How Ryan Imel Created The WP Quarterly Page

One comment I have that applies to all of the e-commerce plugins I tried out is this: the initial setup process is quite overwhelming. During my toying process I set up the basic Quarterly sales items and process for each plugin on a testing location. Without exception, each plugin presented me with options I never ended up needing, or didn’t even care about. I realize that WPCandy’s shopping cart needs aren’t as complicated as some, but that made me wish for a simplified setup process even more.

It would be great to see these plugins take more of a “decisions over options” approach. When that isn’t possible, stashing less vital options in an advanced section would lessen the initial impact of a screen full of checkboxes and dropdowns.

Ryan Imel explained in-depth how he created the sales page for the WordPress Quarterly magazine. Within the post you’ll find his thoughts on the various e-commerce systems he tried, code snippets to produce the page, and much more. Definitely worth a read.