AbleCommerce Shopping Cart Software

I'm about to start setting up a second ecommerce site running ablecommerce. One of the requirements of the site is to run a blog. I'm wondering if anyone has set this up specifically using WordPress and if they have any tips?

First, I want to run the blog @ http://www.mystore.com/blog/ - I do not want to run a subdomain as having it in the same URL is better for SEO. I know Microsoft has web apps and one of them is WordPress (http://www.microsoft.com/web/gallery/wordpress.aspx).

Secondly, I'm planning on trying to pull the AbleCommerce navigation into Wordpress somehow. My first idea was if AbleCommerce can generate an XML file of the categories that I could pull in with PHP for WordPress. Is that possible and how would the categories update when changes are made via the admin? Basically I want the main site navigation to be exactly the same throughout - IE the same set of horizontal tabs across the top.

I'm not really interested in alternate (.Net based) blog solutions because I don't have the time to try and figure out a new system - I know AbleCommerce/WordPress very well to quickly build my site/themes.

Thanks for any thoughts if anyone has done this.

Dappy

Hello,

Setting up both AbleCommerce and WordPress on the same server under IIS7 works with no issues. We have clients using Wordpress under both http://www.mystore.com/blog/ and http://blog.mystore.com/
with no problems.

Integrating the AbleCommerce navigation into Wordpress can be a little bit tricky, but if you are familiar with PHP you can write a Wordpress plugin which connects to the AbleCommerce MSSQL database
and queries the ac_Categories table.

Remember that custom web apps that connect to your database can affect your pci-compliance. AC7 has been tested and passed PA-DSS certification. At a minumum, be sure to create another login for your WP blog and restrict access to only tables you need data from.

mikek wrote:Setting up both AbleCommerce and WordPress on the same server under IIS7 works with no issues. We have clients using Wordpress under both http://www.mystore.com/blog/ and http://blog.mystore.com/
with no problems.

What about the server setup and database? My IT department has concerns about running it on a webfarm and issues with that. Are you using a MySQL database or MSSQL for WordPress?

sweeperq wrote:Remember that custom web apps that connect to your database can affect your pci-compliance. AC7 has been tested and passed PA-DSS certification. At a minumum, be sure to create another login for your WP blog and restrict access to only tables you need data from.

That's why I was thinking about having AbleCommerce output an XML file and just parse that with PHP instead of connecting directly to the database.

Thanks,
Dappy

For WordPress blog configurations we usually setup MySQL server on the web server with shared-memory connection only (Tcp/Ip disabled). Since MySQL DB server
is dedicated to the WordPress blog site only it does not add server load that could affect the AbleCommerce site performance.

WordPress currently does not support MSSQL, the latest version has database layer based on PHP5 PDO, but only MySQL and Sqlite drivers are available.

If you have a high-traffic blog and AC7 site running in a webfarm you can either allocate separate dedicated server with PHP/MySQL for the WordPress blog only or run the MySQL server
on a separate dedicated server and keep the blog site load-balanced in the web farm.