osCommerce

[Nerveman]

Just wondering if anyone has set up an osCommerce store and how long it took to get your head around it?

I come from a ColdFusion background and have never touched PHP yet... how long do you think it will take for me to get a store up and running?

Cheers
David

[Chris]

I've setup two stores and it took me awhile to get my head around it.

OSC is not coded very well, output for a single page can be generated by many difference files. All in all its fairly confusing.

Once you understand it though it is fairly easy to edit.

With no PHP experience though I would not rate your chances very well -- I had been using PHP for years before I started using OSC.

[Mike]

I downloaded the .zip file with all the files in, and didn't know where to start. Is there a help file or something? I couldn't find one in the .zip I downloaded.

[incka]

I had loads of problems when trying to set up a PhpBB board, and this sounds even harder...

But soon I will need to try because I'm making the online store for a timber merchant...

He's worried about a cost...

You said an SSL Seal was $50, but easily charge $350 for an SSL seal with vergisign seal. Do you need the vergisign seal to see that little padlock in the corner?

[Nerveman]

Hmm, my chances of a quick turn-around using OSC don't look good.

Can anyone recommend any shopping cart software (free or low cost) that is easy to install and manage.

David

[Chris]

OSC is easy to install and manage -- just not so easy to hack.

[Mike]

How did you do it? Did you just try things out, or is there a readme or something?

[Chris]

there isn't much installation documentation -- basically for starters just look in the config file.

[Nerveman]

Chris - what made you pick OSC out of all the other shopping carts available at the time?

[Cloughie]

I launched www.atlargenutrition.com 5 weeks ago.

I had someone else do all of the work for me due to my lack of php knowledge. I also needed a fairly customized design.

However I know NO php, and I managed to install things correctly and change the layout of the store by myself with some fiddling and reading around the forums. You should be able to do the same.

As Chris said though, it’s a bit confusing at first but once you work our how the files work it becomes a bit clearer.

[Nerveman]

Cloughie - that is a great looking site, very nice! So why did you choose OSC? Did you (or your developer) feel that OSC had a superior code base from which to start from?

David

[chromate]

I've done work for clients with oscommerce. I like it. I find it fairly easy to work with. Though, I'm not too bad with PHP (no expert though).

[Chris]

I chose OSC because it was free and had many features + additional contributions you could add.

[Cloughie]

Let me point out that although I messed around with the layout of oscommerce a little ages ago, my designer did all of the at large site for me. I did not want to get bogged down in it. Leave it to the experts etc.

I choose osc mainly for its flexibility. If I want a feature I can get a quote from my web guys. Its open source and can easily be customized, as you will see our site has. I have used actinic before, in fact set up a whole site with it and it was very, very rigid in terms of customizing the design and of course feature wise it was not possible to add things.

Also it did lower the cost overall and we already had a lto of cost.

I paid my designer roughly $1300 to implement a half design I had already had made for me, and customize the shop to my requirements including getting the payment system working. We designed our own products, so I had more than enough to worry about without getting into messing around with code, that I did not know much about. Also it would have taken me ages, and these guys work with oscommerce a lot and had previous excellent examples of their work. Also a lot of investment went into the business so I saw no reason to skip on this aspect of the business especially as it was the front end for people ordering the products.

I am also paying them roughly $800 to further ehance the site. They will use contributions but I need custom work done on them to fit my objectives another strong advantage of open source systems.

Ok, I am waffling.

Flexibility, and reduced cost is the main reasons. OSC’s admin tools are very good also ;)

[Nerveman]

Thanks for the detailed info on your latest project Cloughie. OSC seems to be a well thought out product with a vast amount of add-ons and a supportive community. I also like the idea of hiring a PHP developer to install/customise the code for a very reasonable overall cost.

Would you recommend the developer you hired Cloughie (if you are willing to give away your contacts that is… :).

David

[Cloughie]

David,

www.mediahabit.com are the guys that did my site. UK contact also, and very professional. I can't say enough about them :)

[Nerveman]

Thanks Cloughie, I will bookmark them for future use.