Printcart Photobook

Description

Printcart Photobook turns WooCommerce products into multi-page photo-album designers. Shoppers design the cover, spine, inside covers and any number of interior spreads in an embedded designer; the plugin bridges the finished design into the WooCommerce cart, prices every copy on the server, and — through the Printcart Cloud — renders a print-ready CMYK book for fulfilment.

It is a productized, standalone plugin with its own top-level admin menu. You connect a Printcart account in one step, and the rest of the workflow — pricing, products, orders, design files and canvas behaviour — is managed natively inside WordPress. A free Printcart account is required (it powers the designer, pricing and print render), and photobooks are sold as WooCommerce products, so WooCommerce is required too.

Each Printcart plugin is a complete solution for one product niche. One store runs one Printcart solution. To run several Printcart solutions on one store, see Printcart Connect (integration service, Printcart Advanced plan or above).

Who it is for

Print shops, photographers, agencies and WooCommerce merchants who want to sell personalized photobooks without building a designer or a print pipeline themselves.

Key features

• One-step Printcart connect with a guided setup wizard — sign in or create a free account right inside wp-admin; the plugin binds this site to the right store automatically.
• Embedded photobook designer on product pages — a full-screen canvas where shoppers lay out every page, with the finished design bridged into the WooCommerce cart and order.
• Native Pricing management — create and manage per-copy pricing options in WordPress, with a live per-copy estimate as you build them.
• Native Products — create a photobook product with a guided wizard, or enable an existing WooCommerce product as a photobook.
• Orders — a photobook orders list plus a detailed per-order view that shows every page of the book, with one-click sample data so you can explore the flow immediately.
• Design Files library — browse the design files your shoppers produce.
• Canvas Workflow settings — control how the designer behaves (placement, autofill, print quality, layout, content tabs, cover & spine, save & proof), kept in sync with your Printcart Dashboard.
• Server-authoritative, per-copy CMYK pricing — the storefront never sends a trusted price; Printcart recalculates from your catalog and renders the print-ready book.
• WooCommerce HPOS (custom order tables) compatible.

External services

This plugin connects to the Printcart Cloud (a third-party service operated by Printcart) to power the photobook designer, pricing, product/order sync and print rendering. It cannot function without it. Below is exactly what data is sent, when, and to which service. Nothing is sent until you connect a Printcart account.

1. Printcart Cloud API — https://api.printcart.com

Account connection. When you connect on the setup screen, your Printcart sign-in email and password are sent once to https://api.printcart.com/v1/account/signIn to authenticate. They are never stored in WordPress; every later request uses the store credentials returned by that call.

Store management. When you manage pricing options, products, design files or the canvas workflow in wp-admin, the plugin sends the corresponding pricing/product/project data to https://api.printcart.com/v1 (endpoints under /printing-options, /products, /projects, /stores and /customizer) so it can be created, read and updated in your Printcart catalog.

Designer and pricing. When a shopper opens the designer or the store prices a photobook, the shopper’s selections and the relevant product/pricing identifiers are sent so Printcart can render the canvas and recalculate the per-copy price. A client-supplied price is never trusted.

Order sync — includes buyer personal data. Orders are sent by Printcart Connect, a small library bundled inside this plugin (other Printcart plugins bundle the same library, and one copy does the work for all of them). It sends an order once the order is PAID (status processing or completed), and sends it again when the status of an already sent order changes, for example when it is completed or refunded. Nothing is sent at checkout and nothing is sent for an unpaid order. The library POSTs the complete order to https://api.printcart.com/v1/integration/woocommerce/orders so Printcart can produce and fulfil the book. Because it sends the whole order, lines that are not photobooks are included too. The payload contains exactly:

• Order data: WooCommerce order id, order number, order key, order status, currency, subtotal, shipping total, tax total, total, payment method and payment method title, the WordPress customer id, the order created and modified dates, and your site URL.
• Line items (every line of the order): line item id, product id, variation id, SKU, product name, quantity, line subtotal and total, and which Printcart plugin the line belongs to (none for an ordinary product). For photobook lines: the design ids and the Printcart project id.
• Buyer personal data: email address, first name, last name, company and phone number, and the billing and shipping addresses exactly as stored on the order (street address lines, city, state, postcode and country).
• Not sent: payment-card or other payment-instrument data, customer account passwords, and any customer note.
• Why: to authenticate your store, render the photobook designer, calculate per-copy pricing, manage your products and pricing, and produce and fulfil the print-ready CMYK book. The buyer name, contact details and address are transmitted so Printcart can identify the order for fulfilment, ship it and reach the recipient about it.
• Terms of Service: https://solution.printcart.com/tos/licenses-and-terms
• Privacy Policy: https://printcart.com/privacy-policy

2. Printcart activation events and plugin report — https://api.printcart.com/v1

• What is sent: store-scoped lifecycle signals only — for example “store connected”, product/pricing setup state, and “order created” (order status/number and the photobook project ids). Each signal also carries technical identifiers that describe the sending store and plugin, not a person: your Printcart store id, your site URL, the event name, severity and timestamp, the affected resource type and id, the plugin’s own key, version and distribution channel, and the list of plugin capabilities that are enabled. No customer or buyer personal data is sent.
• Plugin report (/v1/stores/apps): the Printcart Connect library tells Printcart which Printcart plugins are installed on your site, their versions and whether each is active, together with your site URL. It does this when you connect, when you activate, deactivate or update a Printcart plugin, and once a day. It is used to show you the right setup and to keep one Printcart solution per store. No customer data is included.
• When: when you connect the store, one day after connecting if a setup step is still needed (no product / no published pricing), and when a photobook order is placed.
• Why: so Printcart can send you, the merchant, the right setup and activation emails. This emitter is best-effort and never blocks or delays checkout.
• Terms of Service: https://solution.printcart.com/tos/licenses-and-terms
• Privacy Policy: https://printcart.com/privacy-policy

3. Printcart design editor app — https://customizer.printcart.com

• What is sent: when a shopper opens a photobook product, the browser loads the Printcart design editor in an iframe using your store’s read-only token and the Printcart product id. The shopper’s design selections and placed/uploaded images are sent to Printcart so the design can be saved, priced and later rendered to a print-ready PDF.
• When: on the storefront, each time a shopper opens the designer for a photobook product.
• Why: to let shoppers design their photobook in the browser.
• Terms of Service: https://solution.printcart.com/tos/licenses-and-terms
• Privacy Policy: https://printcart.com/privacy-policy