The first one I will review is called ShopperPress.

This ecommerce plugin for wordpress seems to be a nice fit for site owners looking to sell their own products or services, offer affiliate products (Amazon, Clickbank, or Commission Junction), sell drop shipped products, sell digital downloads (music, ebooks, images, PDFs), or setup an online catalog or showcase.

Some of the ShopperPress features include:

1. Preloaded Themes/Templates
2. Affiliate Product Import Tool
3. Various Shipping Options
4. Payment Integration (Paypal, Google Checkout, WorldPay, and more)
5. Google Adsense Integration
6. Built-In Article Integration
7. Community Forum and Support

I have first hand experience with the support over at ShopperPress and I can certainly say that Mark Fail (the developer) is more than fair and very straightforward.  He helped me on numerous occasions even before I started using the product and now that I have been using the free plugin he has been a great help as well.  The only beef (minor beef…maybe chicken or pork) I have with ShopperPress is that I think the free version should have a few more features (ie Checkout Options) to really allow site owners to use the plugin before purchasing the VIP version.  I do not have a problem with the pricing for the VIP version because I really think $69 is more than fair…especially since you can us the VIP version of ShopperPress on up to 3 websites. I just think a few more features in the free version of ShopperPress would make it easier to evaluate the product and decide whether it is the right fit for you.

For now, this is all I have on ShopperPress but you can see for yourself at ShopperPress.com when you have a chance. Let me know what you think about using wordpress for ecommerce by leaving a comment!

I remembered a while back that I had found a tool called CushyCMS that would allow you to easily implement content management in to any straight coded site.   In this case I was able to make every 5 or 6 of her web pages fully editable (content and images) in a matter of 15 or 20 minutes…this included setup of CushyCMS and everything.  It’s so simple…all you need to do is place a css class of “cushycms” on any element you would like to edit and Cushy CMS takes care of the rest.

For example:

<h1 class="cushycms" title="My Heading">THIS IS MY EDITABLE HEADING</h1> 
<div class="cushycms" title="My Main Content"><p>MORE EDITABLE STUFF FOR YOU OR YOUR CLIENT</p></div>
<img src="MyPhoto.jpg" class="cushycms" width="250" height="100" alt="MyPhoto" />

After you add these div tags you would go in to the CushyCMS Control Panel and add the page to that particular site and voila!   You now have a web page that your client can edit without messing with code.

For any web designer that still prefers not to use a content management system like Joomla, Drupal, or Word Press to name a few, CushyCMS is a wonderful option.  You can build a quick html/css layout for a client and add CMS to it in a matter of minutes.  The best part of Cushy CMS is that you can use it for free!  The free version is sufficient for most applications but I can see where the Pro version would be very helpful especially if you need support on the product (I think the pricing on the pro version is more than reasonable).  I am using the free version with great success and I would highly recommend this to anyone looking for a quick CMS fix on virtually any website.  For more information, go to CushyCMS.com and check it out!

Side note: I am not a paid CushyCMS representative nor do I get an affiliate commission if you sign up.  I am simply a happy user of CushyCMS! If you have any questions about CushyCMS please feel to email me or leave a comment.