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Anyone use OSCommerce?


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Its an open source shopping cart program.

To answer the original poster. You can use it straight out of the box, but if you want customize features or even make it look prettier, you need to know some html and php coding. And you have to find a hosting company to host it. I can't provide more until I know how much your level of expertise is and what you are looking to do.

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Hey donnieyen, I am answering your pm here so others can help also or benefit from our conversation.

If you want to use a php shopping cart like osCommerce, it makes sense to go with Linux. You do need to mange a little hosting, but most hosting packages come with a control panel to manage the hosting. If you need to do some feature customizations, you do need to know php. If you just want design customization, let me just say tha osCommerce can be a pain in the ass cause their code is all over the place.

If you must go with an open source php shopping cart, you can also look at ZenCart or Creloaded. These two are actually a fork of osCommerce, meaning another development team has taken the original osCommerce code and gone in a different direction. Creloaded has decided to put a lot of osCommerce contributed modules into its cart, so you don't need to search and install different modules.

ZenCart has taken osCommerce's code and clean it up a little, and also created a better separation of code and design html. If you only have html experience, I would go with Zencart. Even if you have php experience, I would still go with zencart for their better separation of html and code, but that's just my preference.

Another popular paid version of php shopping cart is X-cart, which a lot of ppl are using. I think the code is a little better but still a mess, especially the design html separation part.

Many hosts also already have a an open source shopping cart included in their hosting package so you don't need to find and install it. osCommerce is usually included in a lot of hosts. So is a miva merchant, which is not open source, so you have to pay more for your hosting per month.

If you do not want to go with with hosting anything, you can use many of the application service providers out there, where they don't let you touch any server backend, so you can go right in, setup and start running your business. They can be more expensive monthly and lack customization. But they work for many folks. Those include yahoo store, ebays' prostores, volusion, monstercomerce, 3dcart, pinnacle cart. I really liked pinnacle cart. Clean and easy. Yahoo store charges a percentage of your sales, and they can be hard to customize with their rtml code. But most ppl who use yahoo store will get other developers to customize it anyway.

Your question about merchant account is another complicated one. For online merchant you need to have the account and also a payment gateway. But overall, you can signup and link it to your cart yourself. Most shopping cart makes that easy. So it shouldn't be a problem.

If you want to learn more about all these, you can go to a site like sitepoint.com. They can be really helpful, articles and forums.

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Hey donnieyen, I am answering your pm here so others can help also or benefit from our conversation.

If you want to use a php shopping cart like osCommerce, it makes sense to go with Linux. You do need to mange a little hosting, but most hosting packages come with a control panel to manage the hosting. If you need to do some feature customizations, you do need to know php. If you just want design customization, let me just say tha osCommerce can be a pain in the ass cause their code is all over the place.

If you must go with an open source php shopping cart, you can also look at ZenCart or Creloaded. These two are actually a fork of osCommerce, meaning another development team has taken the original osCommerce code and gone in a different direction. Creloaded has decided to put a lot of osCommerce contributed modules into its cart, so you don't need to search and install different modules.

ZenCart has taken osCommerce's code and clean it up a little, and also created a better separation of code and design html. If you only have html experience, I would go with Zencart. Even if you have php experience, I would still go with zencart for their better separation of html and code, but that's just my preference.

Another popular paid version of php shopping cart is X-cart, which a lot of ppl are using. I think the code is a little better but still a mess, especially the design html separation part.

Many hosts also already have a an open source shopping cart included in their hosting package so you don't need to find and install it. osCommerce is usually included in a lot of hosts. So is a miva merchant, which is not open source, so you have to pay more for your hosting per month.

If you do not want to go with with hosting anything, you can use many of the application service providers out there, where they don't let you touch any server backend, so you can go right in, setup and start running your business. They can be more expensive monthly and lack customization. But they work for many folks. Those include yahoo store, ebays' prostores, volusion, monstercomerce, 3dcart, pinnacle cart. I really liked pinnacle cart. Clean and easy. Yahoo store charges a percentage of your sales, and they can be hard to customize with their rtml code. But most ppl who use yahoo store will get other developers to customize it anyway.

Your question about merchant account is another complicated one. For online merchant you need to have the account and also a payment gateway. But overall, you can signup and link it to your cart yourself. Most shopping cart makes that easy. So it shouldn't be a problem.

If you want to learn more about all these, you can go to a site like sitepoint.com. They can be really helpful, articles and forums.

Great info! I appreciate it. Thanks.

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