Tag: Shopperpress

  • How to Convert Shopperpress Custom Post-Type Articles to WordPress Posts

    Recently I wrote about how to setup a blog on Shopperpress, which then led one of my readers to ask about what happens to the custom post-type articles Shopperpress uses for the blog functionality when you convert to another theme or want to move your content to another site or ecommerce platform?

    I saw your Shopperpress post, and I just wondered if you could give me any advice. I probably will move from Shopperpress to another platform in the near future. But for now, is it OK to use the “new-articles” function on WordPress to write articles/blog posts? I just wondered if I did this, would the blog posts be transferable from Shopperpress to the new cart I purchase? I just was a little confused by your blog post that’s all. I currently use the “article” template from Shopperpress on my blog page.

    I haven’t tested it, but I believe that posts written as “articles” are custom post-types, which don’t display natively without the plugin or theme calling them specifically. This means that if you were to switch themes, your articles would not display unless the new theme specifically went looking for them.

    Switching to a different shopping cart platform is an entirely different matter unless you were referring to a different WordPress plugin like WP-Ecommerce, which I don’t recommend. If switching to Big Commerce, you’d probably have to copy and paste it all in manually so make sure you do some sort of backup that makes sense to you before switching over.

    I haven’t actually written any blog posts thus far, I’m just in the process of setting it up. Is there an alternative than using the “article” post type to write blog posts? Basically, Shopperpress has hijacked the “posts” option on WordPress to create new products instead. So I can’t create blog posts that way. Is there an easy way to write blog posts on Shopperpress that are easy to move to a new shopping cart if I did move? I don’t know if doing it manually in the future is particularly appealing.

    You’re right in that Shopperpress uses the normal “posts” option to post products. Your options for moving custom post-types like Shopperpress articles to normal WordPress post-types involve using a plugin like pTypeConverter or Post Type Convertr. Your other option is to use a plugin like Backup WordPress.

    Wordpress Post Type Converter

  • How to Link to Articles in Shopperpress

    Shopperpress is an ecommerce WordPress theme that has many functions, but some are not so obvious. For example, you can’t easily edit the header navigation bar links. While it automatically links to pages you create and gives you the option to hide the ones you don’t want displayed, you can’t add custom links without editing the theme files directly. We created a Shopperpress child theme for one of our clients, but we didn’t want to break the inherent functionality of the theme – we wanted to work with it. The problem was, the client wanted the header navigation bar to link to “articles”, but it wasn’t really clear at first how to do this.

    How to Link to Articles in Shopperpress

    Shopperpress takes over WordPress default post types and calls them “Products”. This means that typical blog content is forced over to a custom post type called “Articles”. These articles are created and managed in the “Article Manager”. If your WordPress website already had blog posts, these will need manually changed over to the post type “Article Manager”. To display all of the articles, create a page called “Articles” or “Blog” or whatever you like and change the Page Template type to “Articles Template”. This “TPL” file in the Shopperpress theme calls a hook that pulls in all of the articles. This new page will now appear in the header navigation until it is asked not to. To change the order in the menu, change the Order number of the pages. The lowest number, starting at “0” will appear on the left and the highest number will appear on the right. If the numbers are the same, they go in the order they were created.

    More Notes About Shopperpress Blog Function

    • Shopperpress requires you to change the Permalinks to %postname% which means that you lose any SEO value of putting categories before post names with %category%/%postname%.
    • Shopperpress requires you to put in a description for each article. It doesn’t automatically display the content or the excerpt. This gives you more control, but takes time.
    • Exported blog post Articles created as the Articles Template custom post type will not display on a default WordPress installation when imported unless Shopperpress is used.

    While Shopperpress is great for automatically pulling in affiliate products from sites like Amazon and eBay, it’s not a great blogging platform, but that’s okay if your primary goal is to use WordPress for ecommerce. However, if you’re wanting to develop an ecommerce site, we are currently recommending Big Commerce due to it’s speed, extensibility, and CSS/HTML editability.