The observant might have noticed a new link on the right-hand side of this page. YAK Gallery is the first premium add-on for YAK, providing an easy way to present a gallery of products with a simple short-tag. You can have multiple galleries on one page, tag products so that they appear in more than one gallery, and hopefully the simple id and class attributes should make it relatively easy to style the presentation. Add the lightbox-2 plugin for quick zoom of gallery pics.

The YAK Demo Site has a demo of the add-on in action.

Not much to report in this latest version of YAK. Suburb (in the address entry screen) is now optional, and javascript usage has been streamlined to use more jQuery (less functions overall, which makes it easier to maintain).

The main point of note is that YAK is now being tested against WP3 only. 2.1.7 is still supported for WP2 users, for the moment, and I’ll make bug fix releases against that version as necessary.

So, versions 2.1.2 through 2.1.6 went by without any official announcement, so it seems like it’s probably a good idea to note that 2.1.7 will be the last release of YAK for the v2 series of WordPress (other than a bug fix release or two, perhaps).

Changes (in this latest release) since 2.1.1 include:

2.1.2

• Fix bug with sales tax via manual CC entry, along with removal of spurious <td>
• Fix bug with sales tax via accounts receivable entry

2.1.3

• Fix sales tax in PayPal Std checkouts

2.1.4

• Fix processing problem with failed Authorize.net payments
• Fix rounding issue with sales tax values sent to PayPal

2.1.5

• Fix bug with confirmation email (missing sales tax, totals wrong)

2.1.6

• Add back missing code to handle unlimited quantities

2.1.7

• Fix problem with incorrectly calculated shipping after validation error
• Increase timeout on Authorize.net connections (occasionally seems to cause a problem)
• Fix problem with unlimited quantity handling
• Add shipping type to email flags
• Add check for the address_entry function existing (seems to cause an incompatibility with another plugin)

The next release (which may not include any major changes at all), will be 2.2.0, which will be the first official version tested against WP3.

YAK 2.1.1 has just been released. Some fairly comprehensive changes have gone into this version. On the stability/security side of things, YAK now uses WP’s SQL “prepare” facility (this is to stop things like SQL injection attacks). From a bug fix perspective, you’ll notice the product edit form (when editing a post) is now draggable (thanks to a contributor), and promo price calculation had a bug in some environments which should now be resolved.

In terms of new features, I’ve added public key encryption for storage of CC details. With the recent news about WordPress blogs hacked on a shared host (http://blogcastfm.com/announcements/warning-massive-number-of-godaddy-wordpress-blogs-hacked-this-weekend/), and various comments about many people on shared web hosts who don’t secure their WP config files properly, it seems prudent to provide the facility for more security for users of the manual CC payment feature. YAK settings are now split into 4 separate screens (General, Shipping, Sales Tax, Advanced) — on the Advanced tab you’ll find a button for generating a public/private key. The public key can be used for encrypting CC numbers, and the private key for decrypting. I’ll be adding some more detail to the FAQ at some point soon.

I’ve also added the facility to require a login for certain products, added more values to the third-party-integration event, and also incrementing item quantity (rather than displaying an error message) when the customer clicks on the buy button for an item which is already in the cart (configurable, of course). The biggest feature addition is the first version of sales tax calculations. This works in a vaguely similar way to shipping (except without the zones), but also provides for federal and state based taxes for the US. If your country has a similar requirement (state versus federal taxes), let me know, and hopefully I can fit that into a subsequent release.

Well, version 2 actually, rather than a Rod Stewart/Tina Turner duet.

YAK version 2 has just been released (the WP site should update shortly). This is a major release, with a large number of changes. Most important to note for upgraders, is YAK now uses WordPress’s shortcode API and also supports multiple shipping options. See the change list below for what this actually means, but before upgrading, I recommend taking a note of your current shipping configuration, and taking a backup of your WP environment (just to be safe).

Changes include (note, read braces {} below as square brackets []):

• Updated the codebase to use WordPress’s shortcodes API. This means the old parameter style (e.g. {yak_price type id}) is replaced by the new style {yak_price id=”" type=”"}. For example, {yak_price small 23} becomes {yak_price id=”23″ type=”small”}. {yak_quantity medium} becomes {yak_quantity type=”medium”}
• Renamed {error_message} tag to {yak_error_message} (for consistency’s sake)
• Added a {yak_sku} tag. This takes the id and type parameters (same as yak_size). For example, {yak_sku type=”small”}
• Added a facility for loading custom modules
• Added “Proceed to checkout” link to yak order widget
• Added support for multiple shipping options (this means you’ll need to reconfigure your shipping settings — on the plus side, YAK now supports more than one shipping option). Shipping is now configured in a separate screen (YAK Shipping), and is broken into 3 tabs – Basic (the basic config settings, including where you can specify what shipping options you support), Zones (specify which country belongs to which zone), and Options (where you can set the price of shipping to each zone for each option).
• Added a test facility for the confirmation email message
• Added (very) basic low stock notification
• Changed “Buy” button on the initial cart page to “Checkout”
• Added an option to include the price on Buy Button drop-down (i.e. multi options)
• Changed ID on the buy button so that it’s unique
• Added “PAYMENT_PROCESSED” option to the orders screen — for orders which have been (manually) paid (either manual credit card or deposit/cheque, for example) but not yet shipped.
• Added “DELETE” option to the orders screen — only allows orders which are CANCELLED or in ERROR to be deleted

ADDENDUM: there was a minor Javascript bug I missed fixing (and meant to before the release), so version 2.0.1 will be on the update site shortly.

YAK version 1.8.0 was released yesterday. This release includes the following changes:

• Add a discount override, to allow for discounts on a per-product basis (useful to get rid of old stock, for example)
• Add option-selection to products. This differs from the categorisation-method of specifying different types of a product, and allows you to setup a selectable range of options (multi-select). Thus you might have a mix-and-match product, where a customer can select 3 out of 10 options, and so on.
• Split installation code into separate file
• Fix a compatibility problem with the exclude-pages plugin
• Add more logging to product update process
• Add threshold-based promotions — promotions which are triggered by the value of the order, rather than by a promotion code/voucher.

I’m currently in the process of updating the handbook to take into account the new features. Those who have previously purchased the handbook will receive an updated copy as soon as it’s done.

Version 1.7.7 of YAK for WordPress has been released.

This release includes mainly bug fixes, including the following:

• Hopefully fix a problem with glob (on some PHP installs)
• Move order widget into separate file
• Change “Espana” into “Spain” in English files.
• Fix problem with country missing from shipping address in confirmation email and in order screen
• Add a new tag [phone] to confirmation email
• Fix a problem with address in order export
• Add message to Credit Card entry notifying the customer that they have a final chance to confirm/cancel the order
• Updated German translation, provided by Joern

This release has been tested on both WP and WPMU.

I’ve noticed what seems to be a predilection, by those who write reviews of WordPress shopping cart plugins and themes, to stick YAK at the bottom of the list. Probably because the number of downloads is below the others. But the final result is something along the lines of:

WP-Ecommerce: feature, feature, feature, feature…
Shopp: feature, feature, feature, feature…
Eshop: feature, feature, feature, feature…
YAK: [gawd I'm tired of listing features... let's not bother with it any more... what can come up with instead... oh I know] it’s a simple plugin!

It’s getting old. Frankly.

So, this is an attempt to come up with a reasonably objective comparison of the shopping cart plugins for WordPress, without excluding the one at the end because someone-got-bored-before-they-finished-writing. You might be wondering how I can be objective when I develop one of those very plugins — well, we’ll see how I do, I guess.

I’m going to take a look at the major e-commerce plugins (not themes, because this probably should be an apples-to-apples comparison). First up, let’s bundle all those features together into one nice big list and see who does what… this might end up being a work-in-progress, because in some cases, it’s not immediately obvious whether the features are included. If I’ve missed something, let me know.

Hard to draw any real conclusions from this matrix — WP E-commerce probably leads in terms of features, but those features come with a (resource) cost. Shopp looks like it might come second (in terms of featureset), and certainly covers the most payment gateways, but it’s also a reasonable investment (particularly purchase of a developer license). Given it’s commercial-only, it’s impossible to know what performance or memory usage is like.

Given that no single plugin covers all the possible features, I guess it’s very much a case of identifying the things that are important to you, then choose the plugin which best covers that featureset.

…At least, until YAK2 comes out, because that will do everything.

That’s a joke by the way.

More to come later, and do let me know if I’m made some glaringly obvious omissions.

Update #1: Added number of downloads, and project links.

Update #2: Changes to eShop features, kindly provided by Rich.

Update #3: Added info on WP E-commerce product search.

Update #4: Added info on Shopp, provided by Jonathon.

Update #5: Added iDeal to wp-ecommerce, i18n to eshop.

Update #6: Added 2 new YAK features

Just a minor bug fix release this time. Sorting the following issues:

• fix an incompatibility problem with Contact Form 7.
• fix a problem with Google Analytics tag ()

YAK 1.7.4 includes a fairly major change, to do with the storage of options. This is significant enough to post a health warning on the box (so to speak): Before upgrading, make sure you backup your database. At the very least, note down any major settings (PayPal, Authorize.net config, etc), just in case.

This release fixes a major problem in WordPress MU, and also a minor issue with the sidebar widget. Which reminds me, I really must update the Handbook to include details on using the Widget. If you’ve purchased the handbook in the past, expect a copy in the (e)mail in the next day or 3…