If you do want it to default to the cheapest option, try this simple plugin:

The post Default Lowest Shipping Choice on WP e-Commerce appeared first on Lee Willis.

Scratching my own itches building, and running my store served admirably as a source of ideas for many of my free, and paid-for extensions. However, for the last 6 months or so, I’ve been planning a bit of a spring clean. A redesign was on the cards, and there were a few things I’d implemented that have worked OK, but could do with a second iteration and a bit of clearing up – particularly the documentation areas and the product information sections.

There’s a fair amount of bespoke code behind the current solution, from the licensing engine, documentation architecture, and a few other handy tools I use to handle support efficiently. When I talked at WordCamp London in November, hopefully I was clear that I’m a big fan of not re-inventing the wheel. So, I took the opportunity to review what was out there that would allow me to minimize bespoke code.

While I still think WP e-Commerce is a great solution for a lot of stores, it seemed overkill for my own requirements. Fortunately one of the plugins to have arrived in the last few years is targeted specifically at digital products. Easy Digital Downloads also provides some great add-ons that are going to help me minimise the amount of custom code powering my store.

So, with a bit of a heavy heart, I’ve decided to move my store over to Easy Digital Downloads.

I’ll certainly still be working with WP e-Commerce regularly (Actually, I’m looking forward to some changes with the store freeing up a bit more of my time to help out again!), not to mention WooCommerce, but I have to say I’m a little bit excited to spend a little bit more time with EDD.

Addendum: I’ve realised how infrequently I actually use WordPress for blogging, so I’m going to use this exercise to make me blog a little more. I’ll be covering the process, the extensions I’m using, and hopefully also any shareable code that comes out of the process – watch this space …

 Disclaimer: The easy digital downloads links in this post include an affiliate code.

The post Moving to EDD appeared first on Lee Willis.

Thanks to the great work that’s been going on in WP e-Commerce core – there are now a bunch of useful hooks and filters that allow the content to be changed by filters rather than by editing the plugin direct.

So – if you want to add the SKU to your order emails you can just install and enable the plugin below to add it for you.

The post Adding SKU to email notifications in WP e-Commerce appeared first on Lee Willis.

This list is a bit of a nightmare to find the file you want. It’s not sorted by anything obvious – not name, and not date-modified as far as I can tell. Finding a file is a bit of a scroll-and-hope affair. Much better to have a nice, ordered list like this:

This is an itch I’ve been wanting to scratch for a while now, and it turns out the code is pretty simple. Just drop the following in your theme’s functions.php file and revel in the glory of a nice, ordered file list.

function site_plugin_custom_sort_function ( $a, $b ) {
  return strtolower($a['display_filename']) > strtolower($b['display_filename']);
}

function site_plugin_sort_download_list ( $download_list ) {
  // Sort the multidimensional array
  usort($download_list, "site_plugin_custom_sort_function");
  return $download_list;
}
add_filter ( 'wpsc_downloadable_file_list', 'site_plugin_sort_download_list' );

The post Sorting the list of downloadable files in WP e-Commerce appeared first on Lee Willis.

If you want to do that – check out this new plugin:

WP e-Commerce Show Personalisation

Screenshots below:

The post Show Personalisation Info during checkout with WP e-Commerce appeared first on Lee Willis.

A while ago, I added code to the WP e-Commerce project so that it could provide Google Merchant Centre feeds (It’s the thing that powers Google’s “shopping results”). It’s been my experience over the last few years that having an effective feed is a good source of traffic, and an avenue that’s often neglected by other e-Commerce providers – so can be a “quick win” SEO tactic.

The fact that Bing now offer something similar recently came to my attention, and it would make sense to expand WP e-Commerce’s support to include Bing Shopping feeds as well as Google Merchant Centre. So, I skim-read the integration guide to see the size of the task at hand, everything looks good (Apart from their choice of format by the way which is, erm, a bit shocking to say the least – but hey – it does the job I guess).

I signed up for an Microsoft AdCentre account (Which requires you to hand over your credit card details, despite the fact the service is free – erm….). Now, the service currently is for US stores only, and I’m in the UK. But hey, WP e-Commerce is a global product, and I know a large portion of those users are in the US – so no problem there.

So – I followed the instructions in the Integration Guide which told me to click “Bing Shopping Account Management” in my Adcentre account, but I don’t have that link. No worries – I’m sure I saw mention of a Merchant Help Forum in the integration guide – so off I headed.

At this point my suspicion was that the problem was my geography (I did contemplate lying on the registration form and entering “US” – but I played it straight and entered “UK”). So I posted the following enquiry:

Hi,

I’m looking to add support for Bing Shopping feeds to a WordPress ecommerce platform. Unfortunately while many of the users are US-based, I’m not. I’ve signed up for an adcentre account – but I don’t see Bing Shopping under “Tools” – is this because I registered with a UK address? If so – how can I get access so I can test the integration?

Thanks in advance

Short, and to the point. No official reply from Microsoft, but that’s not really surprising, but there was a helpful reply from one of the regulars letting me know that it wasn’t an issue that had cropped up before, and helpfully pointing me at a contact page for “Questions about Bing Shopping” – sounds perfect.

So – I fired off the exact same question, and 22 hours later (I don’t consider that a bad turnaround time for something like this) the following arrived as a reply from the “Bing Shopping” support team:

Hello Lee,

Thank you for contacting Microsoft Customer Service.

Based on your message, you would like to suggest to add support for Bing shopping feeds. Let me see what I can do for you today.

As a Customer Service Representative, I am here to assist you in finding the right place to get help with your questions and provide resources to resolve your concern.

Lee, for this kind of concern what may I suggest is to contact Bing Support Professional for better assistance regarding on your concern. You may contact them through this link: https://support.discoverbing.com/eform.aspx?productKey=bing&ct=eformts&scrx=1&st=1&wfxredirect=1

I hope the above information is helpful, and please contact us if you have any additional customer service questions.

Thank you,

Hm, not great. They clearly don’t understand my question, and I now have to contact a second (More generic) support team with my question.

I’m now being made to chase around different departments because Microsoft (You know, that big multi-billion dollar company) apparently can’t pass a customer support issue between teams themselves.

Also – it’s evident that the support team don’t have the right skills / knowledge / experience to answer the question. If you’re a company offering APIs to developers they need a different level of support than your end-users. You need to make sure that your support staff are sufficiently skilled and experienced for the audience they’re supporting – or that they know that it’s OK to escalate an issue if required, and the right place to send it to – not that it’s more important to close the call than actually answer the question.

The response included an invitation for feedback on how my issue had been handled. Obviously I was disappointed, and so I replied to this request for feedback, hoping that someone would take my issue on and find me the right answer:

I’d just like to register my disappointment with responses I’ve received.

I’m a UK-based WordPress developer, trying to provide an integration between one of WordPress’s leading e-Commerce system WP e-Commerce, and Bing Shopping.

I’ve read the integration guide, and am happy I can modify the software to produce a feed. I’ve signed up for a Microsoft adcentre account, but it appears I’m unable to submit feeds (Even test ones) as I’m not in the US.

I raised this as a question on the forum http://community.microsoftadvertising.com/forums/p/68015/95480.aspx and one of the forum visitors helpfully pointed me to the “Contact Us: Questions about Bing shopping” contact page which seemed to be a sensible place to get in touch (See case number quoted above).

The result was a completely unhelpful response directing me to a generic Bing contact page – to which I’ve forwarded my enquiry – but if the dedicated “Bing Shopping” contact page couldn’t get an answer to my query – I’ll be very surprised if this does.

So:

• I’m disappointed that you seem to have no interest in supporting developers looking to drive customers to your products, based purely on their geography
• even more disappointed in the lack of support received when I raised this with what seems like the appropriate group
• mortified that I have to chase round re-submitting my request to various different groups

I’ll confess it’s a bit grumpy, but I think you’ll find the answer fascinating (Emphasis mine):

Hello Lee,

Thank you for contacting Microsoft North America Customer Service.

From the information you have provided in your message, I understand that you are located in United Kingdom and looking for obtaining the Windows Defender download. The Customer Service team you have reached is for North America.  There are significant differences between North American versions of Microsoft products and those localized for your country.

You will be best assisted by the Microsoft subsidiary that specializes in your version of Windows Defender. You can reach them at (+44) 0844 800 2400 or by visiting: http://www.microsoft.com/worldwide/phone/contact.aspx?country=United%20Kingdom

Wish you a very Happy and Prosperous New Year.

So, this was supposed to be “feedback” about the level of support I received. My disappointment, and areas of complaint weren’t even acknowledged (Never mind actually addressed), and I got pointed to a Windows Defender download (If anyone can explain how that could ever possibly have been the right answer to my question I’ll buy them a beer!)

But what about the request I forwarded to the generic Bing Support team? Maybe they came back with a helpful answer? …

Hello Lee,

My name is XXXXXX. Your e-mail was escalated to me and I would like to assist you with your concern on adding support for Bing Shopping feeds to a WordPress ecommerce platform. I understand the importance of your concern.

For issues and concerns on Bing Shopping UK, please contact Ciao help team at support@ciao.co.uk.

We appreciate your continued support as we strive to provide you with the highest quality service available. Thank you for using Bing.

Sincerely,
XXXX
Bing Technical Support

I’d already explained in my contact that I wanted to post information for US stores, and the forum thread I linked through covered ciao.co.uk and why that wasn’t the right area to look at.

Suffice to say I won’t be integrating with Bing Shopping anytime soon and I pity anyone who has to deal with Bing Support …

The post Integrating WordPress with Bing Shopping appeared first on Lee Willis.

I’m pretty happy with the theme in action on Stewart’s site, but I realise that people do strange and interesting things on their WordPress sites, so before I release the theme, I’m looking for people to test and provide feedback.

Interested? Check it out here.

The post WordPress Photoblog Theme appeared first on Lee Willis.

add_theme_support( 'post-thumbnails' );

This worked, in that it solved the problem – all of the post-thumbnail function calls worked. However, it left a bug, and one that isn’t a software, or a techie bug – it was the worst kind – a bad user experience. Suddenly “posts” and “pages” would allow you to set featured images when authoring, or editing, but because the theme didn’t really support post thumbnails, those images would never show leaving a confused, bewildered user. So, the solution is to enable the support in general, but disable it for specific post types:

function check_thumbnail_support() {
 if (!current_theme_supports('post-thumbnails')) {
   add_theme_support( 'post-thumbnails' );
   add_action('init','remove_posttype_thumbnail_support');
 }
}
add_action('after_setup_theme','check_thumbnail_support',99);

function remove_posttype_thumbnail_support() {
 remove_post_type_support('post','thumbnail');
 remove_post_type_support('page','thumbnail');
}

This does three important things:
1. Check to see if the theme supports thumbnails already – if so, do nothing
2. If not, then turn on post thumbnail support, but also …
3. Remove support from “post” and “page”

The “gotcha” if you’re trying to come up with this yourself is that theme support is for “post-thumbnails”, but post_type_support is for the more generic “thumbnails”. Hope this comes in handy some someone.

The post Post Thumbnails only for Custom Post Types appeared first on Lee Willis.

This year’s event is being held in Manchester (Which is nice and central if you ask me!) and looks like it’ll be a great chance to chat about what’s new and groovy with WordPress, and find out who’s doing what in the UK.

You can find out more at the WordCamp UK site.

The post WordCamp UK 2010 appeared first on Lee Willis.

Here’s a a quick tip to show how to control the sort order, just add the following snippet to your WordPress theme’s functions.php file:

<?php
    if (!isset($_SESSION['wpsc_product_order'])) {
        $_SESSION['wpsc_product_order'] = "DESC";
 }
 ?>

Just swap DESC for ASC to swap the default order. Happy sorting …

The post Reverse the product order in WP e-Commerce appeared first on Lee Willis.