I'm hoping there are some Atahualpans here that use the WP e-Commerce plugin and can get me started in the right direction.

I had no problems installing and activating the plugin on my test WP 2.71 website. I'd like to set up "shop" and "cart" in the simplest manner possible to get a feel for everything ...this will be my first hands-on experience with online sales transactions.

It is completely amazing how many changes are made when you install this plugin: added pages, categories, EXTENSIVE additions in the backend Dashboard.

WHERE should I start? ...upload product photos? ...start "creating" product descriptions? I've looked around both at the Instinct website and amongst the unzipped download files and cannot find any "Quick Start" or "How To" or anything ....

BTW: I posted this question on the Instinct/WP e-Commerce forums more than 24 hours ago and there has no been reply from anyone -- not an Instinct moderator and not from any of the other forum members ...not taking that as a particularly good sign.

Jim

Thanks! TTFN Jim

Sorry about the delay in responding here...I've been out of the loop for a coupla days.

You will get NO responses from the Instinct boards, unless some kind reader has had your problem and replies.

There is, however, a Quick Wizard guide which has links to all sorts of helpful tips.

http://www.instinct.co.nz/forums/topic.php?id=596

Make sure you scroll down! It's all there.

The plug-in is clunky, and takes some getting used to, and I would advise you be ready mess around with some style sheets to get it the way you want, but I think it is a helpful plug-in if you are trying to sell stuff. Default settings on some plug-ins, this one included, are mystifying to me, but what do i know?

If you do not have a lot of different items to sell, I would advise you skip this plug-in and just go with Paypal's buttons, cut and paste them into your site. They worked for me for a loooong time until our catalogue grew a bit. Good luck!

Thanks mactony! I understand what you say about just using the PayPal buttons.

It's always seemed that there was a fairly good-sized group of people who did not like PayPal and would not "use" it, even if they didn't have to set up a PP account ...just put their VISA or MCard through.

We also would prefer to not "send" our customers off-site at any point in the process.

As a temporary thing we have a single PayPal "Pay Now" button set up right now ...will have to see how my wife feels after she's had some experience with that. I'd always been the one that did all the online "customer contact" and she couldn't believe it when I had people emailing me their ccard account numbers split up into four separate email messages ...or, my favorite, couching the numbers in a story in email: "....4,345 sheep by 01:00 hours, on or before July of 2011." It was interesting, if a bit amateurish!

Thanks again! Jim

See, I've always had the opposite experience: people prefer Paypal over myriad alternatives because of its reputation and simplicity. We've been selling records via Paypal for years now. Been working like a charm!

Different strokes, different folks. Good luck!

re PayPal - there do seem to be two different groups of thought about PayPal. I use them both as payor and payee, but don't trust PayPal any more than I do all of the ccard companies ...and PayPal, due to the technicality that they don't call themselves a bank, are subject to much less (if any) oversight/regulations.

I'm going to mark this thread as resolved. But, will continue to look around for good places to learn more. Maybe there are some Google or Yahoo Groups that aren't too contentious.