Commerce will allow.  Is Ellis developing a better shopping cart solution, or does everyone need to turn to a third-party app?

The reason I’m on the pre-sales area, is I’m still weighing options.  So-far, I’m not convinced EE does e-commerce.

At this time, EE only has the Simple Commerce solution.

For more features, including payment gateway support, you’ll have to rely on a third-party shopping cart.  I’ve used EE to control the front-end content and pass variables to a third-party shopping cart.  I did this because I enjoy managing content with EE.

This is not ideal, however, and you’ll run into problems if you require login on both sides.  Also, trying to twist and contort EE to have traditional shopping cart features, such as multiple related products to multiple products isn’t easy and will make you question using this setup.

To put it simply, there isn’t a system that is good at both ecommerce and content management.  At this stage, it’s usually one or the other with definite compromises.  Because I feel ExpressionEngine is so superior from a content management standpoint, I’m willing to wait on a solution that integrates with EE, first party or third party, whichever comes first.

Thanks Stephen.  That was very helpful.
I’m seriously considering EE/Foxycart/CoolCommerce.  While in beta, it may promise to be the tightest integration available.

You may consider CCP.  If you do a search in these forums for “click cart pro”, you’ll get a couple results where I discuss it.  It is the only shopping cart I’m aware of that has an API that allows you to accept orders from outside the shopping cart.  This allows you to build forms, inside of EE’s templates, and make submissions to CCP.  CCP’s checkout process is nice and clean, so it works out pretty well.

EDIT/ADD: http://expressionengine.com/forums/viewthread/60948/