Hi all,
I read a few of the comments about OScommerce and wanted to get opinions about ecommerce site building software. Is there a best or is it need driven?? Would appreciate your thoughts. Thanks
tr6c 0 Newbie Poster
fionix 0 Light Poster
OSComerce offers alot of free plugins and a huge community that is ready to help you for free.
In general you will need to look into what exactly you need and expect from your shipping cart and then try a few of them to see what it all is about.
tssif 0 Newbie Poster
I am using zencart which is supposed to be a slightly easy cart then Oscommerce but coming across PHP for the first time Zencart has been a massive learrning curve for me
coolsaint 7 Light Poster
There are many but most of them are Premium that means you have to pay for them like Xcart.
I will suggest you to go for oscommerce because for script,community is very important. If it is big then you will get lot of hands in the development and support which is very important to run a ecommerce site.
Atlant 0 Newbie Poster
I don't think that commercial solutions is bad choice . Free Oscommerce is good one however if you want to be absolutely confident about your partner you may like to choose commercial software like X-cart with official support service.
Also i've heard they even started providing their own hosting service for X-cart owners , that means they care about their customers.
However i would agree that if you start the business free solution will work great.
omemedia 0 Newbie Poster
It seems we all agree that OsCommerce is a good enough solution, but some of you suggest commercial solutions if better stability is needed. What seems to be forgotten is the issue of budget. Naturally, if you have the money to spend on your webshop, it's easy to find a good (or even great) solution. But if your budget is limited, then OsCommerce is definitely a solution I would recommend.
I just recently opened a webshop myself (together with my business partner), and because we had a somewhat limited budget we decided on OsCommerce. It has worked perfect for us so far. See for yourselves at http://www.filmmusikkiosken.se.
I've tried CubeCart before, and even though there's nothing wrong with CubeCart, I still would recommend OsCommerce because of its potentials.
Suomedia 5 Junior Poster
I served for several years as a Senior Team Member with the osCommerce project and can honestly say that its development progress is less than admirable with nothing other than bug fix releases since its initial 2.1 release in 2001.
As a consequence and due to our own needs for an up to date solution, Suomedia have created our own "fork" of the osCommerce project which we intend to release very shortly. It features:
- Complete separation of business logic from display logic (no more osCommerce "spaghetti" code.
- Fully W3C XHTML CSS valid output.
- Template structure (table-less design) - designing is an absolute breeze.
- ADODB abstraction layer for portability to other RDBMS.
- Massively reduced database queries - the standard osCommmerce makes 92 database queries to load the default front page. Ours makes just 13 queries to load exactly the same content.
- Extensive caching functionality, including query caching to further enhance performance.
This will be released as fully GPL code and does not feature the code bloat and complexity of other osC forks such as Zen and CRE.
Matti Ressler
Suomedia
WebManiac 0 Newbie Poster
Yes, if you choose Open Source, you get the community. Community is of course a grat thing, but the fact is they don't have to help you. If you really get into trouble, you stay alone with your broken code and your malfunctioning shop.
Companies that offer paid solutions have quality support. If you bought the shop script from them, they HAVE TO help you get it working. And they usually can do it quickly because it's them who written all the code, and not the abstract "community".
So I was looking for paid solutions only. I tested about five of them and stopped at Avactis shopping cart - it's not that cheap, while has very nice customization features. And the admin area is MUCH clearer that of Open Source stuff (especially Zen Cart).
And it integrates with Google Checkout, too :)
Here's one more helpful link: Shopping Cart Reviews - there's quite a lot of stuff to choose from.
Suomedia 5 Junior Poster
Yes, if you choose Open Source, you get the community. Community is of course a grat thing, but the fact is they don't have to help you. If you really get into trouble, you stay alone with your broken code and your malfunctioning shop.
This is not true at all. Any decent Open Source project has mountains of paid support available (along with mountains of free support also) and most (one notable one previously mentioned excluded) have very active bug reporting/update programs.
What you are saying is akin to saying that if I choose Redhat for my servers I am at a disadvantage for support, extensibility etc. while if I instead choose Micro$oft and IIS I am much better off. We all know this simply is not true
Open source also has a massive advantage with a brains trust that closed source will never match and the fact is is OPEN ... you can do anything you need to with the code (including fixing it, which you cant with closed source).
Matti Ressler
Suomedia
WebManiac 0 Newbie Poster
Hi, wasn't here quite a long time, sorry. Well, you are true, maybe I judged Open Source too hard. You can, in fact, get support for it :) But the commercial software isn't only closed source. How PHP can be closed source? Well, there's actually Zend Encoder, but rare companies use it, as few hosts can run that. So even if you buy a piece of PHP software, you get the code and you can study it and even [try to] modify it :) Avactis doesn't encode its sources, so it's possible to modify it and there's even a separate Avactis Mods website that does that :)
elvisowusu53 0 Newbie Poster
****i want to develop site for ecommernc**e **for local community but i dont know how
this is my locality only
so guys help me out
arun781 0 Newbie Poster
It's better to go with Magento Ecommerce (open source CMS for Ecommerce)it's the best for Ecommerce stores, the backend is really simple and easy to use and features that are equal to a custom online store.
agungshafira 0 Newbie Poster
i think wordpress with e-commerce plug-in still the best. many plug-in and tutorial :)
Everyauction
if you choose Open Source, you get the community. Community is of course a grat thing, but the fact is they don't have to help you. If you really get into trouble, you stay alone with your broken code and your malfunctioning shop.<
Hello Readers. Beeing a Open Source User myself, I fully agree on this. But why should real commercially usable Open Software be supported, or enhanced, free also? Exept for the User, trying to make a buck, nobody else would ever make a profit out of anything. In contrary, helping others, when it comes to more and more enhancments, 'critical' details, could just possibly hurt someone else's Sales, someone, who paid for the same kind of assistance.
If you get a Car for free, don't expect a warranty...
Good Luck
Ernie
joelchrist -9 Posting Whiz
I would like to suggest zeuscart, which is free and easy to customize,to create your own site.
ShoppingMonk -6 Light Poster
You can find lot of websites for making ecommerce websites with your liking plugin's..
Alastair Brian 0 Newbie Poster
One the best online e-commerce shoping cart software is PrestaShop. Its is far better than Magento as it demands less technical expertise Plus a variety of PrestaShop Templates are available. You can find one that suits you best.
Everyauction
Both products mentioned use php & sql. That, combined with a 'Newbie'Installation, could eventually be a rather dangerous adventure:
http://www.projectamplify.com/stuff/41-secure-zen-cart
http://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-9246/Zen-cart.html
http://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-8950/product_id-15797/Prestashop-Prestashop.html
I don't want to scare anybody away from using PHP/Sql Software, but I also know, how seriously installation Doc's are beeing read and followed by most Newbie's. As a result of this, uncounted live PHP/SQL Installations are nothing more but open doors, on a Site, waiting to be blown apart, whenever required...
As long as one has no real business on the Site, who cares. But when money starts to flow, things can change fast...
Ernie
Everyauction
just to round up this discussion, a valable choice could possibly be OpenCart, it's a Open Source GPL PHP Software, I installed a few weeks ago, but not been able yet to look at it very closed.
The Software seems to be rather secure, since 2011, so security warnings have been published anyway.
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