Recommend me an E-commerce package

Nasty_Girl

Hi guys,

I'm a web developer, pretty good with PHP, AJAX, XHTML CSS.

I have a possible project coming up for a online shop.

Now I'm looking at the usual solutions, zen cart, osCommerce, virtue mart etc but I suspect this client will want to take laser payments.

So really I'm looking for an Irish based solution that has a facility to take laser or can be configured to use realex.

It will be a fairly big site so I don't really have the time and resources to start building it myself.

I'm NOT looking for someone to build it for me either.

I need a solution that I can buy, download, put on my hosting, configure and skin.

Any ideas?

TitoPuente

Have a look at Megento. I'm pretty sure you can integrate it with most transaction providers, including Realex.

RoadKillTs

Magento is the mutts nuts. Be warned though it can be a bit slow if you have shared hosting.

Nasty_Girl

RoadKillTs wrote: »

Magento is the mutts nuts. Be warned though it can be a bit slow if you have shared hosting.

Damn shared hosting!

Thanks guys,

I'm looking at downloading the community version now just to get a feel for it.

RoadKillTs

There is a guide here on how to speed it up.

Link

Eoin

Try out Zen Cart as well. The Realex integration is simple to implement, and they accept laser. Don't bother with osCommerce.

mattfinucane

i have been looking at magento too with keen interest.

Nasty_Girl

Thanks guys this stuff is great.
Lots for me to research

TitoPuente

You should definitely see if you can push the client to fork out for a VPS or something. As has already been said, Magento can be pretty resource intenstive and slow on a shared server. I have a VPS with Blacknight and it's the mutts nuts.

ardale

I've been bust for the last few months pulling together a website in Zen cart. Now looking at getting payments sorted. How easy or hard is it to get Realex working with Zen cart. Is there step by step help or do they do it for you?

Eoin

It's very simple. There's a realex plugin available, but I think it was ported from OSCommerce, so it might not be on the Realex site itself. You just install the component and enter the merchant ID and secret and a few other fields, and you're pretty much good to go. Remember that you'll need to give Realex the request URL from zen cart.

I'd say you'd find it with a couple of minutes Googling.

Edit - very first search result:
http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=82752

Edit 2 - that's the redirect solution by the way

ardale

Thanks a mill. I find I get to grips with one thing and then something else goes pearshaped and the learning curve gets steeper every time. Thanks again

Eoin

Well, do remember to read up on all the security tutorials you can get your hands on in that case. It doesn't take much for the site to be hacked unless you take all the correct steps.

ardale

Will do. Just one question in relation to Realex. When a customer inputs their details for the payment and it is approved. Is their card charged straight away? If I was out of stock for say 3 days, can I delay the trasaction from going through and only implement the charge (tell realex to go ahead) of their card upon shipping time/date? Is this possible?

Eoin

It's either an instant payment, or it's done in batch that night by the bank. Either way, it's out of your hands at that stage.

Remember that zen cart can be configured to not allow an item to be bought if it's out of stock.

ardale

Hi Eoin,
Thanks fo rthe help. I realise I cuold stop the sale happening when out of stock but I wouldn't want that. I can't remember but from buying online myself and dealing with sites that take the order but don't ship say for 4/5 days later, I see that my card gets charged on day 5 not the day I place the order; which I kind of like. I suppose I could just set up a generic email for when this happens (out of stock - expect dispatch 4-5 days). They could cancel the order then and I assume Realex have a procedure for returning funds to customer same as refunding at Bricks and Mortar? Do you think it is common practice to charge a card straight away at the time of order? Sorry for all the questions and thanks for your valuable input.
Ard

Eoin

Actually, you'd need to confirm that with Realex - I'm not 100% sure. I had a quick look at their control panel, and I think I could only see an option to cancel a transaction.

Now, this is using their redirect method. If you're gathering the credit card details and doing the processing yourself, then it might be possible to do this - but then you have the burden of storing customer's CC information which is not something I would do lightly.

ardale wrote:

Do you think it is common practice to charge a card straight away at the time of order?

That's what I would expect to happen if I was buying from an online store.

Scotty #

Virtuemart is an option... https://resourcecentre.realexpayments.com/downloads.html?id=138