Congratulations! You have now completed all the basic pre-requisites needed to prepare your WordPress site for use as an e-Commerce platform. Your store-in-progress should now look and act much less like a blog and much more like a business platform.
Chapter 2 covers:

• How to install and activate third-party themes.

• Instructions for disabling comments on posts and pages, both on an individual and a global basis.

• Adding new pages and setting a static front page.

• How widgets add massive flexibility and functionality to any WordPress e-Commerce site.

• A range of recommended complementary third-party Plugins, including tools for spam protection, search engine optimization, database backup, and polls.

• Three different options for adding a contact form, ranging from simple to advanced.

• Taking advantage of WordPress’ strength as a blogging platform to add a

Up to this point, we’ve worked hard to convert WordPress from a traditional blogging platform into a more-appropriate business platform. However, we can’t deny that blogging is ultimately a strength of WordPress.
Business blogging is rapidly becoming more popular, and while you can certainly create a functional e-Commerce site with WordPress using nothing but static pages and the WP e-Commerce Plugin, the addition of dynamic content on a blog helps give your shop a personal element. It provides the customer a sense of the face and personality behind the store. If nothing else, it can serve as a medium for communication between you as a store owner and your visitors. Adding a business blog only takes a few clicks.

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No e-Commerce site is complete without providing a way for customers to contact the shop owner(s). Fortunately, this is an easy task to accomplish. Some themes for WordPress already contain a “Contact” page template. If your theme does not, there are a multitude of Plugins that can bolt on that functionality with only a click or two. Here are three options:

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Also known as “sidebar accessories”, Widgets are one of the slickest and easiest ways to vary the content of your WordPress sidebars. With Widgets, you can elegantly add text, images, gadgets, HTML, or any other design elements to one or more sidebars on your site. A growing number of Plugins for WordPress also come with additional Widget features, including the WP e-Commerce Plugin.
To get started with Widgets, go to Appearance in your Dashboard and click Widgets.

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By default, the main page of your WordPress site shows a running list of your latest posts. While this is perfectly acceptable for a personal blog, an e-Commerce site typically takes a more static approach so as not to confuse any first-time visitors.
Fortunately, configuring a static front page is simple. First, we need to create a new page that will become the default front page. In your WordPress Dashboard, go to Pages and select Add New.

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While the ability to leave comments and interact with readers is integral to the way a standard blog works, it’s not nearly as important for an e-Commerce site. Unless you have a specific need for comments on your site (such as a business blog), you can disable them entirely. The following instructions will cover how to disable and remove all traces of comments on your site, but you’re free to follow only as much as you need, depending on how much customer interaction and feedback you wish to allow. For instance, you may wish to disable comments on WordPress pages, but not on posts, therefore leaving room for comments on a business blog. The choice is up to you.

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Before we can dive into listing and selling our products, we first need to address a few cosmetic and functionality issues. Right out-of-the-box, a default installation of WordPress works great as a typical blogging platform, but the needs for an e-Commerce site are different. Let’s work on converting WordPress from a blog-centric platform to a business-focused platform.

This chapter will cover:

• Installing Third-Party Themes
• Enabling / Disabling Comments
• Setting Up a Static Front Page
• Using Widgets
• Complementary Plugins
• Adding a Contact Form
• Adding a Business Blog

Once you have uploaded some themes to try, it’s time to activate them. Enter your WordPress admin panel and scroll down to the Appearance section within the Dashboard. Click the Themes link.

You should now see a list of available themes that you uploaded, plus your currently active theme. Clicking on an available theme will show a preview of your site using that theme. In our case, we will go ahead and click the Crafty Cart theme.
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One of the major strengths of WordPress is how easy it is to customize and alter. This is especially true with regard to themes. If you have the knowledge, experience, and patience to build a theme for your site completely from scratch, you are more than welcome to do so. For the rest of us, it’s easy to install and tweak a pre-built theme from a third-party.

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