Help with Developing a Web Site

Freddie24

Hi all

I am thinking of developing an online web store and i'm looking for any information in the best way to go about things. I don't want to just jump in and get into trouble half way down the line. Any information, hints, tricks would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers

Freddie

Overflow

Do you have any programming or html/css experience ?

business bloomer

Use WordPress & buy a premium shopping cart template ~ $50

Creamy Goodness

business bloomer wrote: »

Use WordPress & buy a premium shopping cart template ~ $50

Do not do this.

Wordpress is a blog, it shouldn't be used for anything but that!

Would you use Magento for a blog? thought not.

business bloomer

Creamy Goodness wrote: »

Do not do this.

Wordpress is a blog, it shouldn't be used for anything but that!

Would you use Magento for a blog? thought not.

Well, it depends on the amount of products you want to sell. Say <50, I'd definitely go with WordPress.

Sposs

I'd second wordpress with a plugin such as http://storefrontthemes.com/themes/boutique/ which i have seen used on a few sites, you can be up

and running in minutes and provides a very clean and easy to use interface for management, as business bloomer said this is perfect for any

shop under 50 items, anymore and certainly the likes of magento would be more effective.

Creamy Goodness

business bloomer wrote: »

Well, it depends on the amount of products you want to sell. Say <50, I'd definitely go with WordPress.

no it doesn't, the deciding factor on whether or not to use wordpress is how many blog posts you're going to write, not the amount of products you're going to sell.

square holes, round peg situation that is all too familiar in the IT industry.

smcelhinney

Creamy Goodness wrote: »

Wordpress is a blog, it shouldn't be used for anything but that!

Rubbish. There's plenty of enterprise level sites who will disagree with you. (Im not Googling for you).

Agree with you that its not an ecommerce capable framework, but keep the sweeping statements for After Hours.

stevenmu

There are a couple of sites, Shopify being one of the more well known, that specialise in letting you build out an online store quickly and easily.

I don't know a lot about them but I'd guess that the pros are that they're quick and easy to setup, and don't require much or any technical knowledge. And I'd guess that the cons would be that they cost a bit more than getting your own hosting an installing your own package*, and they wouldn't be anywhere near as flexible.



*assuming you have the knowledge and ability to install, configure and customise some package. If you had to hire this out or do a lot of development this would be very expensive

The Corinthian

smcelhinney wrote: »

There's plenty of enterprise level sites who will disagree with you.

Do you know what 'enterprise level' actually means? It's not a mom 'n pop shop company. Nor is it a sideline working out of an home-office. Enterprise level denotes much larger bodies, be they on the large-end of the SME scale, multi-nationals and government bodies. If you're going to use buzzwords, I suggest you look up what they mean first.

WordPress is principally a blogging CMS. As such, if you're going to use a CMS, then you'll probably use another one that is better designed for more complex Web site design. At enterprise level, of course, you'll more likely build it from the bottom up than use any CMS.

That's not to say you can't use WordPress - of course you can. But there is a difference between designing the application around the client's requirements and designing the application around whatever skills and preferences the developer has.

smcelhinney

Typical of evangelists for large scale unwieldy CMS's. Jump right in and say "Listen, I have NO idea what your requirements are, but Wordpress CERTAINLY doesnt meet them".

I've evaluated CMS' for the past 16 years, so yes, I do know what constitutes an "Enterprise Level" CMS. Wordpress, granted, on its own is not enterprise level, but will integrate well with frameworks eg. Zend, thus, is perfectly suitable for content management within an enterprise framework.

Drupal/Joomla/etc require a certain level of PHP knowledge to run and maintain, as does Magento and ZenCart. Wordpress does not. Know your users. I've spent far too much time installing systems because a customer asked me specifically to do so, to be told after the fact that they have no idea how to use it.

If you're going to use buzzwords, I suggest you look up what they mean first

My apologies. I missed the stipulation at the start, to dictionary define everything I say in a post. Noted.

All that being said, we still have no idea what the OP wants. If he wants an integrated logistics/ecommerce/payments/order management/reporting system, then no, Wordpress is not for him. If he wants to sell t-shirts from his garage and get paid through PayPal, its perfectly fine, and is ridiculously easy to scale.

The Corinthian

smcelhinney wrote: »

I've evaluated CMS' for the past 16 years, so yes, I do know what constitutes an "Enterprise Level" CMS.

What non-bespoke CMS' were you working with 16 years ago, then? Tripod site builder perchance?

My apologies. I missed the stipulation at the start, to dictionary define everything I say in a post. Noted.

Don't confuse pedantry with being called out for using buzzwords without actually knowing what they mean, unless you consider the difference between a small family-run florist and Interflora to be pedantry.

If he wants an integrated logistics/ecommerce/payments/order management/reporting system, then no, Wordpress is not for him. If he wants to sell t-shirts from his garage and get paid through PayPal, its perfectly fine, and is ridiculously easy to scale.

But did you not say how "there's plenty of enterprise level sites" who happily work with Wordpress?

smcelhinney

I've no idea why I engaged you. Im actually above this. I only wanted to offer a viewpoint, not get into a dick-swinging match. The floor is yours.

Its gonna annoy the sh!t out of you that I wont respond after this, wont it?

The Corinthian

smcelhinney wrote: »

I've no idea why I engaged you. Im actually above this. I only wanted to offer a viewpoint, not get into a dick-swinging match. The floor is yours.

You offered a viewpoint based on ignorance and most likely years of BS'ing clients who didn't know any better when you fed them such buzzwords. And then stupidly tried to claim pedantry as a defence when caught.

Its gonna annoy the sh!t out of you that I wont respond after this, wont it?

Why would getting the last word between us annoy me?

ressem

Reqarding the OP.

Do you want the web store to permit credit card information, or will you redirect to Paypal for payment?

If you are handling credit card info then you are expected to comply with the PCI compliance standards to protect credit card information which rules out shared hosting, mandates that you have control of keeping the server software bang up to date with security patches and all admin access is encrypted and restricted.

https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/security_standards/documents.php?category=saqs
Probably self assessment either SAQ-A or SAQ-C will be appropriate.

You will probably end up using a redirect to Sage Pay or Realex to handle this.

Regarding the whole wordpress fight, adding an e-Commerce plugin such as wp-ecommerce or woocommerce wouldn't be great for more than low volumes of sales and SKU but it might be OK for the OP and ridiculously easy to set-up. Not sufficient information to rule in or out.

If he types in Magento, shopify, volusion into google he'll see them mentioned in every google ad/youtube for a month.

maxmarmalade

It's amazing the amount of discussions on boards.ie decend into personal insults. It's becoming harder and harder to start a thread here, for fear of a free-for-all.