Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

I`ve recently helped a friend "skin" an e-commerce site built on OSCommerce, and was pleasantly surprised by how easy it is to work with.  I`m usually very apprehensive about dealing with open-source software, but OSCommerce is very well coded and goes a long way towards alleviating my fears of the open-source world.

I am almost ready to start reccomending OSCommerce to anyone looking for a basic & cheap shopping cart solution, but want to learn what others think of it first.  If you have any experience with it as a developer, e-commerce site owner, or even just as an online shopper, let`s hear it please!

 

 

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Oleg Issers | StartupNation.com Web Team

50% of computer programming is trial and error. The other 50% is copy and paste.

As a comment about "themes"/"skins"/etc (they have many names) ...

I think these are awesome.

They are now available on so many things ... WordPress and TypePad (blogs), Vanilla and SMF (forums), ZenCart and osCommerce (shopping). It makes development so much faster and easier. You don`t have to write the software from scratch ... you just develop your own "theme" and then use their engine to make it go.

As a developer, I really think this concept is one of the best advances made in the move to opensource ... when you have products built by developers, for developers, this is the amazing stuff that comes out. It`s all about customization through APIs and themes now. Go open source!


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Did it yourself but something on your website still isn`t working the way you wanted? Have no fear - That PHP Girl is here!

Look ma, I`ve gone green!!

Hi Oleg,

As an e-commerce site owner - We used OSCommerce on our old site and were pleased with it.  The only reason we do not use it now is because when we decided to have the site redesigned, the designers and programmers that we chose work with ZenCart, which is very similar. 

Back to OSCommerce - it was very user friendly and worked well for what we needed - credit card transactions, the use of coupon codes, etc.  My business partner is the one that had the most "use" with it being that her job is to maintain the site but with even my limited experience and knowledge of it, I would recommend it to others looking for an e-commerce solution.

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Put some junk in your trunk!

I`ve used osCommerce and Zen Cart with and without templates.

Templates are great for a quick start and to get away from the default layout.

I prefer Zen Cart for some ecommerce applications... only because it has some features built-in that you have to add to osCommerce.

If you have any questions about either, do not hesitate to ask.

~Roland

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Web Design | Best Beef Jerky | ecommerce articles | Golf Lessons | Follow vwebworld on Twitter

Roland, what are some of the features that ZenCart has built in and osCommerce does not?

As a web developer, I am often asked for advice/recommendations on shopping cart software but really don`t know much about all the available options.  The only other product I had experience with was Miva Merchant, and that in my opinion is utter crap...

 

 

 

 

 

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Oleg Issers | StartupNation.com Web Team

50% of computer programming is trial and error. The other 50% is copy and paste.

I personally am being encouraged to try AppleCart.
I have been told that it is more search engine friendly and by the way the pages are indexed, helps you place higher in the rankings....anyone had these results with applecart or any other shopping cart without also submitting sites manually??


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RDB Electronics
http://www.rdbelectronics.net

The one feature that Zen Cart has included is a media manager...set up to sell various media - mp3, video formats, ..via download.  To do that with osCommerce you need to install an add-in.

Another cool Zen Cart feature is the ability to set up specials - special pricing for a specific date range.  You can set the start and end date of any special.

~Roland

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Web Design | Best Beef Jerky | ecommerce articles | Golf Lessons | Follow vwebworld on Twitter