The latest version of WP e-Commerce (3.8.x) for WordPress is a significant move on both in terms of stability and extensibility.

This is partly down to an extensive re-build on the codebase to take advantage of some of WordPress’ latest features; custom post type and taxonomies. This has the added benefit of making it much easier for plugin developers to create add-on plugin to enhance WP e-Commerce functionality.

The key objectives now seem to be to keep WP e-Commerce ‘lean and mean’ to provide a solid platform on which to develop WordPress-based e-commerce sites, and provide additional functionality through plugins.

Part of this process includes stripping out some of the less-used parts of WP e-Commerce and turning them into plugins. Once such example is the automated ‘Also Bought’ functionality which can be found in the Marketing tab of WP e-Commerce settings.

I have worked extensively with WP e-Commerce over the last 2-3 years and frequently try to get involved wether it be fixing the odd bug or helping out on the forum – when I have time ;) so I jumped on board to help separate the ‘Also Bought’ functionality into a WordPress plugin.

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I frequently install HeadSpace, the WordPress SEO plugin by John Godley, when I work on a WordPress site.

Recently I have been making use of the new custom post type features of WordPress 3.0 but found that the HeadSpace meta box for editing the title and description tags did not show on my custom post type edit screens.

After a bit of delving through the code I figured out the way to do this – note that this may only work if your custom post type uses the default post capabilities.

It checks that the HeadSpace class is available and if so adds the meta box to your custom post type edit screen. Just add the following code into your plugin or theme’s functions.php file replacing ‘myposttype’ with your custom post type.

/**
 * Add Headspace plugin support for myposttype
 */
function myposttype_headpspace_add_custom_box() {
 
	global $headspace2;
 
	if ( function_exists( 'add_meta_box' ) && is_object( $headspace2 ) ) {
		add_meta_box( 'headspacestuff', __('HeadSpace', 'headspace'), array( &$headspace2, 'metabox' ), 'myposttype', 'normal', 'high' );
	}
 
}
add_action( 'wp_print_scripts', 'myposttype_headpspace_add_custom_box' );

Getting to grips with custom post types in WordPress 3.0?

I am, and am finding they’re a great way to organise different content on your site and very easy to implement in just a few lines of code.

However, the challenge now is for plugin developers to make their plugins play nice with custom post types. The main thing I’ve noticed so far is that most plugins only tend to add meta boxes to posts and pages, so here’s the first step – getting your WordPress plugin meta boxes to work with custom post types.

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WP e-Commerce 3.7.6 now includes better support for paging on category pages.

The latest release contains a suite of functions (my little contribution) to help you customise how pagination is displayed in your WPSC templates.

You can find an in-depth look at these functions and how to use them in the WP e-Commerce Documentation.

Below are some quick examples of what you can do…

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By default the terms and conditions link on the checkout page in WP e-Commerce activates an overlay popup containing the terms and conditions text you have specified in the admin.

But what if you want the link to redirect to a page instead of triggering this popup? You just need to make a small change to your checkout template. Here’s what you need to do…

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