Online Store Questions

bombidol

Hi folks. I have a couple of options for Setting up my online store, just wanted to ask people what they thought was the best.

phpshop
cubecart
oscommerce
phpcoin

What of those would you recommend for someone? i need something thats easy to set up and maintain. It doesnt have to be the most elaborate thing in the world, once its easy to set up and maintain

Thanks again

gar

GoneShootin

Oscommerce is excellent, but its very plain out of the box. The good news though is that there are plenty of mods and templates for it out there, and the support community is massive. I learned more about PHP using it than I ever did otherwise.

For example, here is a site that I'm *still* working on. Had to stop the project to work on something else for the client, but its almost done. Check the credits at the foot of the page to take you in the right directions.

I've not used any of the others.

axer

OsCommerce is the way to go. Get yourself this mod (Simple Template System) and you can totally change the look of the website to fit around the design you create. The backend is very easy to use. I have set it up for people that just have regular basic computer skills and they had no problems adding/removing products etc. It will automatically create invoices and much more aswell. Let me know if you have any problems or need scripts to use OsCommerce with Realex or Euroconnex.

Serbian

osCommerce looks good alright. The only one I have used personally is the xCart. It was a real piece of crap. The HTML code in the Smarty templates was a complete mess, the manual was about 2 pages long, support was non-existent and you have to pay for it. Apparently they have forums on their website that offer some sort of support but I bought it off a reseller who wouldn't provide me with a forum login.

It would be really handy if we could create a sticky for this forum and include as much detail about setting up an online store as possible as this kind of question gets asked a lot. I'll see if I can throw something together later on to get the ball rolling.

Rollo Tamasi

Hi lads i attempted to install and run Oscommerce on my Viux account this evening. With no joy. Did either of ye have any problems with it?

When i click on http://yourserver/catalog/install/ i get a :

IISPassword
The page cannot be displayed
There is a problem with the page you are trying to reach and it cannot be displayed. It is most likely that configuration files for this url are corrupted.

Please try the following:

* Click the Refresh button, or try again later.
* Open the www.chef-shop.com home page, and then look for links to the information you want.
* If you believe you should be able to view this directory or page, please contact the Web site administrator by using the e-mail address or phone number listed on the www.chef-shop.com home page.

HTTP Error 500
IISPassword for Internet Information Services

Page appear, i'm a bit of a novice with php, is there something i should have done prehand to make sure the installation is a sucsess?

bombidol

Ok after messing aroung with PHP SHOP i decided to installed OSCommerce and already its a lot easier to mess around with. All i need to know now is how to change the look of the the thing. I know i can download Templates etc, but how do i install them and make them active?

Ph3n0m

what do you want change - simple stuff or overall look?

If its simple changes you can probably do that yourself via the stylesheet

But for major changes, you might be better of just buying an oscommerce template

Normally they have instructions on how to install them

bombidol

Just simple changes really, www.20bullseach.com/oscommerce is the address. I want to get rid of the demp crap on the front page there. and change the logo in the top corner, that type of stuff. nothing major just slight customization!

GoneShootin

Try some of these free templates
http://www.vn2designs.com/index.php?cPath=19_20

The osCommerce forums are an excellent resource
http://forums.oscommerce.com/

Im on there
http://forums.oscommerce.com/index.php?showuser=56882

If you have a tiny bit of PHP you will find osCommerce easy enough to get around.

Rollo I wonder why its asking for an IIS password, should you not be using Apache or something?

bombidol

I have Minus Tiny bit of PHP in fairness. im not good at code, too much like Math for my liking!

axer

look at the link i gave earlier for the Simple Template System for OsCommerce above - no need to pay for OsCommerce templates. It is very powerful and very easy to use - you do not need to know how to code PHP, you just create a template (html in dreamweaver of whatever) of the way you want the website to look and add place holders to indicate the positions for the different parts of the website e.g. listing of product categories, cart contents etc.

Also the best tool that you could ever use for changing parts of OsCommerce is a text searching tool like agent ransack. If you see words or a paragragh you want to change and dont know which file to edit - just search for the words using agent ransack to see which file it appears in. Also if you want to edit a piece of the php code, just view the source of the displayed page and pick out a piece of the html and search for it with agent ransack to find out which file that needs to be edited.

Also be careful with quotes when editing the language files because if you forget to add quotes at the begining or end of the string it will give you errors (but at least it will tell you the file and the line number of where the error is).

rsynnott

bombidol wrote:

I have Minus Tiny bit of PHP in fairness. im not good at code, too much like Math for my liking!

Maths, not math. Careful, or you'll turn into an American.

G

Anyone know of a good out of the box ASP/.NET/SQL Server ecommerce app? Open source/commercial not an issue.

G

axer

G wrote:

Anyone know of a good out of the box ASP/.NET/SQL Server ecommerce app? Open source/commercial not an issue.

G

does it have to be asp?

leftofcentre

http://www.x-cart.com gets good reviews, its php and commercial but its not very expensive.

For ASP carts check out www.aspin.com

G

axer wrote:

does it have to be asp?

It has to be SQL Server.