Need assistance matching a general theme style as well as eCommerce capability
- by humble_coder
I'm in the process of acquiring a new design client. They are getting into the business of "auto parts wholesaling" and they want a storefront. My preference is/was to create something from scratch. However, here is an established trend in their particular market (similar parts, layout, etc). They insist on following the existing visual trend, as per the following:
http://www.xtremediesel.com/
http://www.thoroughbreddiesel.com/
http://www.alligatorperformance.com/
My plan of attack at this point is to find a comparable WP theme and a flexible (but useful) backend/product management. Their current demo site (which their previous developer made a stab at) is using Pinnacle Cart. It is no where near what they need, nor is it intuitive to work with. I was actually considering Magento for its greater abilities but I'm still considering options.
That said, my two primary dilemmas are as follows:
1) I need a theme that mimics the general style of those listed. They explicitly said they didn't want anything too clean (e.g. ThemeForest, Woothemes) as it "wasn't rugged or busy looking enough" for their field.
2) I need a WP/Magento/WP e-Commerce (or any one of a host of other) plugin that will allow for bulk import/update of nearly 200,000 products, descriptions and images. I'm not opposed to manually interfacing with the DB for import, but in the end, I need a store/system that doesn't needlessly add 50 tables to accommodate some "wet behind the ears" concept of table normalization and is easy to add to.
Anyway, if anyone has any quality suggestions regarding either of these issues, it would be most appreciated.
Best.
