Plone Commerce Background

Early in the planning process of GetPaid, we studied the state of commerce in Plone. We talked with dozens of people, gathered information on what had been attempted, problems, products, and more. This information provided us an understanding of the context for the project and was an invaluable part of the process. The following page is designed to give a general background on commerce in Plone based on the information we found - and which we continue to find. The notes and discussion were first started at the "Plone e-commerce BOF" at Plone Conference 2006.

Evolving Plone Solutions

A quick synopsis: There has been lots of activity in this space lately! Near the top are the newcomers, whereas further down the list is the older information. A survey of Plone-based commerce solutions:

• GetPaid: An entirely Zope3 architected solution targeting Plone 2.5 is near to a first release which is focused on the donation use case, but which includes extensive commerce framework already. Download the latest version here. Product page and documentation.
  
• EasyShop: A Plone 2.5 (with branch in 3.0) product for ecommerce store is already released as alpha and running live. The product includes archetypes for all content and Zope 3 interfaces, adapters, and views. It is in the process of being refactored for Plone 3.0. It is focused on stores (European), with ability to configure flexibly criteria for pricing, shipping, and taxes. Credit card payment is via PayPal and it also allows for manual processing (ie offline), with ability for the store manager to control the order workflow.
  
• Sustainable Shop (ssShop): according to one of the developers, it is "an out-of-the-box online shop which includes, amongst other things, paid-for downloads, and product variants, as well as regular shop products". The product was based on work for the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society.  Pending a 1.0 final release shortly, for now the code can be found Sourceforge.
  
• SimpleCartItem: Developed by the folks at netCorps, SimpleCartItem is designed to provide a basic content type that integrates with online stores such as PayPal store and allows for various attributes on an item (color, size, etc). It works with both Plone 2.1 and 2.5 and draws from PloneMall and PlonePayPal. It appears to also work with 2Checkout processor. 
  
• PayPal-related products: Probably the most commonly used tool for payment processing and simple stores in Plone. Unfortunately most of the products haven't kept up with the evolution of Plone. One product that is current, is SimpleCartItem (stable, Plone 2.1, 2.5). Other products include PlonePayPal (stable, Plone 2.0) CMFPaypalHelper (stable, Plone 2.0). LetsPay is another paypal product released this year (still in beta state).
  
• PloneMall: An early Plone product to be driven by the use of UML diagrams. No stable release; After a long time with no releases (since 6/2005), there was a Feb 2007 release (1.1 Alpha) to bring PloneMall into 2.5 technologies! The product is extremely large, has lots of dependencies, and is not useful out of the box (ie requires customization by a developer). See product page (note: the plonemall.com web site is not maintained or official!). This product represented the merging of several early attempts at plone ecommerce, including PloneShop and other now-defunct projects. It was intended as a framework, not an out-of-the-box store product.

• Shopping Cart products: Inventory Builder Cart is an addon product to a catalog product that allows you to create carts. No stable release. See product page.
• There has been rumors of other commerce products (created as one-off with potential for general use) that use more of the newer Plone/Zope technologies, but these are largely unavailable as public products at this time.
  

How People Really Did It

Synopsis: People have dealt with commerce in Plone in different ways. Some people get around the problem by re-evaluating its priority. But it seems that most people who have to implement Plone with payment/donation processing do it with PayPal, and that most ecommerce/store/shopping cart sites are implemented with an additional (non-Plone) software product. The following are examples:

• There are several sites pending release with new Plone commerce products mentioned above. We will update more here.
  
• Quintagroup Ecommerce Solution: One approach is the "bundled package" from Quinta. The first for-fee (not free) Plone commerce product I have come across (costs US$430), it is designed to run an online store as "a universal tool for managing products in the online store".
  It is developed for Plone 2.5 and uses SimpleCartItem (see below) and seems to consist of a product content type and some portlets, inventory function, as well as a currency preference feature.
  
• Snow Leopard Trust Plone Site and the visually-integrated ZenCart commerce system by OneNW
• Toys in Babeland (notice: adult content): a Plone ecommerce store. Solution method unknown.
  
• Integrating Paypal API: Beyond the simple Paypal for payment, Fundable.org is a Plone-based (2.0) site with Paypal integrated (a custom API integration).

Related Products for Commerce in Plone

Synopsis: So payment processing and stores are not easy in Plone today, but there are other opportunities for making money with a Plone site! Examples include:

• Currency: simplon.plone.currency is a package adds currency handling support to a Plone site. Site managers can enable any of the standard currencies in a site and manage the currency rates. Works with Plone 3.0/Zope 2.10. Allows you to add currencies to the site, set conversion rates, designate a main currency.
  
• Amazon Store: Anyone can become an Amazon Associate and thus earn money through the affiliate marketing program. ATAmazon is a Plone product (for 2.1) that integrates metadata from Amazon.com for books displayed on your site.
  
• Ad referrals (Google AdSense, Yahoo!, etc): Google Adwords have become prevalent around the internet, and given the revenue sharing model through AdSense, represent a way site owners can earn money from traffic on the site. Other search engines and advertisers do it too.
  
• Banner ads: You can add a portlet to manage banner ads that are either from within your site or coming in from an external service (a la adwords or other service). Existing products to help you manage banner ads on your site include:
  
• KBannerAd (for Plone 2.1, allows you to set weights and numbers of clicks for images or Flash ads);
  
• PromoEngine (for Plone 2.1 and 2.5), recent release makes it available in the latest stable Plone version; allows you to manage text, images, and links of ads in different areas of site. Most recent release adds flash ads and rich text (wysiwyg) ads with Kupu editor.
• PloneBannerManager (Plone 2.0, mysql backend, allowed for tracking, weights, images and text ads)

Commerce without the Plone

• Commerce Products in Zope, Python:
  
• Emencia Commerce Suite: An Open Source commerce product built on Zope / Zwook / relational database. Handles country, shipping, taxes, order workflow, currencies, customers, catalog, coupons/promotions, and orders management. Find code repository here.
  
• Satchmo is a Django-based open source ecommerce shop system.
• ZWarehouse: An open source Zope product that uses a relational database backend. However, rumor is that the core developers do not tend to continue supporting its development.
• Bizar Shop: A Zope product created by an Australian company that features a full ecommerce store with impressive functionality. Proprietary (non-Open Source) system; unsure about the specific implementation technologies. See video of features.