These are your…shipping settings (once again, captain obvious at your service).

Use Shipping: If you are ONLY selling digital downloads, you should select “no” to disable shipping on your site. Otherwise, select “yes”.

Base Zipcode/Postcode: If you are based in America then you need to set your own Zipcode for UPS and USPS to work. This should be the Zipcode for your Base of Operations.

ShipWire Settings: If you are using ShipWire, this is where you put your settings.

Enable Free Shipping Discount: Do you want to be able to create a coupon for free shipping? Here’s your chance!

Shipping Modules

For shipping to work, you gotta select how you want to calculate shipping. You got a few choices to make here — how do you want the shipping to be calculated, and then depending on your selection, who do want to use for shipping rates.

Internal Shipping Calculator: How do you want your shipping to be calculated. WP e-Commerce comes with the following options

1. Flat Rate -  Do you want to use a flat rate for shipping? In which case you need to decide
   1. Do you want to charge a flat rate per product (i.e. one book costs $3 to ship, two books costs $6 to ship, etc.)
   2. Do you want to charge a flat rate for the entire order (i.e. no matter how many books you buy, shipping will be $10)
   3. Do you want to charge a flat rate both per product AND for the entire order (i.e. one book costs $3, two books costs $6, and I’m going to charge you an additional $10 just for the effort)
   4. Does the flat rate change depending on the general location of the customer (i.e. North america, South america, Europe)
   5. Man, flat rate shipping can be exhausting, and you haven’t even packaged the item yet!
2. Table Rate - Do you want your shipping to be calculated based on the total cost of the order? For example if the order is $10-$20, the shipping will be $3, if the price is $20-$30, the shipping will be $6, and on and on.

External Shipping Calculators: WP e-Commerce automatically connects with a few different shipping providers so that your shopping cart is always using the most current rates. If you are using weight rate shipping, which provider would you like to use to calculate the rates (shipping costs vary per provider).

1. Australia Post
2. UPS - If you select, you will be presented with a whole bunch of optional settings
3. USPS – If you select USPS, you will need to make sure you have registered with them, and have a USPS ID and Password. Otherwise, the shopping cart won’t connect.

A Note on USPS
Steps to obtain and activate a USPS Web Tools ID

* A username and password for USPS Web Tools can be obtained at https://secure.shippingapis.com/registration/
* Though USPS will e-mail you a username and password with instructions on using the testing server, your account must be activated to access the production server. To activate it, send an e-mail to the ICCC at icustomercare@usps.com or call 1-800-344-7779. Provide your username and tell them you are using 3rd party software called WP-Ecommerce; this allows you the skip the process of testing your access on the testing server.

When that process is all done (they’re very responsive to these types of requests, so it typically just takes a few hours by e-mail or instantly by phone), just enter your username and password in the USPS “edit” window under the Shipping options window–and make sure you’ve applied the “button” bug fix above.

I’ve updated the wiki with this information, but haven’t added the info about the button; It’s a bug with the code and should be addressed there.

You can now offer both USPS and UPS external calculators. One drawback is the USPS calculator doesn’t support weight-based calculations, but it does recognize the difference between international and domestic locations. Hopefully we can address this issue soon.