Description
NOTE: Please go to http://www.OrderStorm.com to sign up for either a free or a paid subscription to use this plugin.
OrderStorm is a SaaS solution. Since all data is entered and stored in the secure OrderStorm cloud, you won’t see much in the dashboard after you install the plugin. You must log in at http://www.OrderStorm.com to see and use all the back end functionality. Unlike other SaaS e-commerce solutions, OrderStorm delivers front-end applications that are resident on (not remote to) your website. Customers never leave your website and there is no linking out to complete a purchase.
Product Description
OrderStorm E-commerce – A feature-rich shopping cart that runs on your WordPress website, hosted anywhere. You can sell your products with flexibility, customization, security and integrity with the OrderStorm E-commerce plugin and achieve online success. Works with any theme.
The OrderStorm E-commerce engine is a cloud computing solution. Our servers do the heavy lifting and all you need is to use the OrderStorm E-commerce plugin to access the power of our feature-rich shopping cart.
The OrderStorm E-commerce shopping cart is a full featured product for serious web merchants. Categories and Products are not WordPress pages or posts. They are stored in external databases. OrderStorm E-commerce is just right for:
Businesses that need more functionality than the other plugins provide
Businesses that are drop-shipping from more than one supplier
Businesses models that create a quote or estimate that can later be converted to a sale
Stores with large numbers of SKUs
Businesses that have multiple CSRs working on orders
The OrderStorm E-commerce shopping cart offers a wide range of built-in features, making it easy to manage your product catalog and your day-to-day sales. Shopping cart features include:
Creative product display, using backend-configurable templates and styles
Drag and drop categories menu
Unlimited number of features and options
Automatic sizing of thumbnail, medium and large images
Drag and drop image gallery
Color configurator to customize your item and display in different colors prior to purchase
Related links to installation instructions, drawings, manuals or other documents
Up-sell with optional product add-ons
Import products from a spreadsheet
Batch price updates
Quantity discounts
Product bundles – apply quantity discounts across product variations and similar products
Automated drop shipping features including POs to suppliers
Vendor management
Search engine optimization (SEO) with meta page title and description for each category and product
Integrated with the Google XML Sitemaps plugin for proper product indexing.
Full range of transactions from simple credit card processing to complex transactions with deposits and contracts
Accept credit cards, checks, money orders, wire transfers, Google Checkout and PayPal Express
PCI compliant
No SSL required – checkout uses OrderStorm’s SSL.
Large selection of gateways
Sends email order confirmations and shipping notices
Set coupon codes for promotions
Accept file uploads with an order
Sales tax collection
Automated FAQ list per product
Easy order management including order Notes and Action Items lists
Mobile marketing. Manage your cart from your mobile device
Free shipping, free shipping on orders over X dollars, charge by flat rate or percent of order total
Flexible options for different shipping zones and international shipping
Reports including sales per product, COGS and sales by day, month, year
Youth Sports Camps
Online event registration
Multiple online payment options
Accept checks
Collect detailed information on campers
Camp Rosters
Customizable camp forms
Liability Wavers
Manage campers
Daily Check-in
Numbered wrist bands
Point of Sale (POS) – sell jerseys, balls, sports memorabilia at your camp store
Email receipts
Camp dashboard – Registration numbers, summaries for t-shirt/shorts orders, total sales by camp, scholarships
Export mailing lists
Easy Order Management
Log phone calls and emails with the corresponding registration
See all communication with parents
Setup
The plugin creates 3 pages: Product, Category and Checkout. Set the Product and Checkout pages to not display in your menu – those have nothing on them but shortcodes. The Category page shows all of your root categories. You can either use this page or set it to not display if you are using the Categories Menu widget in a sidebar.
Rename these pages and their permalinks to something that is SEO friendly for your particular site: go to the OrderStorm.com sys admin to Settings, Storefront Settings and enter the slugs in the corresponding fields.
The Key you see is an example key. To add your categories and products to the shopping cart, sign up for a subscription on the http://www.OrderStorm.com/wordpress-e-commerce-sign-up/ecommerce-wordpress-plugin-pricing/ page. After you sign up and login through the OrderStorm.com home page, you will find the key under Settings -> WordPress/API keys. Replace the example key with your key. Note that even the free version requires a subscription and key.
Customize Appearance
Two widgets are added to the Widgets page during the initial installation. One for the Categories Menu and another for the Shopping Cart status box. You can put them anywhere you want plus put them in multiple places on your site.
To display the Categories Menu, go to Appearance, Widgets. The OrderStorm E-commerce widgets were added to the list of Widgets during installation.
Drag the Categories Menu widget to a sidebar wherever you want it.
To change the Categories Menu settings, click the arrow on the widget to open up the settings box.
Maximum menu level depth can be set as 0, which displays all menus or any other number to limit the number of menu levels that fly out before a customer has to click on something.
The Parent Category Key can be set if you want to display a subset of the menu on a particular page.
The OrderStorm View Cart Status widget draws a box that shows how many items are currently in the customer’s shopping cart and the total dollar amount. Customers can click on this box to check out.
The View Cart Status box can be included in any part of a theme. This example shows the way to include it in PHP.

The ‘topright’ value you see is an argument for the function’s $idSuffix parameter, used to provide a unique ID for the DIV containing the status box. Each instance should be named differently, using this suffix, in order to allow for styling or ostrm_shopping_cart_status_$idSuffix,
which for the PHP code example above would translate into:
ostrm_shopping_cart_status_topright.
To change the look of the categories and products, go to the Plugin page. Then go to OrderStorm E-commerce, click on ‘Edit’.
The .css files controlling the appearance of the categories, subcategories and products are here. You can completely customize colors, fonts, product display, product box sizes etc.
After you have your .css files changed the way you want them, create a backup copy of your .css files in a separate folder or use the OrderStorm eCommerce Custom Files Manager plugin. OrderStorm will overwrite the main plugin .css files when we issue updates.