Presentation
The presentation settings within Store > Settings > Presentation enable you personalise the look and feel of WP e-Commerce to match your unique needs.
Before you get started, we strongly recommend you move your WP e-Commerce themes to a ‘safe’ location, we do this to ensure changes to your WP e-Commerce theme are not lost during Plugin updates of WP e-Commerce.
If you are running version 3.8 and above: Open the WordPress Administration, to the right of Store > Presentation you will see a box that says “Theme Customization”. Click the provided link and WP e-Commerce will copy your current WP e-Commerce theme to your current WordPress theme directory. From here you can customise your theme in an ‘Plugin update safe’ environment.
If you are running version 3.7.6.*: Open the WordPress Administration, to the right of Store > Presentation you will see a box that says “Theme Customization”. Click the provided link and WP e-Commerce will copy your current WP e-Commerce theme to ‘/wp-content/uploads/wpsc/themes/’. From here you can customise your theme in a ‘Plugin update safe’ environment.
If you are running 3.7.5.3 or lower: Connect to your server with your preferred FTP editor (we recommend the Open Source FTP manager, Filezilla), copy your current WP e-Commerce theme from ‘/wp-content/plugins/wp-e-commerce/themes/’ to ‘/wp-content/uploads/wpsc/themes/’.
Now, on to the fun part!
Button Settings
Button Type: The button in questions refers to the button your customers will click in order to purchase a product. This setting is a bit misleading. While it looks like you have two choices, the truth is, that unless you are using PayPal, you really only have one choice, which is “Add to Cart”. For those of you using PayPal, for your payment gateway, you have the option of having your customers bypass the whole “add to shopping cart, then view the shopping cart” thing, and instead have them taken directly to the shopping cart once they click the “Buy Now” button.
Hide “Add to Cart” Button: We’re not entirely sure why you would want to do this, unless you are using WP e-Commerce for something besides a shopping cart, but hey, the options there if you need it!
Product Settings
Show Product Ratings: Do you want your customers to rate your products? Do you want others customers to see these ratings? This settings is for you! If you select “yes”, a star rating system will display underneath the “Add to Cart” button on your product page.
Display Fancy Purchase Notifications: Fancy Notifications gives users instant feedback when they add an item to the shopping cart. It pops up a little window indicating that their cart has been updated, and then lets the user choose between “Go to Checkout” and “Continue Shopping”. This feature is particularly useful on sites with long product pages, in which the user might not see that the shopping cart widget has been updated. We suggest you set this to “yes”, and then if you don’t like it just turn it off.
Show Postage and Packaging: If you select this option it will display the shipping cost on your products page. It is currently displayed as PnP under the product price but you can change this by editing the language file. Set this to “no”, unless you want your individual product pages to display the postage and packaging (AKA shipping and handling) costs next to the price.
Disable Link in Title: This refers to whether or not the product name links to the actual product page. Under 95% of circumstance, you will want to check “no”. The only times we can think of that you would want to check yes is if you are only selling one product, or you really don’t have much to say/show about your products and therefore don’t care if each product has it’s own page (laaaaazzzzyyyyy).
Add quantity field to each product description: If you check “yes”, a quantity box will display on your product page, so customers can enter the number of items they want.
Product Page Settings
Product Display: This refers to how your products will be laid out on pages that contain a number of products (such as the “products page” or a “category” page). If you are not using the Gold Cart, you really don’t have a say in the matter, you’re stuck with default view. However, if you are using the Gold Cart, you just bought yourself some variety! In addition to default view, you now have list view, as well as the infamous grid view.
- List View: Displays your products in….a list (aren’t our naming conventions clever). If you select list view, you also have the option to display a quantity field next to each product.
- Grid View: Displays your products in…a grid (once again, our cleverness astounds even us). If you select grid view, you have a number of other choices that must then be made, which are pretty self-explanatory (damn we’re good).
- Products per Row
- Show images only
- Display Variations
- Display Description
- Display “Add to Cart” button
- Display “More Details” button
Select Theme: This is where you get to choose which WP e-Commerce theme you want to use. Just a note, this DOES NOT refer to your overall WordPress theme, this is strictly your shopping cart theme. The default themes that come with WP e-Commerce are called default theme, iShop theme, and Marketplace theme. Play around with the different themes to see which you prefer. You can also create your own theme. Read our documentation on “Creating a New Theme” for more information.
Select what product group you want to display on the products page: The “products page” is your main shopping cart page. While you might have a separate homepage (such as a “welcome to my store” page or something), the “products page” is the “homepage” for the plugin itself (yes, we do use a lot of quotations marks, you gotta problem?). So what exactly do you want showing up on this all important page? Once again, Instinct is here to provide you with a myriad of choices.
- Show all products: No explanation necessary
- Show list of product groups: Select this, and the products page will…display a list of all your product groups. We know, it seems silly to even say that, however this is actually a brand new option as of version 3.7.6.
- Show all products and list: Once again, this is a brand new option as well. Selecting this will not only display all your products, it will also display the aforementioned list of product groups.
- Categories/Brands: You can also choose to only display products from one particular category or brand. For example, one thing previous users have done, is to create a category called “featured”, in which they add the products they want to feature (Captain Obvious at your service). They then choose to display the “featured” category on their products page!
Sort Product By: Pretty self explanatory
Show Breadcrumbs: Once again, you probably know what this mean
Products Groups/Products Display: This refers to what happens once you get to a category page. Do you want all of the products within the category to display on the page at once (product groups only), or do you want only one product to display at a time (sliding product groups).
Show Search: Display a ‘live search’ bar within your store allowing customers to filter products based on name using AJAX.
Note: Show Search is a feature available exclusively in Gold Cart, purchase Gold Cart to instantly enable this functionality in your WP e-Commerce store.
Replace Page Title with Product/Category Name: Check “yes” to this if you want the page title to actually display the product name, instead of just the generic title of “Products Page”
Shopping Cart Settings
Cart Location: This refers to the location of the shopping cart widget (i.e. the thing that shows you the number of items in your cart, etc.). You have a few choices
- Page: If you want the shopping cart to just appear within the content of your page
- Widget: If you want the shopping cart to appear in the sidebar (or wherever your widgets might be located). If you choose the widget, you need to make sure to actually add the “shopping cart” widget in the widgets section of your site.
- DropShop: This only applies if you have purchased the DropShop module. Click here to read more about DropShop. It’s pretty rad.
- Manual: Hey, go crazy. We’re giving you the code so you can put that shopping cart wherever your e-commerce loving heart desires. Put it in the header, the footer, the center of the page, heck, put it on a completely different site (well, not really). You are the master of your domain my friends.
Display “+ Postage & Tax”: In your shopping cart widget (or whatever you want to call it), do you want your customers to see the total price, plus the shipping and tax?
Note: The shipping display will only work if either 1) you require customers to register, and therefore this is a returning customer and you know their address, OR 2) you are using shipping that doesn’t depend on location (i.e. flat rate or table weight). In addition, the tax display will only work if either 1) you require customers to register (for the same reasons before) or 2) you are in a location that only has one sales tax rate (which means you ain’t in the USA, though I’m not sure about other countries).
Product Group Settings
Show Product Group Description: Do you want to display the descriptions for your stores categories/brands?
Show Product Group Thumbnails: Do you want to display the thumbnail for your stores categories/brands?
Show Product Count per Product Group: Do you want to show the number of products per category?
Use Category Grid: Do you want to display your categories in grid view?
Thumbnail Settings
Default Product Thumbnail Size: Here you can set the default dimensions for your product thumbnails (you can further edit your thumbnail sizes when you are actually adding/editing your product).
Default Product Group Thumbnail Size: Same as above, except we are talking categories, not individual products.
Single Product Image Size: Once you get to the individual product page, what size do you want the main image to be
Show Thumbnails: Do you even want to display thumbnails? Maybe you are anti-pictures and you want a text only site.
Show Thumbnail Gallery: Once you get to the individual product page, do you want to show a gallery of other images associated with the product? If you have uploaded multiple images for a product, make sure you select “yes”.
Note: Show Thumbnail Gallery is a feature available exclusively in Gold Cart, purchase Gold Cart to instantly enable this functionality in your WP e-Commerce store.
Pagination Settings
Use Pagination: Do you want little numbers to display showing you the customer what page they are on, and how many more pages they have available to view? If so, check “yes”
Page Number Position: Do you want the little numbers to appear at the top of the page, the bottom of the page, or both!
Comments Settings
Use IntenseDebate Comments: Do you want customers to be able to leave comments about your products (for all to see). If so, select “yes” and hope you have kind customers.
