Integrating WordPress Into osCommerce

I had been integrating WordPress into osCommerce 2.2 since 2008 based on several online tutorials. It was a daunting task as there were a few files that needed to be modified and it was a maintenance nightmare whenever there’s a software upgrade. Then there were other similar integration attempts in both communities, OSC into WordPress or WordPress into OSC, and I had no clue what had became of them. Well, since the modular top and bottom templates implementation in OSC 2.3, integrating WordPress and OSC had actually gotten a lot easier; hence, the creation of this WordPress-OSC template. The idea was basically to make OSC’s modular header and footer available in a WordPress template. So let’s take this out for a spin…

1. Install WordPress in a sub-folder inside the OSC catalog. Here, my sub-folder name is “wordpress.”

   

2. Create a symbolic link of the OSC includes folder in the wordpress sub-folder. This allows WordPress to call OSC functions. You should be able to do this via Cpanel, but this was the shell command I used in my wordpress folder:

   ln -s ../includes .

3. Download my Westfalia theme on Github, and copy it inside your “wordpress/wp-content/themes/” folder.
4. Login to your WordPress and activate the Westfalia theme (for Bootstrap version but I have the 2.3 version somewhere on a production server. You really should be migrating to the Bootstrap/responsive version anyway, but do ask if you really want it).

   

5. That is! Now, set your permalinks, create a page, and you can set your OSC link to point to the page like this:  define(‘FILENAME_SHIPPING’, ‘wordpress/shipping/’);

   

Yes, modifing an OSC page gets a lot easier. I had never gotten into OSC’s Articles Manager as my teeth clench every time I had to install an OSC addon. Oh, you should also install an SEO as well as the Akismet plugins as a minimum for your WordPress install. Hey, what’s fun without a little adventure, right?