WordPress, without any doubt, can be used to create any type of website like blogs, newspapers, social networking and much more.

Jigoshop is a free plugin for e-commerce-enabling WordPress installations to easily sell both physical and digital products.

It allows the admin to track orders, views sales reports and track the inventory from a custom dashboard.

There are widgets like shopping cart, product search, navigation and filtering-by-price which can be positioned on any part of the website.

The store has several marketing tools like displaying related items automatically, discount coupons and cross/up sell.

Jigoshop can calculate tax-by-location and has multiple currency + shipping options. Currently, it has built-in support for PayPal, Moneybookers and cheque as the payment methods.

Fortune3, an all-in-one shopping cart solution, is giving away "any plan wanted for 6 months" to 3 WRD readers.

There are very few things to do for joining the giveaway (info can be found at the bottom of the article) and here are the most important details about the application:

What is Fortune3?

It is a complete service for creating an e-commerce website of any size and type with the huge list of features offered.

Fortune3 is a hosted application, comes with a 24/7 support and enables users to create their stores from desktop with their "E-Commerce Wizard" software which speeds up the whole process of customizing the stores and adding products (it supports copy-paste and drag 'n' drop on multiple items).

The design of the store can be totally customized with the ready-to-use templates, ability to edit styles, built-in WYSIWYG editor and more.

Using Fortune3, not only B2C but B2B e-commerce can also take place under the same system with different user levels and pricing options.

It is tightly integrated with all major "live shipping" providers (like UPS, FedEx or DHL), payment processors (including PayPal, Google Checkout, Amazon, etc.) and accounting softwares (QuickBooks, PeachTree). Also, the ones that are not in the list can be added on request.

The application has powerful marketing tools like an integrated affiliate system, price/quantity based promotions, gift certificates, promo codes and newsletter system.

There are many other features like an API, import/export of data to Excel, integrated visitor statistics or one-page quick checkout. Here is a little closer view to 2 other features that you will probably love:

Social Shopping:

Fortune3's Social Shopping Cart App is an instant way to add a shopping cart to Facebook pages and reach social media users.

The products to be advertised can be selected/changed easily and this social app integrates with the settings of the system.

Mobile Apps:

Stores can be controlled from iPhone and Android (coming soon) devices with:

• push notifications on orders
• order management
• customer management

Simply, wherever you are, the essentials for controlling the store are under your hand.

How to join the giveaway?

In order to win one of the 3 accounts (which will be free for 6 months) for this ecommerce software, simply comment to this post and winners will be selected with the query below on 15 June 2011 (1 week later):

SELECT * FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_post_id=2289 AND comment_approved=1 AND comment_type='' ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 3

Good luck to everyone.

Easy Basket is a very original shopping cart application which enables us to sell items inside any web page without any big code/structure updates.

Once installed, the products and basket can be inserted into any part your web page where they will start functioning instantly.

When an item is added to the basket, a sliding + Ajaxed basket can appear to to show the total price and display the checkout options. Also, you can drag 'n' drop a product into the shopping cart as well.

It is possible to enable the user to choose various details about the product like the "color", "size", etc. and they will be shown in the basket as well.

EasyBasket supports PayPal and Google Checkout where their details can be mentioned inside a simple "settings page" provided.

And, the core comes as PHP and ASP, so, you can choose the one that best suits your needs.

Avactis, the easy-to-use PHP shopping cart system (now with hosted solutions), is giving away 3 "Owned" licenses ($249/license) to WRD readers with celebrating the launch of their hosted version and hosting bonuses.

What is Avactis?

This previously-shared application is a very flexible shopping cart which can power any type of e-commerce website whether it has few or 1000s of products.

It lets you to create unlimited categories, add unlimited products and define detailed + categorized (thanks to the "custom fields" feature) information about them.

The application has many tools to help selling the products like the ability to create any type of promotions (discount codes, price-based or quantity discounts), built-in affiliate system, newsletter management and more.

Its interface is totally customizable with the support for theming, integrated with 40+ payment systems and can be extended with modules.

To sum up, Avactis is a robust enough to create and control an online store. And, besides the paid ones, it also has a free version.

Announcement of hosted plans and hosting bonuses

Avactis used to be only a downloadable product where you can install to your own servers. Right now, they are offering a hosted version where setup, backup, optimization, etc. are taken care of.

And, until April 28th, there are special hosting bonuses offered:

• Standard plan, 1 month
  • Bonus: Free Setup
• Standard plan, 6 months pre-pay
  • Bonus: 3 extensions pre-installed for free* (worth $82.85)
• Standard plan, 1 year pre-pay
  • Bonus: SSL Certificate pre-installed for free (worth $149.00)
  • Bonus: 3 extensions pre-installed for free* (worth $82.85)
• Professional plan, 1 month
  • Bonus: Free Setup
• Professional plan, 6 months pre-pay
  • Bonus: SSL Certificate pre-installed for free (worth $149.00)
  • Bonus: 5 extensions pre-installed for free** (worth $118.75)

The good part is, every hosting plan includes free support from the company besides the included license.

The giveaway of licenses

In order to get a chance to win one of the 3 "Owned" licenses being given away, simply comment to this post and winners will be selected with the query below on 26 April 2011 (1 week later):

SELECT * FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_post_id=2202 AND comment_approved=1 AND comment_type='' GROUP BY comment_author_email ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 3

Good luck to all.

Avactis is a powerful PHP shopping cart application that has multiple versions (including free + open source) and impressive features.

It has everything and more to expect from an e-commerce tool on every level from product to member managements, orders and marketing.

Unlimited categories and products with any number of images (auto-thumbnail support) can be created. Using "custom fields", you can better define a product and help users reach to it with a point-shot search.

The application is very flexible in creating any type of promotions like discount codes, price-based or quantity discounts discounts, built-in affiliate system, newsletter management and more.

SEO is taken care of -mostly- automatically with SEO-friendly URLs, optimized HTML code or breadcrumb navigation and more can be done with the help of custom meta information and titles.

Avactis works with almost every popular payment processor including PayPal, Google Checkout, Authorize.net and much more.

When it comes to frontend, the look and feel can be totally customized via CSS and templating system.

A CSS Editor, which actually works like a site builder, helps switching between styles and designing the storefront while browsing it.

Modules like featured products, newsletter subscription, registration can be positioned with a "Visual Layout Editor".

Simply, Avactis is a complete software for creating and managing an online store. And, besides the paid ones, it also has a free version.

The giveaway

Sitepoint and Avactis are running a giveaway of 50 Avactis full licenses with Brandon Eley & Shayne Tilley's "Online Marketing Inside Out" (Online Marketing: Sitepoint) book. You can join it from the link above and act fast as it'll be expiring soon.

LiteCommerce is an open source and free e-commerce application that integrates with Drupal to make use of the powerful CMS capabilities.

The connection to Drupal is optional and it can also work as a standalone online store.

Unlimited number of products or categories can be created, a product can belong to multiple categories and it has support for inventory tracking.

When connected to Drupal, it becomes more powerful in means of SEO as well with the ability to create search engine friendly URLs and custom meta tags.

The application has various options for easier marketing like wholesale pricing, discounts or gift certificates.

Shopping experience for the end-user is very smooth with Ajaxed catalog pages with a drag 'n' drop shopping cart, product images with zooming and more.

LiteCommerce, for now, integrates with PayPal, Google Checkout and Authorize.NET as the payment processors and has a flexible pricing functionality on every level (product, tax, shipping..).

Users can view past orders, track shipping status and admins have many tools to manage the system including invoice printing and importing/exporting data.

And, this e-commerce software has a detailed admin interface to control it easily.

E-commerce websites usually display a huge information from brand names to categories, products, their technical specifications, etc.

And, if you're running or planning to launch an e-store, creating this data requires serious time and effort.

OpenICEcat is an open source and free database of brands (210+ major ones) and products (350,000+) with standardized data-sheets.

It includes the cross-sell and up-sell relationships + it is available in 20+ languages.

The database comes in 2 formats: XML or URL (links to datasheets and product images).

Also, the resource has a commercial version that includes the products of more than 4000 brands.

ZeusCart is an open source e-commerce application that is built with PHP and MySQL.

The application has support for selling any type of items (including digital goods) where items can have multiple properties like color, size and multiple images.

Visitors can quickly checkout as guests or they can be forced to become a member and it'll be possible to offer more features like wishlists, easier checkouts on next purchases, etc.

Products sold via ZeusCart can be promoted with the built-in flexible coupon discount system.

It supports multiple currencies and various payment providers (PayPal, 2Checkout, Bluepay, Google Checkout, etc.).

The ajaxed admin interface is well-planned and easy to navigate. You can instantly view the most important stats, latest customers or sales.

ZeusCart also has CMS capabilities which makes it possible to create content (like FAQ, blog, etc.) under the website.

TomatoCart is an open source e-commerce application that is branched from the popular osCommerce to offer a better experience.

It comes with a totally new front and back-ends where the back-end is an impressive desktop-like ExtJS-powered interface.

The application supports selling any type of item from simple products to digital goods and services.

Also, there are lots of features for marketing them including:

• gift certificates
• wishlists
• discounts based on quantity
• cross-selling and more.

TomatoCart creates SEO-friendly URLs for products, categories, reviews or articles and automated sitemap generation for a better ranking in search engines.

It also makes analyzing the stats easier with Piwik, an open source analytics application, being integrated into the admin dashboard.

Another interesting but handy feature is the "built-in webmail" which helps receiving and replying customer e-mails within the back-end.

TomatoCart is multilingual, being improved frequently and definitely worth checking out.

eCart is an open source e-commerce shopping cart application that is built with PHP-MySQL.

It is a fresh but powerful software which can manage multiple stores from a single admin interface, supports unlimited product categories, one-page-checkout and more.

Users can easily compare products, add items to their wishlist or write reviews about them.

eCart has a powerful admin panel with a dashboard that enables you to have quick look for the most important data like orders and popular products.

It is possible to create customer groups, define different tax information for different zones or products and generate content within the store with the CMS features it has.

The application is multilingual and has import/export feature for easily switching from/to another software (has a ready-to-use OsCommerce importer).

P.S. eCart is currently in beta status and can be lacking of good documentation. Hopefully, it will be a well-documented one within time.