Ecommerce Forum

I keep seeing the terms 'shopping cart' and 'ecommerce software solution' thrown about and wondered if someone could tell me exactly what is meant by them.

Sometimes these phrases are used interchangeably, but more often they are seperate.

A shopping cart is often a plug in module that can be taylored for your needs. Some are more flexible than others. I wrote my own just so I could have the flexiblity that I wanted. You typically load product sku's into a database and add the needed code on product pages to communicate with the shopping cart/database.

An ecommerce software solution can be a huge application or suite of applications. Some are integrated into various WYSIWYG programs and help you build your entire site. And, some are just shopping carts.

I was under the impression that one would have to buy an ecommerce software package or utilize one provided by a host site in order to design the online store from bottom up.

No, most shopping carts are stand alone applications. You add a few lines of code (typically a form) to a product page. These lines of code are represented by the "Add to Cart" buttons you so often see at sites. When the button is pressed the page data is sent to the cart (along with your customer).

There are soooooooooo many solutions out there I really don't know where to start. I would prefer an out of the box solution that I can work with and configure alone.

Just do a search on Google for 'shopping cart'. You can also search Webmasterworld much better using Google that the sites search options. Use Googles advanced features and limit you scope to the webmasterworld.com domain.

OScommerce offers many customizable features for smaller to mid-sized e-stores, and works with most major credit card gateways. It is up to you to customize it, but that sounds like what you are looking for.