Friday, November 28, 2014

1stwebdesigner

1stwebdesigner


Twist That Code: How to Add Custom Buttons for WordPress TinyMCE Editor

Posted: 28 Nov 2014 05:00 AM PST

WordPress version 3.9 uses TinyMCE version 4.0 core, an open source HTML WYSIWYG editor by Moxiecode Systems, AB. This means that all of the buttons you see on your default theme posts and page editor comes from the TinyMCE plugin. WordPress TinyMCE editor version 4 provides comes with the following changes:

  • New UI and UI API
  • New theme
  • Revamped events system/API
  • Better code quality, readability and build process
  • Lots of (inline) documentation

Using the TinyMCE Visual Editor has a lot of benefits as you don’t need to add styles or shortcodes manually. Instead, you can style elements in just a couple of clicks. Unlike other simple plugins, it may take some time to figure it out how to customize or add functionality to the TinyMCE editor.

In this article, you will learn how to add custom button on your WordPress TinyMCE Visual Editor using the previous tutorial about creating tooltips shortcode.

Resources You Need to Complete This Tutorial

  • WordPress Installation
  • Basic Knowledge about PHP, TinyMCE, JavaScript and CSS
  • Time and Patience

What We Are Going to Build:

final

Getting Started

TinyMCE is great for Shortcodes. Most users are comfortable clicking buttons than putting codes manually to display a particular feature or style. You are going to use the following code to display a tooltip text along with its position.

  [tooltip class="top_tooltip" title="This is a tooltip"] TEXT[/tooltip]  

Now, see how you can add a custom button on the TinyMCE editor for this Shortcode.

STEP 1 – Create a Function That Will Filter a Series of Functions

The first thing you need to do is to create a function that will filter series of functions. You will check if user has permissions and then check if TinyMCE is enabled before finally hooking it using the add_action function. Check out the codes below.

  // Filter Functions with Hooks  function custom_mce_button() {    // Check if user have permission    if ( !current_user_can( 'edit_posts' ) && !current_user_can( 'edit_pages' ) ) {      return;    }    // Check if WYSIWYG is enabled    if ( 'true' == get_user_option( 'rich_editing' ) ) {      add_filter( 'mce_external_plugins', 'custom_tinymce_plugin' );      add_filter( 'mce_buttons', 'register_mce_button' );    }  }  add_action('admin_head', 'custom_mce_button');  

STEP 2 – Adding and Registering New MCE Plugin for WordPress

Next, you will create another function to create the new custom button. The code will have the path of the JavaScript file that will handle the option of your custom button later on.

In this part of the tutorial, you can name your JavaScript file as editor_plugin.js but, please, feel free to use any name you want for the file.

  // Function for new button  function custom_tinymce_plugin( $plugin_array ) {    $plugin_array['custom_mce_button'] = get_template_directory_uri() .'/editor_plugin.js';    return $plugin_array;  }  

Then, register your new button using a new function. You will parse the variable buttons to make sure it will display the button that you’ve added above.

  // Register new button in the editor  function register_mce_button( $buttons ) {    array_push( $buttons, 'custom_mce_button' );    return $buttons;  }  

STEP 3 – JavaScript for the Custom Button

The next thing you need to do is create the JavaScripts file that registers the custom_mce_button function. This will simply add a new button, that, when user click it, will display the text "Hello World!".

  (function() {      tinymce.PluginManager.add('custom_mce_button', function(editor, url) {          editor.addButton('custom_mce_button', {              text: 'Tooltip',              icon: false,              onclick: function() {                  editor.insertContent('Hello World!');              }          });      });  })();  

OK, great! You've made it! But it's not done yet. The next series of codes will add the meaty part on your tooltip Shortcode. Replace the code above with the following codes.

  (function() {      tinymce.PluginManager.add('custom_mce_button', function(editor, url) {          editor.addButton('custom_mce_button', {              icon: 'false',              text: 'Tooltip',              onclick: function() {                  editor.windowManager.open({                      title: 'Insert Tooltip',                      body: [{                          type: 'textbox',                          name: 'textboxtooltipName',                          label: 'Tooltip Text',                          value: ''                      }, {                          type: 'listbox',                          name: 'className',                          label: 'Position',                          values: [{                              text: 'Top Tooltip',                              value: 'top_tooltip'                          }, {                              text: 'Left Tooltip',                              value: 'left_tooltip'                          }, {                              text: 'Right Tooltip',                              value: 'right_tooltip'                          }, {                              text: 'Bottom Tooltip',                              value: 'bottom_tooltip'                          }]                      }, ],                      onsubmit: function(e) {                          editor.insertContent(                              '[tooltip class="' +                              e.data.className +                              '" title="' +                              e.data.textboxtooltipName +                              '"]' +                              editor.selection                              .getContent() +                              '[/tooltip]'                          );                      }                  });              }          });      });  })();  

The code that you see above will add a pop-up Window that will let the user add the tooltip text and its position.

After highlighting the text, the user can click the tooltip button and this pop-up Window will appear. When the submit button is clicked, it will add or insert the tooltip Shortcodes along with the data the user inserted on the Pop-Up Window. tooltip

Adding Icon to the Custom Button

There are two ways that you can add a custom icon for the custom button on TinyMCE editor.

  1. Adding a custom image URL path to existing stylesheet.
  2. Creating a function to hook the icon’s URL path.

Adding a Custom Image URL Path to Existing Stylesheet

To add a custom image URL path to existing stylesheet, you will simply need to declare a class with the URL path of the image you want to use.

  i.custom-mce-icon {    background: url('../images/tooltip.png');  }  

Next, you just need to add class you've just created to the icon option.

  (function() {          tinymce.PluginManager.add('custom_mce_button', function(editor, url) {                      editor.addButton('custom_mce_button', {                                  icon: 'custom-mce-icon',                                  text: 'Tooltip',    

Creating a function to hook the icon’s URL path

To display the icon using the function, you just need to add a function to load a new stylesheet for the admin panel use.Then, create the file and add class of the image and change the icon option to the class you just created.

  function custom_css_mce_button() {      wp_enqueue_style('symple_shortcodes-tc', plugins_url(          '/css/custom_style.css', __FILE__));  }  add_action('admin_enqueue_scripts', 'custom_css_mce_button');  (function() {          tinymce.PluginManager.add('custom_mce_button', function(editor, url) {                      editor.addButton('custom_mce_button', {                                  icon: 'custom - mce - icon',                                  text: 'Tooltip',  

What’s next?

Adding custom buttons to TinyMCE is not that hard. I hope that this article helps you add a custom button to your WordPress Visual Editor.

If you are not comfortable doing all this stuff, you might want to use the Custom TinyMCE Shortcode Button plugin. This allows you to add a custom button to TinyMCE which will insert a custom shortcode into the editor. Feel free to tweak and use the codes on your project.

If you have any thoughts about this tutorial, just drop a line on the tutorial.

Wednesday, November 26, 2014

1stwebdesigner

1stwebdesigner


What You Should Tweak in Your WordPress Theme Options Page (But Forgot)

Posted: 26 Nov 2014 04:00 AM PST

Every website or blog needs some modification in its theme. Only then can you make your blog to stand out from the crowd and bring traffic to it.

WordPress theme options page is a custom admin page that allow users to change theme settings without modifying the theme files. These theme option pages can be simple or have lots of customization split into either tabs or multiple pages.

Theme options are good for majority of the users; however, these options do have a tendency to confuse things on the development side. So if you are a WordPress site developer, here are some of the options that you should be including in your WordPress theme page option. Moreover, the article explains why you should include these features in the WP theme options page.

Avada is the best selling theme on ThemeForest, we are using it as example in this article. We have covered the most important options below. For further information, you can also check complete documentation here.

General Options

Responsive Option

General Options will let people control the look of their site. There are three main sections in this option: Responsive Options, Favicon Options, and Tracking Options

  • Responsive Option – needed to make your website design layout responsive or fixed. Responsive design will adjust your website on different devices, whereas fixed layout is for users who want to display the site in fixed width.
  • Favicon Option – needed to associate an icon with your website URL that represents your website's favicon.
  • Tracking Option – adds a track code into the footer template of your theme that allows people to use services like Google Analytics, among others.

Header Options

Header Option

The Header Option lets users customize everything above the content area, including the menu. It has three main sections: Header Content Options, Header Background Options, and Header Social Icon Options.

  • Header Content Option – needed to change header design, slider position, transparent header and website's logo, etc.
  • Header Background Option – required for inserting background image in header. Users can choose various options like, repeat and even modify the heading top and bottom padding.
  • Header Social Icon Option – needed for customizing the social icons that are displayed in header.

Footer Options

Footer Option

The Footer Options help in customizing the different areas of website footer. The footer tab has two sections: Footer Widget Options and Footer Copyright Option.

  • Footer Widget Area Option – needed if you want to set number of footer columns. This option will let you insert an image URL for footer widget area background.
  • Copyright Area Option – useful for displaying copyright text in footer. This option will also will also help you in displaying social icon on footer of page (if you want).

Background Options

Background Option

The Background Options will let you change background for box and wide mode layout.

  • Background Option for Boxed Mode – needed for changing the background colors and pattern. This option is also recommended to change the background image and how the image repeats.

Typography Options

Typography Option

The Typography Options let you to customize fonts. There are five sections in it: Custom Font for the Navigation Menu and Headings, Google Fonts, Standards, Font Sizes and Font Line Heights.

  • Custom Fonts – needed to use custom fonts instead of Google and Standard fonts.
  • Google Fonts – integrating Google Fonts lets the user choose fonts for body, menu, headings, and footer headings for Google Font directory.
  • Font Size – needed to change font sizes for different areas of the theme page including sidebar widget, footer widget and copyright font size etc.
  • Font Line Height – allows setting font line for body and heading of theme page.

Styling Options

Styling Option

The Styling Options are needed to customize the colors of your website. This option has five sections: Background Colors, Element Colors, Element Options, Font Colors, and Menu Colors.

  • Background Color Option – needed to modify colors for several page items including header, content, footer and copyright, etc.
  • Element Colors Option – lets user control the colors for button, sliding bar, footer widget, form, blog grid and social share box, etc.
  • Element Option – used to disable button text shadow, sliding bar text shadow and footer text shadow.
  • Font Color Option – needed for controlling the text color of buttons, header tagline, heading, body, link, sliding bar, footer heading, and footer font color, etc.
  • Menu Color Option – gives you the complete control over colors for menu background, font and header.

Blog Options

The Blog Option can be good if you need to publish blog posts related to the content. It can also be used for customizing different blog aspects such as layout, sidebar, excerpts and date formats, etc.

  • General Blog Option – allows you to choose the title, layout, sidebar position, excerpt length and pagination, etc.
  • Blog Single Post Page Option – allows you to have a featured page with no sidebar and other distracting content.

Portfolio Options

Portfolio options enable user to customize different aspects of portfolio page, such as the number of items per page, sidebar, excerpts and more.

Social Media

Social Media

Social media options can help if you want to display the social icons on your site. These will help grow your social presence; also, they will add to your network marketing efforts.

Contact Page Options

Contact Form

Most people use custom contact form plugins, but having a built-in option can be helpful for non-techie individuals. These options let you customize the contact page on your blog. This option has two sections: Google Map Options and Recaptcha Spam Options.

  • Google Map Option – added if you want to show a Google map, and having direction to your business address. This option also allows you to set the width and height of  the map.
  • ReCaptcha Spam Option – helpful for securing your blog or a website with public and private ReCaptcha.

Sidebar Options

Sidebar options are needed for customizing the width of the content area and sidebar. This option is also needed if you want to choose sidebar background colors to match your content.

Custom CSS Options

Custom CSS option will be needed if user wants to overwrite or add new CSS properties to the theme. The HTML themes cannot be modified; however, custom CSS provides the power to create a custom design.

Conclusion

Every popular WordPress Theme has a powerful options panel. It offers a great way for customizing the page that can be managed and understood easily. Many users don't know what a CSS is but, they can easily use these options to change colors, headings, fonts, and more.

Any developer who is creating a website or a blog on WordPress should consider these options for the theme option page. Which of these options have you included in your theme option page? Please share your thoughts in the below comment section.

How to Find and Fix Broken Links in a Jiffy

Posted: 25 Nov 2014 06:00 AM PST

If you are running a website, you will surely have put a lot of hard work to make it an important resource. However if you can’t fix the broken links, it can destroy all the hard work you did.

The problem of broken links can be lot worse with outbound links. You will not be getting notified with the change in your linked website. Therefore, you should have a daily check to see whether all of your links are still working.

Broken Links Can Be Very Harmful to Your Site in Two Ways:

  • Destroying user experience. When the users click on a link and find that it's dead with a 404 error, they will get annoyed.
  • Bringing down the SEO effort. Broken links disturb the link equity flow on the site and makes negative impact on the rankings.

In order to prevent any of these, you need to check for the broken links on your entire site. If you are wondering how to prevent this, we have the solution for you!

Why Broken Links Are Bad?

Depositphotos_18202977_m

If you ask yourself why broken links should be checked and fixed, here are the answers:

  • Broken links make the impression that you don't care about your own site. When the users get a 404 Page error, the only thing they think of is that you don't care for the content on your website and the user experience.
  • Broken links can be very frustrating. Visitors may feel like disappointed when they are unable to find what they were looking for. Also, this will prevent you from getting new visitors on your site and blogs.
  • Fixing the broken links will give the impression that you are keeping your site fresh and alive. SEO will be more effective when you are regularly updating your site. This will signal the search engine sites that you are regularly maintaining the site.

Broken links can have a huge impact on your site's SEO. If all the links on your site are working, it will make the site more accessible on the search engines. But if you don't fix these links, your site will be rated negative on the search engine optimization.

How Do Links Become Broken?

There are many reasons to which a link may become broken:

  • The web page doesn't exist there anymore.
  • The server that hosts the target page stops working.
  • There is blockage from content filters or firewalls.

How To Find The Broken Links?

Depositphotos_15556835_m

The good news is you don't need to do anything to find broken links. Finding them is not something that you can do manually; however, you can fix them yourself!

Plenty of plugins are available that will check both internal and external links.

  • Internal links – The ones that point from your single web page to any other web page that is available on your site.
  • External links – Points to some other website and take your visitors away from your site for further reading.

Increase Your Blog Experience With Un-Broken Links

Fixing the broken links can be very helpful in increasing the experience of your blog. If you are using some plugin to check the links that are broken, you will stay ahead of everyone.

You may think to just remove the old content, but, if you can simply update it using plugins, then, you will make sure that your site is liked by everyone.

By updating you broken links, you are making your place in the SEO results. A good approach is to check on the links that are linked externally from your site. Keeping them updated will help you to increase your site's experience and bring more traffic to your blog and websites.

Improve Your SEO By Fixing Broken Links!

Depositphotos_9704898_m

Search engines are becoming smarter now; they only promote the pages in their results that are liked by users. Broken links are counted as bad experience by the visitors which can have an effect on the SEO. If there is a page with lots of broken links, it is more likely to get a negative rating from the search engines such as the Google.

The 301 redirect

The most SEO-friendly way to redirect the broken links is the 301 redirect.

The 301 redirect lets the search engine know that following page has been moved to some other location. This will help you pass the SEO properties for old pages all the way to new pages.

In order to put the 301 redirect in place, you will need to have the access to the .HTACCESS file that is located on your website server. However, this will only work for the links that point to the pages on your website that have moved locations.

In today's post, we are featuring some useful plugins that will help you to check for the broken links on your site. Also, you will get some SEO tips to get rid of the broken links on your site in a fast and easy way. Let's start then!

Here are some useful plugin that we have compiled for you to check the broken links:

1. Xenu's Link Sleuth

xenu1

Image from Online Marketing News

Xenu's Link Sleuth is a free plugin for Windows that scans the entire site for find the broken links. You only have to provide a URL and it will do the rest for you. This plugin runs the complete scan to check for:

  • Broken links
  • Images
  • Frames
  • Backgrounds
  • Stylesheets
  • Scripts

Besides finding broken links, Xenu can also be helpful in finding duplicate content, missing alt text, page depth, site structure, etc.

2. Screaming Frog

screaming-frog1

Image from Screaming Frog

This plugin is available for PC, Mac, or Linux. It can be installed easily. It is similar to Xenu; you will need to give a URL and the plugin will scan the entire site for you. Screaming Frog is meant for site optimization, and goes in depth for page elements like heading tags and the likes. You will be reported on the following:

  • Client and server errors
  • External links
  • Duplicate Pages
  • Page depth level
  • Anchor text

The plugin can be downloaded for free but, the free version has a limit of 500 URLs. Also, the lite version doesn't give you full access to configuration. You can purchase the full version for £99 per year, which removes all the restrictions.

3. W3C Link Checker

w3c

Image from Flickr

W3C is another useful plugin to check any of the broken links on your websites. Also, it provides recommendations based on the results that are detected.

You have to set a limit of how deep the search should be made or else, it will keep on going. Link checker will look for the issues related to:

  • Broken links
  • Anchor and referenced objects in a web page
  • CSS stylesheet
  • Page depth

You can download the plugin and run on your computer to checkout on all the broken links that are in your site.

When choosing the best plugin among these will depend on your needs.

  • How much complex is your website?
  • Why do you want to check the broken links?
  • How frequently will you run the scan?

Once you know the answer to these questions, you will easily select the best plugin that you can use for checking the broken links on your site.

Conclusion

Everyone can get frustrated when they are going deep for an article on a news story and find that the link to further material is broken.

This post is meant to teach you the importance of broken links and how to find them through different plugins. We also share how important the links are for improving ranking on the SEO charts. We hope that you found the post useful. Please share it with others as well. If you like to add something, comment in the below section.

 

10 Free Online Markdown Editors - Six Revisions

10 Free Online Markdown Editors - Six Revisions


10 Free Online Markdown Editors

Posted: 26 Nov 2014 02:00 AM PST

Markdown is a syntax designed specifically for easier web writing. In this post, you’ll find the best free online Markdown editors.

1. StackEdit

StackEdit

StackEdit is a free online Markdown editor loaded with useful features. It has a visual tool bar for formatting (bold, emphasis, lists, etc.). It can sync with cloud storage services like Dropbox and Google Drive, and import files from a URL or your computer’s hard drive. A nifty helper feature of this Markdown editor is it can convert HTML to Markdown.

2. Dillinger

Dillinger

Dillinger has a clean user interface that will help you compose Markdown text easier. This online Markdown editor links up with four web services: Dropbox, Google Drive, One Drive, and even GitHub. You can export your text to HTML, styled HTML, Markdown (.md), and PDF. It has a "distraction-free" mode which hides everything except your Markdown text so you can focus on writing.

3. Markable

Markable

Markable is a basic online Markdown editor. All it has (unless you create an account on their site to access more features) is the ability to preview your Markdown-formatted text and an option to download your work as either an HTML or Markdown (.md) file.

4. Online Markdown Editor

Online Markdown Editor

This barebones web-based Markdown editor gives you a live visual preview of your Markdown text as well as its HTML-markup equivalent.

5. Markdown Journal

Markdown Journal

Markdown Journal is a very simple online text editor that syncs with Dropbox. To be able to use it, you will have to give it access to its own Dropbox folder.

6. Dingus

Dingus

Dingus is a relatively old and extremely simple Markdown online editor. What makes this tool special is it’s by Daring Fireball (John Gruber), the creator of Markdown. Don’t quote me on this because I’m not sure, but this might very well be the first online Markdown editor.

7. Markdown-Editor

Markdown-Editor

Markdown-Editor is a minimalist Markdown editor that can also handle the GitHub Flavored Markdown (GFM) variant. It syncs with Google Drive.

8. (GitHub-Flavored) Markdown Editor

(GitHub-Flavored) Markdown Editor

This is another option if you want to compose GitHub Flavored Markdown. It doesn’t have cloud storage syncing capabilities, but it has a visual preview pane so you can see the results of your Markdown formatting.

9. Writebox

Writebox

Writebox is a distraction-free text editor that supports Markdown. When you start writing, it hides everything except your text. This online text editor can sync with Dropbox and Google Drive, has a few keyboard shortcuts, and allows you to download your text in HTML or .txt format.

10. wri.pe

wri.pe

wri.pe is a simple web-based notepad that supports Markdown. You can back up your notes in Dropbox or Evernote.

Conclusion

There are a lot of free online Markdown editors out there. However, two of them truly stood out to me: StackEdit and Dillinger. Both of these online Markdown editors have the features needed for practical writing, and that’s why they get my vote.

If you work on a lot of GitHub projects, Markdown-Editor and (GitHub-Flavored) Markdown Editor can make writing your docs and README.md a bit easier.

Markdown Learning Resources

Markdown is an excellent syntax for Web writers. It’s simple, intuitive, not cumbersome like HTML, and designed specifically for composing text that will eventually find its way on the Web.

Check out these resources if you would like to learn Markdown:

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About the Author

Jacob Gube is the founder of Six Revisions. He’s also a front-end web developer. Follow him on Twitter @sixrevisions.

The post 10 Free Online Markdown Editors appeared first on Six Revisions.

Monday, November 24, 2014

10 Best Hosted Ecommerce Platforms - Six Revisions

10 Best Hosted Ecommerce Platforms - Six Revisions


10 Best Hosted Ecommerce Platforms

Posted: 24 Nov 2014 02:00 AM PST

If you’re thinking about putting up an online store and would like to do it quickly and easily without worrying about coding or web hosting, the hosted ecommerce platforms discussed in this article are ideal options.

What is a Hosted Ecommerce Platform?

A hosted ecommerce platform is a type of software as a service (SaaS) that hosts online stores. A good hosted ecommerce platform will have ecommerce-specific features such as online payment integration and inventory management, powerful and reliable server technology resources, and expertise in compliance and security as it pertains specifically to web-based transactions and data management.

Generally, hosted ecommerce platforms are ideal for individuals or small- and medium-sized businesses that have little or no ecommerce development experience.

The biggest trade-off when using a hosted ecommerce platform compared to self-hosted solutions like Magento and Open Cart is your ability to have full control of your online store, which (among other things) means you will encounter some areas that you will not be able to customize or change.

There are many hosted ecommerce platforms out there. I will talk about your top ten best options.

1. Shopify

Shopify

Shopify is a popular hosted ecommerce platform. Their user-friendly administration interface gives store owners the ability to manage their product inventory and customize their online store without knowing how to code. Shopify recently launched a separate service that allows you to run a POS system through your mobile device, it integrates with your Shopify store so that you can manage your inventory using only one platform.

Pricing starts at $14/month for the Starter plan, but you will quickly outgrow this plan if you’re serious about selling online. The next plan, called Basic, is more practical: It’s $29/month and gives you 1 GB storage, an unlimited number of products in your online store, and a 2.0% transaction fee.

Online stores that use Shopify

2. Bigcommerce

Bigcommerce

Bigcommerce is comparable to Shopify and, really, you can’t go wrong with either one. Bigcommerce is a host to over 55,000 online stores that (combined) have done over $4 billion in sales. Have a look at their collection of free and paid store apps that can extend your online store with extra features and integration with third-party services like MailChimp and Visual Website Optimizer.

Pricing starts at $29.95/month and comes with 3 GB of file storage and a 1.0% transaction fee.

Online stores that use Bigcommerce

3. Volusion

Volusion

Volusion is, in my opinion, in the "Big Three" of the top hosted ecommerce solutions (alongside Shopify and Bigcommerce). According to Volusion, the online stores they host have generated over $16 billion in combined sales. This platform boasts over 900 ecommerce features and offers additional personal services to their customers for a fee, such as conversion rate optimization which provides store owners one-on-one consulting with the company’s marketing consultants (for $899).

Pricing starts at $15/month and allows up to 100 products in your online store, unlimited storage, and no transaction fees.

Online stores that use Volusion

4. X-Cart Cloud

X-Cart Cloud

X-Cart is a free and open source PHP shopping cart software that you can host and manage on your own. The company has a hosted ecommerce platform service called X-Cart Cloud which runs the X-Cart software. Think of X-Cart Cloud as being akin to WordPress.com, a subscription-based hosted publishing platform for the WordPress open source project. X-Cart Cloud has an assortment of free and paid modules that extend your X-Cart online store. In three of their more expensive subscription plans, you will get access to their point of sale (POS) system module that will allow you to manage the inventory of your brick-and-mortar stores and online store within a single interface.

Pricing starts at $15/month and allows you to have up to 100 products in your online shop, 1 GB storage, 10 GB of bandwidth, and no transaction fees.

Online stores that use X-Cart

5. Big Cartel

Big Cartel

Big Cartel is a hosted ecommerce platform that has found a niche in the creative industry. It hosts over 500,000 online stores, with most of them being stores for jewelry, fashion, music, arts, crafts, and other creative endeavors.

Pricing starts at $9.99/month, which allows you to have up to 25 products (with a limit of 5 photos per product), and no transaction fees. They also have a free plan that allows you to use the service for up to 5 products.

Online stores that use Big Cartel

6. 3dcart

3dcart

3dcart boasts a ton of ecommerce features: This hosted ecommerce platform allows you to accept Bitcoins and has a loyalty program system that gives your users the option to earn rewards points whenever they shop at your online store.

Pricing starts at $16.99/month and allows you to have up to 200 products, unlimited storage, and no transaction fees.

Online stores that use 3dcart

7. PinnacleCart

PinnacleCart

PinnacleCart displays an impressive client list of companies that includes HBO, Discovery Channel, and the Miami Heat. It has the ability to integrate with for third-party apps like Facebook, QuickBooks, and more.

Pricing starts at $29.95/month, which includes 1 GB of storage, 2 GB bandwidth, and no transaction fees.

Online stores that use PinnacleCart

8. Yahoo! Ecommerce

Yahoo! Ecommerce

With Yahoo! Ecommerce, you get peace of mind knowing that your online store is hosted by one of the biggest giants in the technology industry. They have supported over $65 billion in transactions and over 1 million businesses. As to be expected from a tech company like Yahoo!, their ecommerce solution has a ton of excellent features such as direct integration with UPS (a major shipping company) to make managing your product deliveries easier.

Pricing starts at $26/month (billed annually) and includes the ability to have up to 1,000 products in your online store, 5 GB of storage, 150 GB bandwidth, and a 1.5% transaction fee.

9. Wix Online Store Builder

Wix Online Store Builder

Wix is an extremely popular and easy to use DIY website builder. They recently ventured into the ecommerce space by launching the Wix Online Store Builder, a hosted online store platform.

Pricing for their ecommerce solution starts at $19.90/month, which comes with 20 GB of storage and 10 GB of bandwidth.

10. Storenvy

Storenvy

Storenvy is different from the other hosted ecommerce platforms discussed above in the sense that your online store is going to be included in their marketplace/network of brands. All of your products will be featured and searchable within their marketplace, which means your items will be visible to their existing base of customers. Storenvy has over 100,000 brands selling on their site. Storeenvy also has an impressive developer API.

Pricing for Storenvy online stores is free, but if you would like to have a custom domain, it costs $5/month.

Conclusion

Hosted ecommerce platforms take the hassle out of self-hosting an online store. The biggest disadvantage with this type of ecommerce solution is that you will have less control and ownership of your online store.

My top picks are Shopify and Bigcommerce. They both have wonderful user-friendly features, excellent documentation and support, top-notch expertise, and good reputations in the hosted ecommerce platform space.

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About the Author

Jacob Gube is the founder of Six Revisions. He’s also a front-end web developer. Follow him on Twitter @sixrevisions.

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