Car Parts CMS

pablo21

Guys looking for some help in choosing a shopping cart cms. I dont want to go custom so would like to go with an off the shelf Cart. The site is for car parts sales online, something along the lines of micks garage. It would need all the usual cart stuff and the ability to search by make/model etc. I'm very comfortable with Zen, joomla etc so no problems with setup/usability etc. Just want your advice on what would be best to give a very professional finish.
All help greatly appreciated.
P.

Hal1

I installed joomla and was going to use a shopping cart system so I had a look at virtuemart (its a joomla addon). It very straight forward and easy to use.

Kila

Zencart can be a bit tricky to get to grips with, but is quite customisable and has an awful lot of options built in (coupons, shipping modules, etc) as well as a reasonably active community forum where people post and modules are developed.

I just finished a site with it, and while it wasn't all plain sailing, it definitely offered a very customisable setup for the finished product.

pablo21

Hi Guys, thanks very much for comments. I probably wasnt clear enough in the post but I'm very comfortable with Zen and Joomla shopping options and have alot of sites running with these already. What I suppose I'm looking for is something to take it to the next level without going to a complete custom design. I would normally heavily modify Zen and joomla but I was wondering if there may be something more targeted to what I have in mind. Something along the lines of Micks Garage or that level of usability? Maybe Zen and a few plugins are the way I'll end up going but I'd like to explore other options ya know? All info greatly appreciated.

pablo21

Anybody have any input on this? All suggestions greatly appreciated.

pablo21

I've ended up using Zen Cart but would still love some suggestions on this... Anybody?

nellyshark

Open Cart if small or Magento?

Scotty #

nellyshark wrote: »

Open Cart if small or Magento?

Yea, if Virtuemart's not enough I'd suggest Magento also. Different kettle of fish to Zen or Virtuemart though. Much steeper learning curve!

nellyshark

Scotty # wrote: »

Yea, if Virtuemart's not enough I'd suggest Magento also. Different kettle of fish to Zen or Virtuemart though. Much steeper learning curve!

You can sing that. Also Magento is resource hungry :eek:

Tim M-U

Take a look at oscommerance (i think thats it anyway)..zencart is another one but am not sure if 'its open source' or 'free', this takes a while to get used of.
as a matter of interest, does this site offer car parts or cars? they might be a limit to how much you can charge on a credit card/merchant account, that im not sure!

Scotty #

Tim M-U wrote: »

Take a look at oscommerance (i think thats it anyway)..zencart is another one but am not sure if 'its open source' or 'free', this takes a while to get used of.
as a matter of interest, does this site offer car parts or cars? they might be a limit to how much you can charge on a credit card/merchant account, that im not sure!

Personally, I'd avoid OsCommerce at all costs. Zen evoloved from OsC and the original developers are now the guys who develop Magento.

There is no limit to how much you can charge to a credit card, only the cards own limit.

pablo21

Lads, I'm probably not explaining myself correctly but I need something specific to car parts or similar, something that allows vehicle search specifically something like Micksgarage. Maybe custom is the only way to this end?

nellyshark

pablo21 wrote: »

Lads, I'm probably not explaining myself correctly but I need something specific to car parts or similar, something that allows vehicle search specifically something like Micksgarage. Maybe custom is the only way to this end?

Maybe I am totally misinterpreting what you are saying but IMO car parts would be classed as products, car makes classed as categories, and car manufacturers classed as manufacturers

pablo21

Its not that simple I'm afraid Nelly. I though that too until I started building one. There's so many variations on specific models and versions that the standard logical layout Zen and other carts use is not completely suitable. You also need a custom search module to allow people search by make plus model plus year etc My question was is there an off the shelf package that would be more suited to this or is it primarily to mainstay of custom design and build? Have a look at micksgarage and you'll see what I'm on about.

nellyshark

pablo21 wrote: »

Its not that simple I'm afraid Nelly. I though that too until I started building one. There's so many variations on specific models and versions that the standard logical layout Zen and other carts use is not completely suitable. You also need a custom search module to allow people search by make plus model plus year etc My question was is there an off the shelf package that would be more suited to this or is it primarily to mainstay of custom design and build? Have a look at micksgarage and you'll see what I'm on about.

Again I could very well be misinterpreting what you say but it would actually be somewhere between the standard build and a custom eCom build, what you would be a plugin to add that functionality.

I just did a quick search on google for said plugin for Magento (or what I understand to be said plugin) and came across this plugin: http://demo.vehiclefits.com/index.php.

Edit: I haven't fully read the thread, are you specifically asking in relation to Zen Cart? I assumer you were still looking for suggestions

pablo21

Thats good nelly, Just having a look now. I've gone with Zen cart and found a custom house in UK that will build the search box for me so fingers crossed that will cover me for the moment. I have a few more of these type of sites on and it might be time to start looking at magento. Anyone much experience with it?

Scotty #

nellyshark wrote: »

I just did a quick search on google for said plugin for Magento (or what I understand to be said plugin) and came across this plugin: http://demo.vehiclefits.com/index.php.

Or watch the video..... :eek:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRGSzmp2dAk

nellyshark

pablo21 wrote: »

Thats good nelly, Just having a look now. I've gone with Zen cart and found a custom house in UK that will build the search box for me so fingers crossed that will cover me for the moment. I have a few more of these type of sites on and it might be time to start looking at magento. Anyone much experience with it?

I would have a wee bit of experience with it, mainly testing it when it first cam out and have followed it since then. I wouldnt recommend it for a small eCom site as it is overkill but for large scale projects then its ace. Thats only my opinon however, maybe a shop owner using Magento would be a better person to ask. Also I do know that Magento utilises a lot of server resources and it can be a steeeeeeeeeeep learning curve for the administrator