Which platform to focus on?

[Yolandaz]

Hi,

I've been reading posts about ecommerce solutions for small businesses, and there seems to be so many to choose from!

I need to create my first ever ecommerce website for a small local business. I have developed quite a few non-commercial sites over the years, but have no experience on developing for e-commerce. Fortunately there seems to be many packages around.

Which package you would recommend from the developer's point of view? I would prefer focusing and learning 1 or 2 solutions, that I would then use them for building commercial sites for my customers.

So, I would need to be able to:

• have multiple sites
• be able to create my own templates
• change the code and css freely (I use Dreamweaver)
• have customised urls, image and other file names etc
• control the structure / architecture

My customers are mostly SMEs, have product range between 20-1000 products and they have different payment acceptance arrangements

So the solution would need to be quite flexible, and include the usual shopping cart features, product options for size/colour, emails, promotional pricing, etc and ideally a search as well.

I planning to download the Zen Cart trial version - but I'm not convinced it's the best solution. I would really appreciate if you could please recommend some other software/solutions I should check as well.

It's better if it's free but I'm willing to invest anything up to £1000 for it.

Many thanks,
Yolandaz

 

[sanjiv]

Zen Cart is free so there is no trial.

For multiple sites, I have heard Magento is good.

 

[tpsprint]

quick cart by open solutions is worth to take a look at. There is a limited free version and extended paid version (under £200) with a free skin. It is easy to work with.
giving you a multiple pages with a paypal order. SEO support with a friendly links
www.opensolution.org/quick.cart,en,9.html

 

[Christiane]

From a user point of view, I love zen cart. With the right modules, the features are great.

 

[edmondscommerce]

yep Magento for advanced stores, multistore or simply more modern sites

for budget sites you still can't beat Zen Cart or CRE Loaded (both osCommerce derivatives)

I tend to favour CRE simply because it is the most feature packed and actively developed of the two. There are some annoying adverts etc in the free version but its easy enough to get rid of them

 

[Toni Anicic]

Magento is free, meets your requierments, but "(I use Dreamweaver)" part of your post is kind of concerning me, I don't think you'll have the knowledge needed to modify Magento templates on your own.

 

[Jeff FV]

I've recently been playing with Zen Cart and am amazed with what it can do.

I'd describe myself as computer literate (I know HTML, CSS etc.), I sat down for few hours and soon got to grips with it - customized the appearance, configured the store etc. I'd bought Zen cart Plain English Survival Guide for Newbies and kept it close at hand - has pretty much everything you need to know in it, but not necessarily in (to my mind) the most logical order.

Jeff

 

[mud-stx]

How about an EKM powershop? or maybe Cubecart? I have used both and they seem to work really well for me..

 

[edmondscommerce]

Magento is free, meets your requierments, but "(I use Dreamweaver)" part of your post is kind of concerning me, I don't think you'll have the knowledge needed to modify Magento templates on your own.

yes dreamweaver is definitely not the tool for Magento

 

[luckyg]

I understand I can have different domains with different stores on one magento backend.

But in terms of seo, do the search engines see them all as the one store and it will make it more difficult for each individual store to rank?

 

[edmondscommerce]

if they are different domains then they are different domains and google has no idea, especially if you also have them running from different IP addresses

 

[Yolandaz]

Hi and thanks for everyone for your replies.
Just got back from my Easter break, so sorry for not getting back earlier.
I think I’m going to definitely look into the Zen Cart and most probably to Magento too. I did have a look at some of the off the shelf packages like Artinic and EROL but there has not been much discussion about them at all so I assume the open source is the way forward.
I did find an up and coming hosted solution called Bigcommerce, I wonder if anyone’s got any experience with them? It sounds like a very viable option for my friend’s business at the moment.
I only mentioned the Dreamweaver because I’ve always worked with it and quite like the way I can control the code and see how the pages are rendered. I don’t really use any of the automated scripts, I prefer doing it myself. But I’m quite concerned when you say that you are worried that the DW is my preferred tool. Would you mind explaining why you think so?
Do I need to update my skills in PHP with Zen Cart or Magento?
Thanks again,
Yolandaz

 

[Jeff FV]

Hi Yolandz

As I mentioned, I've recently been playing around with Zen Cart and I hope to be going 'live' soon. (We have already have a website - the Zen Cart site will be a dedicated 'add on' to our site to allow our trade customers to order directly with us.)

I'm no expert, but quite pleased with what I've achieved - I'd be happy to help you in any capacity: doing so would help me cement what I've learnt in building my own zen cart site.

I don't think you need to know much PHP, but a working knowledge of CSS would be useful.

Jeff

 

[Yolandaz]

After careful consideration and changing my mind a couple of times I've made a decision to start with the Magento.

My only concern at the moment is that I've heard from other discussions that it's a bit of a resource hog that can make the site slow.

So any of you who are currently using it...:

What's been your experience? Is this still the case? Do I need to consider this when arranging hosting for the site?

Many thanks in advance!

Johanna

 

[computer emporium]

i have used ecommercetemplates dot com (cant give you url not enough posts yet)

just google it its cost about £100 to purchase well worth it

the generic version allows you to bolt it onto your website

it has a great control pannel for your products (unlimited)

with stock control dozens payment methods cusstomer login if required

avaiable in ASP or PHP

 

[She Says]

Have you looked at Open Mind Commerce? www.openmindcommerce.co.uk Phil the developer is very good to talk to.

 

[FreelanceSoftwareDeveloper]

The concerns with Dreamweaver and other visual tools is you can't see all the technical stuff in the background, therefore you may break the site without realising. Also you may end up with 'too much HTML' which isn't required.

I came across a good example of this over the weekend. I was installing a new template for a client on Zen Cart and tweaking it to suit.

I noticed the information pages were white text on a white background. This was because the previous site was black background and the client had done these himself in a WYSIWYG tool so was specifying the font and colour for every paragraph which should have been left to the stylesheet.

More worrying the text started with <body> tag and ended with </body></html> tags!

There was another issue where a FAQ he had created had new divs mid sentence, I don't see how they got there or why they were used to format new lines, but since the site width change the text was a mess with new lines in the wrong place.

This is a combination of 3 issues:

1. Using a visual editor to create html for a cart.
2. Not understanding the working of the cart and how it's stylesheets work.
3. Not understanding html and it's tags

 

[CatalinaMadnickk]

Hello, I just made a new community and I find this very useful.

 

[edmondscommerce]

I wish UKBF locked really old threads

 

[Simple Servers]

Hi and a good call trying Magento. We offer optimised servers that will help speed the site page loads etc. please feel free to research us and/or give us a call.