# WordPress vs. DecoNetwork (I did both, now what)



## AKSTS (Jun 10, 2015)

I took on the task of setting up our ecommerce site. Only programming experience comes from one C++ class in high school.

I set us up with DecoNetwork, hosted via Host Gator. The t-shirt design tool seems great and very nicely works with uploading apparel. However, the actual website itself is lacking unless you have it custom made, which was beyond my expertise.

Switched to WordPress, watched a lot of tutorials online, and set us up with a great theme and a t-shirt design tool plugin. The site looks much better, the design tool is good, but there's a lot of manual work to get things loaded up. I guess that's just part of setting something up for the first time.

Now that I've setup basic sites on both, I think I'm going to stick with WordPress and our current setup. However, before I put in all the work to make it an actual website, full of all our offerings, I wanted to get other users experiences/input.

Doing it on my own in WordPress vs. DecoNetwork. Has anyone else debated between the two? Any pro/cons for either I should be looking at? Any information to sway me away from WP to DN?


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## Ziptac (Jun 25, 2015)

I started with Wordpress and Woocommerce and am now looking to make a move. What has your experience been with Wordpress? Are you making loads of variants?


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## AKSTS (Jun 10, 2015)

Ziptac said:


> I started with Wordpress and Woocommerce and am now looking to make a move. What has your experience been with Wordpress? Are you making loads of variants?


Sorry for the late reply.

Yes, lots of variants.

The site is based on 2 ideas.

#1: Custom T-Shirt designer. Lots of variants for that so that the client can choose the correct gender/size/color, and then the t-shirt designer populates with that shirt.

#2: Our own designs. Each design is offered in a few colors, so there's plenty of variants with that as well.

How are things going for you with Wordpress/Woocommerce?


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## okprinter (Sep 6, 2014)

we are trying to get our Wordpress site up and running. We hit a limit on the number of variations and I have a person that is working to find the solution. I found some help online, but I need him to make some changes behind the seem.

I am concerned if this variations limit is going to be a problem as I go forward..


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## AKSTS (Jun 10, 2015)

okprinter said:


> we are trying to get our Wordpress site up and running. We hit a limit on the number of variations and I have a person that is working to find the solution. I found some help online, but I need him to make some changes behind the seem.
> 
> I am concerned if this variations limit is going to be a problem as I go forward..


Are you referring to the 50 variation limit?

If you have 80 variations, I believe if you hit link all variations, it'll link 50 of them, and if you hit it again, it will link the remaining 30.


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## Ziptac (Jun 25, 2015)

Okay, I had to delete a previous message as I was using the wrong profile.

When I started with the webpage, I did a whole bunch of research about what type gave me the best control while still being friendly to new web developers. I decided to use Wordpress with Woocommerce. Woocommerce seemed to have all the tools that I needed, so I got to work straight away. I added product after product and created about 200 variants for each parent product.

For those who don't know the product/variant thingy, it works like this; every parent is the main design with all the descriptions and attributes you'd expect. Each variant is just a modification in size, color, cut, or what ever. If you have 6 sizes and 5 colors, you actually have 30 products. This makes sense because we know that the sizes and colors are all different T-shirts.

When I tried to load my Wordpress site, I found it was heavily bogged down. It was taking more than 10 seconds each load time. I was so frustrated. I'm too new to understand everything so I turned to the web for answers. Unfortunately, the discussions about my issues were too far above my head. What I did understand was that it was a inherit issue and there was probably customization that would help out. So I hired a developer to help me out. He was a tremendous help in getting an understanding of what was happening. Indeed, he was an interpreter for me.

Each variant caused a database query. That meant that to load a page with 12 products on it (like my shop page) I had 200x12 database queries. Did I mention I had swatches and the T-shirt mockup changed each time? Yeah, those had to be queried too. Or so I think - if I understand things correctly. But wait there's more, according to the web every frigging option in the variants is also loaded, even if it is blank. I'm talking about weight, stock, dimensions, sale price, and so forth. So I took to asking Woothemes for support. 4 days later I still had no answer. I took that as my answer and asked the developer his ideas.

So the developer and my hosting company helped me find the answers; Woocommerce was to blame and it likely wouldn't be fixed. At times it took 15 seconds to load. Any page that I had a Woocommerce widget became slow. In short, my selling capabilities were limited to dear friends and family. I went to work over two weeks working on the optimization and I finally got it all down to about 8 seconds. That was using caching, CDN, small pictures, limited Woocommerce widgets, a front page devoid of products (ouch!)and so forth. I felt horrible. I want to produce and have success and I can't even get out of the starting gate. The developer suggested that we just go with an addon/drop down menu for color and size. No variants. That did the trick and the site loads reasonably well. (see Woocommerce product add-ons for plug-in to avoid variants entirely)

With the dust cleared I thought I had a working site. I did, but I realized that I had a shadow of what I had set out to make. I didn't have swatches, cool colors, or even the ability to have an additional option like cut (or garment like hoodies, hats, and so forth). I felt the sting when feedback came in that we were missing the boat if we didn't have swatches with pictures that change.

So a new journey started as I tested out other shopping cart ideas. There was scarce pickings for a Wordpress shopping cart plugin, so I checked out Presta-shop, Shopify, Bigcommerce, and Deco-network.

Deco looked solid except their pricing was too high and their templates looked old. In talking to them (see http://www.t-shirtforums.com/ecommerce-site-design/t560266.html) things weren't a good match.

Shopify only allows 100 variants and limited payment gateways-see ya

Presta shop had some fuzzy reviews about how to use it for what I wanted to do. In talking to them, they couldn't quite answer my questions except to say, "Try it out!" Do they not realize how much time it takes to get things setup to fully "try it out"!!!!? Plus there were reviews about it being a more technical shop and after my Woocommerce issues, I was looking for plug and play. Also, limited payment gateways was an issue.

Bigcommerce is the one I decided to do a full test with. I'm still putting everything together, but it looks like I'll have everything that I wanted:

1. Swatches with pictures changing with every swatch click. Reasonable load time.

2. Built in and separate CDN and caching from my main site

3. Full control over my main site (still Wordpress) with them as a sub-domain

4. Can use my existing payment gateway.

5. Can bulk import products and pictures.

6. Can easily tweak rules - E.G. I can have a rule set that allows for the changing of colors for each design. I'll have a design that I put on 18 colors and another design that only goes on 7 colors. Without hardly any hassle, I can use the rules for the previous design, and just have it "hide" the colors I don't want. I cannot emphasize how awesome this is for a guy who deals in bulk design imports.

7. Testing shows product load fast, show a "wait" sign when it is loading images that may be larger.

8. Full SEO. If you don't know what I mean grab the book "The Art of SEO" and yeah, brace for impact, cause she's a mambajamba of a read.

9. Yes, you can use the word, "Mamba Jamba" on a T-shirt free of licensing issues.

10. Reasonable prices with no stupid limit on how many transactions you can have, or how many products you can have, before you have to move to a higher paid program. For the lowest program there is a 1.5% transaction fee for each order.

11. Reasonable support over chat and phone. I've tested this several times and had to get bumped to technical support both times. Their "university" is lacking for advanced topics, but they do answer their phones. This is just light years ahead of Woocommerce. With Woocommerce I still don't have answers and Bigcommerce answered my questions in less than 20 minutes.

I will be posting again later once I'm done with my Bigcommerce test. I'm not totally sold yet.

In summary, Woocommerce probably works best for those who want to have a little side shop to accompany their blog. The bloggers who have posted that Woocommerce is a "powerful shopping cart" they are sorely misguided. I suggest sorting out the options that you want, and then check out the dedicated E-commerce sites.


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## Ziptac (Jun 25, 2015)

AKSTS said:


> Are you referring to the 50 variation limit?
> 
> If you have 80 variations, I believe if you hit link all variations, it'll link 50 of them, and if you hit it again, it will link the remaining 30.


If you are having uploading issues, you can also easily get around this too by just bulk uploading. I bought the Woothemes bulk uploader (overpriced) and it helped a lot for cutting my time down. I also fixed this through increasing max_vars and increasing memory on my server.

But again, boo on Woocommerce for how it handles variants. I just hated loading trying to load a page to edit a description or something. It would take several minutes to just load the back end.


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## okprinter (Sep 6, 2014)

Ziptac said:


> You can easily get around this too by just bulk uploading. I bought the Woothemes bulk uploader (overpriced) and it helped a lot for cutting my time down. I also fixed this through increasing max_vars and increasing memory on my server.
> 
> But again, boo on Woocommerce for how it handles variants.


We were getting decent page load times until we hit some limit...this is what we found online

"The problem is your hosting setup. You need to increase the post_vars in PHP. The newer PHP version limit the variables that can be passed to 1000. This is just not enough. There is also a plugin to help you find the limit that you have at the moment.
Just set max_input_vars in php.ini to 5000, that helped me"

and this

Problems with large amounts of data not saving (variations, rates etc) | WooThemes Documentation

but currently waiting on my web person to increase the post_vars...not sure if he does not know how or what?


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## okprinter (Sep 6, 2014)

AKSTS said:


> Are you referring to the 50 variation limit?
> 
> If you have 80 variations, I believe if you hit link all variations, it'll link 50 of them, and if you hit it again, it will link the remaining 30.


thank you...but not that limit...seems to be another limit..the max_input_vars


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## lvprinting (Sep 23, 2014)

You can't use junk cheap shared hosting for ecommerce unless you are selling simple single products.

Sent from my SM-G900T using T-Shirt Forums


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## AKSTS (Jun 10, 2015)

Thanks for all of the info Ziptac.

Sort of like you, I resorted to getting the basics of what I want in. When the business grows, I'll reinvest in getting everything I want out of the ecommerce solution.

At this point, we just have drop downs.

For example:

Black t-shirt w/the words "I LOVE HOCKEY".

There's a drop down for gender, size, color, and fit (athletic fit vs. standard fit).

The image displayed as the product does not change when you choose the drop down selections. I would like it to, but then again, that is just sooooo many variants that need to be added for every product and there's just no easy way to make it work perfect/easily. So if you pick a blue shirt, the image shown is still just the black shirt.


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## AKSTS (Jun 10, 2015)

nicefile said:


> Hi,
> 
> I love wordpress and woocommerce. It is fast and good with SEO. You can install more plugin.
> 
> ...


It seems to me that you might have an affiliation with the custom product designer you linked there, as you also have the link in your signature.

If so, can you tell me if your software can create a set price for any front design (say $22). And if anything (text or graphic) is put on back then the price would calculate to $26?

I'm after simple pricing. $22 for any front design, $26 for any front/back design.

Thanks.


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## okprinter (Sep 6, 2014)

AKSTS said:


> Thanks for all of the info Ziptac.
> 
> Sort of like you, I resorted to getting the basics of what I want in. When the business grows, I'll reinvest in getting everything I want out of the ecommerce solution.
> 
> ...


have you looked at the plugin for swatches and colors?

it will allow you to change the picture as the user makes selections


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## AKSTS (Jun 10, 2015)

okprinter said:


> have you looked at the plugin for swatches and colors?
> 
> it will allow you to change the picture as the user makes selections


 Do you have a specific plugin/name that you like?

Thanks.


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## okprinter (Sep 6, 2014)

AKSTS said:


> Do you have a specific plugin/name that you like?
> 
> Thanks.


this is the one we are trying to make work at this time, it does most of what we want...but to make it work like we want we end up with lots of variations...my web person is trying to have the limit changed today, so I can continue testing

WooCommerce Variation Swatches and Photos | WooThemes Documentation


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## nicefile (Nov 3, 2014)

AKSTS said:


> It seems to me that you might have an affiliation with the custom product designer you linked there, as you also have the link in your signature.
> 
> If so, can you tell me if your software can create a set price for any front design (say $22). And if anything (text or graphic) is put on back then the price would calculate to $26?
> 
> ...


We give free version but we stopped.

This plugin allow config price with print type. So you can config price with size or color of area design.

You can setup front with size A4 and price $22 and Back/A3/$26.


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## okprinter (Sep 6, 2014)

good news, my web developer was able to make the file changes and I am able to save variations again.

He changed the following file....
the change was made to the php.ini file to increase that limit

so back to testing the creation of my products using global and product only attributes...


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## forwill (Jun 28, 2012)

AKSTS said:


> I took on the task of setting up our ecommerce site. Only programming experience comes from one C++ class in high school.
> 
> I set us up with DecoNetwork, hosted via Host Gator. The t-shirt design tool seems great and very nicely works with uploading apparel. However, the actual website itself is lacking unless you have it custom made, which was beyond my expertise.
> 
> ...


I believe there are some big companies using wordpress and woocommerce. But I think you need good hosting in order to make it run well.

12 Great Examples Of WooCommerce Stores - WooThemes


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## Ayomi (Aug 21, 2015)

AKSTS said:


> I took on the task of setting up our ecommerce site. Only programming experience comes from one C++ class in high school.
> 
> I set us up with DecoNetwork, hosted via Host Gator. The t-shirt design tool seems great and very nicely works with uploading apparel. However, the actual website itself is lacking unless you have it custom made, which was beyond my expertise.
> 
> ...


 Sounds like you want to build a business with WordPress: "before I put in all the work to make it an actual website, full of all our offerings"

In that case what you need to know is that, while WordPress is great, Wordpress "as is" won't build an online business. It's missing a do-able start-to-finish BUSINESS process.

Surely, you can slog through the mountains of business building advice and tools that are out there. But for most WordPress users it all ends up being too much.

So, despite the dazzling display of Wordpress features, the reality for most (non-tech) people who want to create a web business with Wordpress is that they need to adhere to an easy-to-follow, all-in-one, proven, ethical webbusiness-building system (not a get rich quick scheme), tailored to the WordPress platform, to get (1) a significant amount of traffic and get (2) targeted traffic (example of such a system: WealthPrinciples dot net). Otherwise you'll end up having (and building) only a WordPress webSITE but not a webBUSINESS.


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