[Allie]

Good morning!

I am going to be working with Amazon products and recently purchased a WordPress theme in which to design my affiliate site, but then I came across the fresh store builder, and signed up for that as well. Has anyone combined the two? I emailed the FSB help to see how this could be done and they told me it was possible, just would take additional programming. Before I delve into this too deeply or hire someone else to do it, does anyone have experience with either WP or FSB and which one worked better for you? Should I set my site up in both and then run A/B testing to see which would perform better?

Thanks so much!

[gibson]

could you put FSB in its own directory?

like in

www.example.com/store

then you have whatever you want on the plain

www.example.com

[housebg]

Hi Allie,

I found Fresh Store Builder last year and absolutely love the script. I've been building a site like you describe with both Wordpress and FSB, which you can see over at WiselyOrganic (dot) com. I'm still filling the products out, as I'm re-writing every product description to be unique, but you can see how I integrated the two.

I installed FSB into a /store subdirectory, and put WordPress into the root. I then customized FSB to match my WP theme. In hindsight, I picked the wrong theme to start with so I had to pull components from the other themes to get what I wanted, but I was able to adjust it so it matched my blog theme the way I wanted.

For me, the choice to put the store in FSB came down to a couple of factors:
1.) The ability to hand-pick the products I want, or the flexibility to take everything in a category node.
2.) The ability to control all the content descriptions, re-write my own, control the MetaData etc.
3.) The ability to shop and put all the items into a Cart, and then check-out all at once and transfer to Amazon.
4.) The coding behind FSB is standard PHP, with a nice separation of code from presentation so modifying the CSS/HTML is easy.

I'm eventually going to be creating themes for FSB, as I see it as a very strong tool for Amazon affiliate stores - but the number of templates is limited. The FSB team is working on a template system for version 3 that will allow us developers to create themes for the platform. Once that is released this year, you'll see more themes being created. In the meantime, you'll need to customize yourself or hire someone to help you - but it's completely doable.

If you do look at my site, I'm happy to hear any feedback you might have :-)

[Allie]

Originally Posted by housebg

Hi Allie,

I found Fresh Store Builder last year and absolutely love the script. I've been building a site like you describe with both Wordpress and FSB, which you can see over at WiselyOrganic (dot) com. I'm still filling the products out, as I'm re-writing every product description to be unique, but you can see how I integrated the two.

I installed FSB into a /store subdirectory, and put WordPress into the root. I then customized FSB to match my WP theme. In hindsight, I picked the wrong theme to start with so I had to pull components from the other themes to get what I wanted, but I was able to adjust it so it matched my blog theme the way I wanted.

For me, the choice to put the store in FSB came down to a couple of factors:
1.) The ability to hand-pick the products I want, or the flexibility to take everything in a category node.
2.) The ability to control all the content descriptions, re-write my own, control the MetaData etc.
3.) The ability to shop and put all the items into a Cart, and then check-out all at once and transfer to Amazon.
4.) The coding behind FSB is standard PHP, with a nice separation of code from presentation so modifying the CSS/HTML is easy.

I'm eventually going to be creating themes for FSB, as I see it as a very strong tool for Amazon affiliate stores - but the number of templates is limited. The FSB team is working on a template system for version 3 that will allow us developers to create themes for the platform. Once that is released this year, you'll see more themes being created. In the meantime, you'll need to customize yourself or hire someone to help you - but it's completely doable.

If you do look at my site, I'm happy to hear any feedback you might have :-)

Housebg, thank you so much for your response! This is exactly what I am looking to do, almost right down to the niche. Although mine is specifically eco-friendly/organic baby-related.. Anyway, it's my first site and I would like to do as much as I can on my own without hiring anyone, I figure it's the only way I will really learn. I'm a novice web designer, but I know all skills are learn-able, right? Would there be a way that we could get in touch so that I could ask you specific questions about doing this as they come up - perhaps via email?

[housebg]

Hi Allie,

I completely understand about learning yourself - it's how I taught myself web design over the last 6 years.

I can't seem to find a way to PM you my email, but if you go to the wiselyorganic store and send me an email through the contact form, I'll reply with my email.

I'm happy to help you learn and answer questions.

Barbara

[UGIB]

I just finished up doing all my research regarding what the best tools are to combine with WP and I would have to say hands down that datafeedr is the most versatile, plus your not restricted to just Amazon products.

I'd love to show you an example of my store, but I'm still new myself and don't have PM or Sig rights yet lol.

You should definitely check it out. I tried all of them before going with it...PopShops, GoldenCan, Shopify, JigoShop, BigCommerce, and a few others worth mentioning, but can't think of off the top of my head.

[cstrouse]

I've had better luck with wpzonbuilder and a custom wordpress theme than with FSB.