scriptygoddessI've been a little absent around here lately, and part of the reason is that I've been working on a project that I can now formally announce here! I'm starting up a little side business. You see, I've always loved doing origami – from the time that I was a kid. I can't even remember when I started. And now I've decided to turn some of my creations into things I can share. Ok… sell. 😀 My little side business is called Above The Fold (AboveTheFold.org) and it's an online store for (at the moment) origami earrings, cards, and magnets. (More things will be coming).
(As for the .org – instead of the .com – the squatter "owner" of the .com is willing to sell it… for a mere $7K! heh. I'll be lucky if I sell 5 pairs of earrings this whole year!! LOL! I don't think it's in my budget!)
This may not seem very "scripty" related – but actually it is. When working on my ecommerce site, I briefly looked into some pre-made web-shops, but they were all a little "too big" for what I wanted to do. I wanted to add products easily. I wanted to have "add to cart" buttons automatically generated.. etc. etc. I thought I'd just start writing something on my own – but then realized that I could probably do A LOT of what I wanted with WordPress!! Not sure how many ecommerce sites are WordPress driven – but I did it quite easily. Now that it's up and running, I can see more "ecommerce" type "plugins" I can add – but for now, I'm busy making origami.
But I thought, for those interested, I might share some of my little tricks that make the site run. Many of them are take-offs on what I did for Christine with Pixelog.
First thing – I'm using WP 1.5 (formerly known as 1.3) for the site. Up until now, I hadn't had too much opportunity to play around with it – but I gotta tell you. This version KICKS BUTT!!! I've really been enjoying working with it and can't wait to upgrade my other blogs!
So, now on to the geeky-under-the-hood talk…
Product Setup.
Each product is essentially a post. The "Product Name" is the "Post title". In the "excerpt" field, I put the thumbnail image of the product. In the main post field I first put the full size photo of the product, then the "more" tag – then I put the product's description.
I store the price in a custom field. As well some products may come in gold or silver, so I have another custom field to indicate if it's one of those (and which one). I have another custom field that stores available sizes.
Home Page.
I wanted to show the most recent products that I had added to the store. (Just the thumbnails). To list just the excerpts (there may be another way – if so, please tell me!) I access the raw data from the database. Right BEFORE the WP Loop start I initialize my count variable:
<?php
$count = 0;
?>
After the loop start, here's what I have:
<?php
//each time we loop through - get JUST the post excerpt
$postdata = $wpdb->get_row("SELECT post_excerpt FROM wp_posts WHERE id = $id");
$count++;
if ($count == 1) {
echo '<ul class="itemlisting">';
}
?>
<li><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"><?php echo $postdata->post_excerpt; ?></a><span class="title"><?php the_title(); ?></span><?php edit_post_link(__('Edit This')); ?>
</li>
<?php
if ($count == 4) {
echo "</ul>";
$count = 0;
}
?>
<?php endwhile; ?>
<?php
if ($count < 4 && $count > 0) {
echo "</ul>";
$count = 0;
}
?>
(I'm creating two lists of products – you may ask why I'm not making just one list. I did have it that way at one point – but had some cross browser compatibility issues. This method meant less code than some other options I was working with.)
Categories.
I have my "category" (product type) pages set up very similarly as the home page.
Post Pages.
This is where the fun gets started. My shopping cart is handled through paypal. WordPress itself is generating the product ID numbers. The product names are derived from the "post titles". Prices are grabbed from the custom field. I also display some customized text depending on that "gold silver" option.
So first, I want to extract the full size image – but not the product description.
$content = explode('<!--more-->', $pages[0]);
That breaks up the content into the two pieces. So to echo the first part (the part with just the full size product image) I do this:
echo $content[0];
To display the rest of the product description (formatted as you'd expect with paragraph and "br" tags) I do this:
echo apply_filters('the_content', $content[1]);
To get the custom field values:
$price = get_post_custom_values('price');
$sizes = get_post_custom_values('size');
$goldsilver = get_post_custom_values('goldsilveroption');
To echo the sizes in a drop down menu:
Size: <select name="os0">
<?php
$sizes = get_post_custom_values('size');
foreach ($sizes as $size) {
echo '<option value="'.$size.'">'.$size.'</option>';
}
?>
</select>
To echo the price, simply:
<?php echo $price[0]; ?>
I display the appropriate text for the gold or silver by doing this:
<?php if ($goldsilver && $goldsilver[0] == "gold") { ?>
Earrings are made with 14k gold filled posts and earwire.
<?php } else if ($goldsilver && $goldsilver[0] == "silver") { ?>
Earrings are made with sterling silver posts and earwire.
<?php } ?>
So that's it. I'm not completely done (is anyone EVER done tweaking their site??) I still want to add a few additional features. But at the moment, the site does everything and more that I wanted for a first release.
Sooo….Wanna buy some origami earrings? 
