# paypal merchant processing with joomla or wordpress designed site.



## Naptime (May 19, 2011)

I have hosted my new site with godaddy. I have the option of using wordpress or joomla to build the site.

the site will be primarily for showcasing our screen print t shirt business. however, i will also have several designs that we wish to sell on our site.

i have no intentions of setting up a shopping cart, or a t shirt designer.

but i do wish to sell specific designs on there.

for that, we are going to use paypal "buy now" and "add to cart" buttons. and using paypal for the merchant processing.


i have never used joomla nor wordpress, but i like what i am seeing for content management and ease of use. rather than dealing with dreamweaver that i have used for other sites in the past.


i am leaning more towards joomla, as i am hearing bad things about wordpress in regards to security and malware.

am i able to edit pages in joomla to add the paypal purchasing buttons?


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## discoqueen (Jun 5, 2010)

Yes, you can use the "Buy Now" and "Add to Cart" buttons with Joomla. 

It sounds like you are familiar with building sites with software, and Joomla really isn't all that different, except that it's installed on your server rather than local. 

I have built quite a few sites with Joomla now, and just recently added not only a Buy Now but also a PayPal donations button for fundraising on one of them (school related, not for my biz). 

The Joomla community is quite helpful if you run into problems, and there are a wealth of extensions for it as well.


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## Naptime (May 19, 2011)

discoqueen said:


> Yes, you can use the "Buy Now" and "Add to Cart" buttons with Joomla.
> 
> It sounds like you are familiar with building sites with software, and Joomla really isn't all that different, except that it's installed on your server rather than local.
> 
> ...


 
Thanks for the quick reply!

I have used dreamweaver extensively in the past. But i am old school html, and never learned much about css, or many of the features of dreamweaver.

im trying to focus more on the print side of the business and less on the webside. or rather, i dont want to spend all my time designing a site. im fine with daily updates, and maintenance, as long as i dont have to spend hours doing it.

i guess i'll give it a shot 

thanks again.


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## discoqueen (Jun 5, 2010)

You sound a little bit like me. Started years ago with Dreamweaver and coding in HTML, learned a little bit of CSS and XML. Decided to get out of web dev, and then along come all these new languages and tools. LOL

I will warn you.....there is a bit of a learning curve with Joomla. 
For me it was wrapping my head around the structure (ie. Sections vs Categories vs Articles)

If you run into any issues, give me a shout I might be able to help.


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## Naptime (May 19, 2011)

discoqueen said:


> You sound a little bit like me. Started years ago with Dreamweaver and coding in HTML, learned a little bit of CSS and XML. Decided to get out of web dev, and then along come all these new languages and tools. LOL
> 
> I will warn you.....there is a bit of a learning curve with Joomla.
> For me it was wrapping my head around the structure (ie. Sections vs Categories vs Articles)
> ...


thanks, i'm sure i will have many questions. lol.

i've used another content management system. didnt care much for it, but it did make things easier and faster 

i wish i would have started with dreamweaver.......

i started with notepad... long before any wysiwyg editors existed. then moved on to frontpage. used that long after it was dead. and finally switched over to dreamweaver only once my frontpage cd quit working lol. so, i only learned what i absolutely needed in dreamweaver.


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## AntoAlbo (Aug 5, 2011)

I built a site with wordpress and then I added the custom buttons created with paypal. it seemed like the easiest solution for my needs. I know that there are very powerful plugin for ecommerce but are very complicated. For those interested the site is accessible from my signature


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## consultantnomo (Jul 21, 2011)

Naptime said:


> im trying to focus more on the print side of the business and less on the webside. or rather, i dont want to spend all my time designing a site. im fine with daily updates, and maintenance, as long as i dont have to spend hours doing it.


Based on the above quote, I'd really recommend Wordpress over Joomla. The community is significantly larger. The learning curve is much easier, and security is not a concern, provided you keep up with the various platform and plug-in updates. The readily-available themes are another bonus so that you can avoid either a blog'y or cms'y look. 

If you want a nice, bare-bones theme that has easy customization, take a look at StandardTheme.com (i use it as a base for a half dozen clients, plus 4 of my own sites).


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## 20vK (Jul 9, 2011)

I've done a bit of html in the past, never got round to dreamweaver.

In the last year, I've moved onto Joomla. Once you get your head around how it works, (you can't just create a menu for example - you also have to create a module to control how that menu is seen. ie which pages it appears on and which it doesn't), it is pretty easy.

You'll also need to register a MySQL table to hold the data - but you can do that easily through cpanel on your host's server.

All in all, I'm very happy with Joomla and the info and help out there is outstanding. One thing I will say is to choose your template before you start to fill it with pictures. THe sizes can vary and what looks great on one template may not fit in nicely with a different template. Once you have chosen a template, very basic html literacy becomes very handy for tweaking them to look exactly how you want.

Finding modules to do various jobs is a piece of cake (think of them like apps on an Apple) - I'm currently looking for testimonial modules so my customers for my watersports business can leave feedback easily, for example

Best of luck!

Richie


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