Anyone know anything about oscommerce?

[Vagabond]

A friend of mine told me I should check out www.oscommerce.com for building my website.

I don't really know much about it, can anyone on here shed some light on it?

It seems like www.squarespace.com would be a good beginners tool for making a professional looking webpage. Otherwise i'd have to hire an "elancer" anyways...

thoughts??

thanks!!
matt

[Drewkerr]

searstower does web design. You can PM her and get a qoute for what you are trying to do.

[darrin365]

Depends on what you're trying to do Vagabond. osCommerce is basically an open source shopping cart/store solution. If all you want is a store, it may be OK. If you want a full site, maybe not. It can be used for a bit more than just a store, for instance, you can use it as an online catalog, so you could use it to offer articles for download.

As I said, it really depends on what you want to do.

[MiniBlueDragon]

As people have mentioned it really depends on what you're trying to do...

From the perspective of simplicity I'd say getting a simple CMS like Drupal set up will be your best bet as it's completely customisable and easy as pie to update and administer once it's running. It also allows you to add extra modules to clean-up the URLs of pages, add a blog to it (which helps your SERPs position) and you can fully customise access, permissions etc.

From the perspective of an online shop I wouldn't hesitate to recommend ZenCart to you. ZenCart is fully customisable as Drupal is but it gives you many shop-based options such as cataloguing, grouping, special offers, new-in, limited editions etc. It also allows you to add scrolling side-boxes to the display to allow people to see a selection of all the current specials/limiteds etc in one small area. It also has full settings for calculating shipping, postage etc which is great!
Oh and it also fully supports SSL which you'll need if you want people to think about purchasing through you... I for one never purchase through a site without SSL enabled on it.

Have a look into those two as they're both OpenSource and thus free to use as you please. :)

[GatsbyGirl]

I like XSite Pro because it helps with SEO, too.

[MiniBlueDragon]

XSite Pro is software for creating sites whereas OSCommerce is a shopping cart solution. :(

Drupal also allows for a high degree of SEO (along with regular SEO techniques) and if you apply extra care it can be very successful!

http://devbee.com/drupal_seo
http://blamcast.net/articles/drupal-seo

[searstower]

Vagabond,

In order to help you, we need to know what the website is supposed to do. Is it going to be a fullblown ecommerce solution? Are you selling hard goods, or info products? Will there be any content on the website?

In my experience, if it's mostly content and will be selling info products, the site will need to be built in a very different way than if you are selling hard good products and getting all your traffic via PPC.

OSCommerce is great for hard good ecommerce sites. It's powerful, but if you want to do much customization, you will need to learn PHP or hire someone who will do that coding for you. It uses a common programming language so it's pretty easy to find coders if you go that route. ZenCart is very similar.

XSite Pro is designer for internet marketers, so it's not as flexible for hard goods but better for building a list, etc.

Drupal is another powerful tool but that you probably won't be able to do yourself, you'll need to hire a coder. Drupal coders are a bit harder to find, at least in Seattle, and generally charge a bit more since they are scarce.

Sitesell is awesome for building content sites and selling info products since it includes all kinds of SEO tools, autoresponders, forms, layouts, etc, but there is a learning curve.

What is the main purpose of the site?

Rebecca

[Vagabond]

wow... thanks for all the replies everyone!!!

My site is going to sell a product that I am creating and having manufactured for me. I'd *like* some sort of quick flash intro page that forwards to the main site or probably about 3 pages. A homepage with copy that is written to make an emotional connection with the customer and intrigue them to click on a page that describes how it can help them , this copy will attempt solidify that emotional connection. I plan on sampling my product when I receive my first shipment so i'd like testimonials at the top of this page and then this leads to an order page.

I'd like to have something where people can enter their email address to get a "Top 10 ways to..." and maybe a page that has articles/science that supports the effectiveness of my product

I will be driving people to this page via google pay per click initially and hopefully moving up to banner ads on relevant websites...

is that better?? :D

[MiniBlueDragon]

By no means am I saying that people here will rip your idea but I personally would refer to your items as "products" rather than their actual name... Just to make sure ;)

If it's a single "product" you'll be selling you won't really need something like OSCommerce or ZenCart as they're more geared for many different sections with products in each etc etc.

My personal suggestion would be to go here:-

http://www.oswd.org/

And find yourself a design that you like. If it needs tweaking, re-colouring etc then give searstower a yell or if I have the time (not likely with the amount of muses I've started!) I may be able to help you out myself.

Once you have a site you need to find a cheap but reliable web host (I've seen a few mentioned on this forum) and you need a Domain Name for which I'd recommend GoDaddy (For a small extra fee they also allow you to hide your personal details from a /whois by using a company called Domains By Proxy)

Edit all of your site on your machine until it's about ready and then upload it to your webspace using whatever method you prefer; I normally FTP.

Once you're up and running you can then ask around here for critique etc and then your final step will be adding the option to be paid! hehe

Of course if you'd rather just shell-out the cash and have everything taken care for you I'm sure there are people who can help too. :)

[Vagabond]

heh, yeah for now im trying to be vague about what im making or who im targeting. i dont think i gave away too much in my post... or did i? ;)

[MiniBlueDragon]

Not "too much" but people who read your post pre-edit will have an idea of the sector and type of muse you're looking at.

Probably just me being too cautious... hehe