If you’re using WordPress as your online shop there’s a good chance that you’re using WP-Ecommerce 3.8 as your shop plugin. It is a great plugin and very flexible for selling product online. One of the things you want to do when you run a WordPress based shop ios to integrate your products with your site as fully as possible.
A lot of people also like to present their shop front as a grid of products – it’s a great way to present your wares. Displaying a grid view with wp e-commerce when you are using the default twenty-ten template is fairly straightforward if you have experience of coding and know the WordPress system well.
Wp-ecommerce 3.8 home page grid view with slider.
However not everyone has the time to learn the coding of WordPress so I’ve put together a home page template file that will give you a grid view of your products on your home page. You can see it in action at phonelingo.co.uk.
The mod is a page template file that has most of the features hardcoded but still allows you to add your own content using the standard WordPress editor. In our example everything between the slider and the first Latest Products section is content added through the normal editor.
Line by line instructions for grid view for WordPress based shop.
There are somethings you need to adjust and the read me file gives you a line by line of all the changes you need to make for your own particular site. This page template has only been tested using the default twenty-ten theme, it should work ok with child themes. If you have other themes it may work but there’s no guarantees and you may have to make quite a lot of changes to the css to get the wp ecommerce grid view correctly formatted.
If you are using the default twenty ten theme with wp-ecommerce 3.8 then once the file is uploaded and you’ve added the extra css to your style file all you need to do is open up another page, add your content and then choose the home template option in the templates section of page attributes. Then go to the WordPress settings > reading and select the front page displays static page and select the page you have just produced.
Adding slider to wp-ecommerce home page.
For this page template to work correctly you will need the following plugins installed:
- NectGen gallery
- JJ NextGen JQuery Slider
You will also need to have a wp-ecommerce category called special Offers and a WordPress category called Reviews.
The hard coding will automatically keep your front page up to date with;
- a promotional slider of your products on the home page – just add the images and links to the gallery you have set for the front slider.
- the latest products will automatically be displayed on your home page.
- any product you add to the special offers category will be displayed. If the number of products in the category is greater than the number you have set to display then the items on offer will be randomly selected.
- the latest blog posts that you make will automatically be displayed with the excerpt.
- the lasted reviews that you have done on your products will be displayed.
This is not a plugin or theme for wp-ecommerce but a page template file.
This is a great extra file to give your wp-ecommerce shop a grid view on your WordPress home page and give you the option to add your own content. You can also update your own content in the normal way through the editor because the other aspects of the page is hard-coded and you don’t see it in the editor view.
works on wp 3.2.x
Download a frontpage template for wp ecommerce using grid view and slider just £5.00.
I can install and configure this page template for you for £50.00.
