Creating an Online Bakery Store with WordPress and WP Easy Cart Plugin

This article explains how to create an online bakery store using WordPress and WP Easy Cart plugin. It covers the scope, setting up, templates, business functions, plugins, design, challenges, and testing. The business functions include account registration, search, and order for goods and products. The plugins used are WP Easy Cart for adding products and making orders, and WP Easy Cart Registration form for user registration and login. The article also discusses the challenges faced during the development process and the testing done to ensure a good user experience.

Website URL: http://getbiz.atspace.co.uk/
Wordpress credentials
Email : [e-mail]
Password: 1234567sa

Business idea
We decided to take a bakery store as our business idea. The bakery store is an online shop that allows
user to purchase cakes on internet. The store works by allowing users to search for desired cakes, after
the user is satisfied with the cake, they can continue and purchase the cakes by adding to cart. When
the user add products to cart, they will navigate to the cart page and make purchase by checking out the
product.
Scope of the website
To build a website that will allow user to buy cakes through internet and make payments on online
platforms.
Setting up the website
To set up the website we had first create a domain with the atspace account. After setting up the
domain we installed WordPress using zack installer.
The next step was to provide the login credentials to access the wordpress site.

After filling all the required field the user will be directed to success page which contain the link to
access the admin page and the link to access the website. User received email notification to their
account.
Following the link user are taken to a page containing a form to fill in their credentials. After filling their
credentials, they are directed to a dashboard page for WordPress.
Templates
After a successful installation of WordPress, it was time to choose a website template. While choosing
the template theme we had to choose a template that work better on both devices. WordPress has
thousands of theme both trial versions and free templates. The template theme used on the website
was Hestia, it is premium template but has a trial version. The theme worked with our idea that’s why it
was used for the site. The template had a customization tool which can help in creating new pages. The
template allows customization of the theme components colors, text, headers. Using the theme you
don’t need to code.
Business function
Below are our business functions that we implemented.
1. Account registration business function

2. Search business function.
3. Order for goods and products business function
Each function is contained on its page, account registration is on the account page, search
business function is in store page and make order function is in the cart page.
Account registration function allow new user to create account with the company.
Search function allow user to search for products using a text input or through navigating
through all products, user will add the products to the cart for further purchase.
Order for goods allow user to purchase goods. After user has added products to cart, they will
navigate to cart page and make order for the product by using check in button.
Plugins
WordPress plugins were used for implementing the business functions. WordPress plugins are
useful when the website requires some special features. Plugins needed in the adding products,
adding products to cart, ordering the product and making payments for the product. WordPress
plugins are easy to install. You can install plugins via a WordPress dashboard on the plugins
page. After the installation, you navigate back to the plugins page and activate the installed
plugins.
WP Easy Cart (products)
The plugin enable developer to build a simple shopping cart. The plug-in has several features, it
allows one to add product manually or by importing products by use of CSV file or Excel sheet.
To use the plug-in we first installed it to the site and finally activated it. The plugins appear at the
left menu after it is activated. The plugin has several options that user can work with. User can
chose to add new product or view products.
When adding a product some field must be filled, product Title, image, and price of the product.
There are optional fields like product description that user can decide to fill.

The plugin automatically add new page to the site, the new page contain all products added by
the admin. When a new product is added, it will automatically display on the front page of the
site.
WP Easy Cart (making order function)
In order to implement the second function for making orders we had to use a compatible plugin
with the one used for adding product. We used WP easy cart for adding product to cart. The [lug-
in allow user to purchase products. After the user has checked out the products, an option to
make purchase is displayed. It allows user to add their billing details. When user completes to
add the billing details, they will need to login to the system in order to complete their purchase.
WP Easy Cart Registration form
The form allows users to create an account and login to the system. The plugin has two section
the registration and sign in.
The user will create account if they do not have an existing account. After successful
registration, they will use the login email and password to login to the system.
Design
The website theme needed some changes. The template picked contained dummy text on the landing
page. The landing page was deigned to contain all the blog post. To change this we had to navigate to
setting area under reading section. There was need to change the setting for the home page.
After setting the pages, we had to change the colors for the themes. We used the red color for headings
and on the navigation section to make the site attractive.
Challenges
We experienced some up and down when we were creating the site. One of the major challenge was to
get a free plugin that can work with our site. We only found premium plugins that were compatible with
our business functions. The WP Easy Cart was the one that had all features for our business site but it’s a
14 days trial.
The major challenge with the plugin is that it will expire within a short period. Some function for the
plugins will not work until we get the premium version.
Testing
The aim of the website testing is to make sure that a user has a good experience on the website
regardless of the system are using. The testing is done on both browser, the older one and the newest
browser. Sometime the website look different on older browser. The website may also look different on

different browser. While developing a website this must be put into consideration. Another
consideration while testing the website is the use of mobile devices. Mobile devices need to be
considered while developing a website. Testing is done to see how pages appear in mobile device. After
complete testing, the website appeared to work well on both small screen. The navigation is one of the
major challenge when using the mobile device, collapsed on mobile device and it is accessed on a menu
icon on the right top part of the screen.
We had to test how the products appear on both screen. On the large screen products appeared in a
three column grid and small devices the products appeared in one column grid. All pages were tested
and they working well on both screens.
Conclusion
Through group work we were able to implement the three business functions mentioned in assignment
one. The three functions work well but some functionalities cannot be used. The functionalities include
completing payment method. The functions needs one to have a PayPal developer account.
The assignment has helped us to understand ways of working with WordPress themes and how to
customize the themes. Given more time and having the required resources we can build a real
functional business website. The required resources is money to purchase premium plugins.
Reference
First business function
WP Easy Cart
Author: WP easy Cart
URL: https://www.wpeasycart.com/
Second business function
WP Easy Cart
Author: WP easy Cart
URL: https://www.wpeasycart.com/
Third business function
Page title: WP Easy Cart
Author: WP easy Cart
URL: https://www.wpeasycart.com/