E-Commerce

sticker

Hey all,

Just a quick question -

Whats the easiest e-commerce platform to intergrate into a new site build?

I've no experience with this and would like to learn. I'm using Dreamweaver CS3 as my primary web build tool.

Alternativley if anyone can provide the service for me (or possibly even a few lessons to get me started - which I'd happily pay for) that would be fine too.

Thanks in advance

grahamor

Well, what platform are you using ?

If it's linux there are many free options, like OsCommerce.

forbairt

To integrate ... really depends on what you mean by integrate into it ..

Joomla with http://virtuemart.net/ is quite quick an easy to get up and running but as Nevf will say ... I don't like joomla

osCommerce is in my opinion a bit of a nightmare ... the generated code heavily relies on tables and it seems crazy the way the release it ..

As others will tell you zenCart is another option ...

Depending really on what you mean by integrate .. simply having a link to paypal to process a credit card transaction could be the simplest way to go about it

sticker

grahamor wrote: »

Well, what platform are you using ?

If it's linux there are many free options, like OsCommerce.

Windows

sticker

forbairt wrote: »

To integrate ... really depends on what you mean by integrate into it ..

Joomla with http://virtuemart.net/ is quite quick an easy to get up and running but as Nevf will say ... I don't like joomla

osCommerce is in my opinion a bit of a nightmare ... the generated code heavily relies on tables and it seems crazy the way the release it ..

As others will tell you zenCart is another option ...

Depending really on what you mean by integrate .. simply having a link to paypal to process a credit card transaction could be the simplest way to go about it

I'm considering buying the Lynda.com - "building an online shopping cart" training module.

It's got a Dreamweaver addon "Cartweaver Extension Suite" as it's main tool, considering I'm familiar with Dreamweaver, Anyone have any experience or tips with Cartweaver?

sticker

Get Your Own Thread Chada! :pac:

Chada

Done!

daymobrew

You can use osCMax - "osCommerce Maximized". It is osCommerce with a bunch of useful add-ons included.
It seems to be a bit easier to customise.

sticker

daymobrew wrote: »

You can use osCMax - "osCommerce Maximized". It is osCommerce with a bunch of useful add-ons included.
It seems to be a bit easier to customise.

Thanks - I've bought the Lynda.com tutorial - I'll start it this evening.

Pixel8

Zencart is an offshoot of osCommerce, the original and best, but only coz of its massive amount of add-on features. As someone else said, it is indeedy a nightmare to get used to, took me around 2 or 3 years to get confident with it. Any PHP CMS based application like osCommerce and Zencart are going to take a good while to get used to.
I'd go for Zencart if i was starting now though because of its template support, its excellent. It also has more of the harder to install oscommerce mods included in it already, like group pricing. On the downside, the community is a lot smaller than the oscommerce one, and community help is a must for getting used to these types of programs. Ah Zencarts is getting better all the time though and there seems to be more competition on the Zencart side to be better than osCommerce coz they seem to release more updates.
Oscommerce v3 is almost here though, whereas v2.2 has been around for years without an update! But thats not really an issue coz of the amount of add-on modules being written by the open source community.

If you do choose to go with Zencart or osCommerce, change your hosting package to Linux, dont use Windows. PHP runs on both platforms but editing file permissions is not possible on a windows server remotely, only linux can do that by users through FTP.

sticker

Thanks for the replies...

Anyone any experience with "Cartweaver Extension Suite" - ? - This is the application the Lynda.com uses in it's tutorial.