WordPress MU

Could I use WordpressMU + WP-ecommerce to provide a hosted facility for multiple vendors to maintain their own websites and sell their own items, but use an aggregator side to showcase the 'latest' from all of them?

Is this feasible? I see it (in my minds eye anyway) as a kind of cross between a full virtual shopping mall concept and a seperate payment process per vendor (allowing them to have their own site designs/layouts and options)

Before I embark down this road can someone tell me please if it's a workable idea? Will the concept hold up against the capabilities of WordpressMU and WP-ecommerce?

Thanks for any advice in advance.

c0y0te
http://www.avalon5.com
"Howl @ The Moon!"

anyone?

Have you tried it? Don't know about teh WP-ecommerce plugin but do a search for sitewide tags. There's a couple of different methods on doing them.

I'm going to put up a proof of concept site to see if it works, but although I'm used to WP I've no experience yet of using WPMU... so I was just looking for some sagely advice from you folks before I go down a wrong track or waste time doing the wrong things.

I've bought a domain name and sorted some hosting so I guess I'll start with a WPMU install and then figure it out from there. Are there any gotchas or dos and donts I should worry about for my first WPMU install?

c0y0te

How did this work out for you ?

I'm looking for the same solution

Yes, it;s both doable and feasable. One caveat: the WP-e-copmmerce plugin needs some rewriting to work properly with MU.

Also, you will probably need the commercial version of the plugin.

Why should we need the commercial version of the plugin ?

We just need someone that is willing to rewrite the plugin ot work properly I think.

Because the license of the plugin is *NOT* GPL. It states if you use it commercially, you must pay for the commerical license.

From the site:

"Commercial Use

You create e-Commerce sites as part of a commercial venture (for example a corporate blog or a blog network) and you want to roll out WP e-Commerce solutions."

and

"License

WP e-commerce is certainly going to be GPL friendly. We are currently exploring what license will suit us best - we are likely to use the same model as Akismet where we offer a free version and a developer version."

So you can't assume that is currently GPL.

If you're essentially setting up shops for others, then that's commercial use.

Granted, one could argue that out of the box for one user , an e-commerce plugin is commercial by nature, but still. And most of the rewriting is hard-coded plugin directory stuff and a bit of db changes to make sure it find the right blog.

Disclaimer: I haven't asked the devs about this situation because I eventually went in another direction, but if I were seriously considering doing this, I'd have a good long chat with them.

Hi,

Yep totally clear and strange too. Every shop will be commercial, so everyone that wants to use the free version can only test it using that one.

I have seen that there have been troubles in development with WPshop what actually looks like a very nice feature if you ask me.

http://www.cregy.co.uk/category/wp-shop

I hope this shop will be available asap :)

Andrea,

This is your own post on the wpmudev.org.

Hate to rain on your parade, but it does not appear that the original plugin was released under GNU. Also, using it in an MU environment may violate what licences it was originally under, as you're supposed to pay for the plugin upgrade if used commercially. If users on your install are paying to use this, that's commercial.

So actually of you deliver this shop for free with your service you provide, it's not illegal at all.

But still tricky if you see the messages about the developers.

Better to be safe than sorry though. I think i pretty much stated the same thing in both places.

So, your opinion... not use it ?

My opinion, if you're serious, would be to talk to the devs before using it.

You may also want to look into this plugin:
http://www.briggs.net.nz/log/projects/yak-for-wordpress/

It's more lightweight, and in some ways is done more sensibly (products are associated with posts, not pages, URLs are cleaner) and it's fully GPL.

Only problem is it borked in MU in the regular plugins folder, but I haven't poked around the code to see the conflict. (I have a ton of plugins running in a test site. Could have been anything.)

Same here, didn't work.

The developper was going to check it on MU because it wasn't tested on this version.

Thanks

I just saw your comment there - I was testing this just a few minutes ago. :D

We are testing the same ;)

QuickShop is also very nice, I think it's much more easy to make 2 formfields for that plugin into the WritePage page where you can set the productname and price in and when you submit that small form for the 2 formfields that it will insert the full string like this:

[quickshop:NAME_OF_YOUR_PRODUCT:price:YOUR_PRODUCT_PRICE:end]

into the TinyMCE editor without adding the full line.

- NAME_OF_YOUR_PRODUCT
- YOUR_PRODUCT_PRICE

Should be variables from the 2 formfields than.

I have seen some ideas about it, but I don't know how to add the small form above or under the TinyMCE editor. The rest is simple javascript that puts it into the TinyMCE editor.

Hmmm, now you have me thinking...

Maybe we can figure something out :)

Hi Andrea,

Have you tested something out about this ?

I'm figuring out if it's easier to do in the TinyMCE quicktag or in a small extra form into the post-page.