Where can I learn to put an oscommerce or any ecommerce site together?

[Macbeth]

Where can I learn to put an oscommerce or any ecommerce site together?

I'm getting an online shop built by a firm of web developers.

Oscommerce seems to be popular and I think this would be good choice due to the popularity and support.

However, I want to be able to use, administrate it and where necessary troubleshoot any problems.

I want to be able to add/delete products in the web catalogue, update prices etc without breaking the thing once it is handed over to me.

I know nothing about ecommerce and some IT guy suggested that I should create a local server and test it there first before uploading and putting on a web server.

Can someone help me please? because i feel way out of my depth and think a training course on how to put an ecommerce site together is the way forward.

I really would appreciate suggestions here (other than read WW unless there is a specific article).

Thanks.

Macbeth

[Essex_boy]

Amazon.com have some great books on OSC and how to run/operate it.

[EstoreSeeker]

While I’ll second Essex boy here. I want to give u some other suggestions too.
You can get some short-term training course. No harm indeed.
Read a lot in the forums. They are really helpful.
Get the help in forums whenever you have doubts even over little trivial things. Sometimes they are the cause of big troubles.
Read Blogs and other material provided on websites.
……………..internet is the media for the most precious knowledge around the world…buddy. Make it work for you and learn with its help.
cheers

[edited by: lorax at 6:19 pm (utc) on April 4, 2005]
[edit reason] delinked (see TOS [webmasterworld.com]) [/edit]

[EstoreSeeker]

........you can get some online course also. we could recommend you some ..ie if you wish.

[idoc]

You might look at zen-cart as well. It is open source oscommerce based and has some extra end user friendly features. It is really a matter of what your capabilities are and personal preference. There are alot of good open source solutions out there.

[Macbeth]

Thanks very much for your response guys!

I am more oriented towards something course based as I find it a lot easier to learn when someone physically shows me something.

I think this would provide a great foundation to any reading i do on the forums.

If I anybody could recommend any, I would be grateful.

[Rachel]

Macbeth, I spent a lot of time at osC's forum when I first started, and it helped a lot. I think I've said it on here before, but what helped me the most was picking a good hoster that was willing to help with all of my stupid questions, and walk me through what needed to be done so that I could learn to do things myself. So, my advice would be to find someone like this. You could probably get recommendations at osC's support board if you wanted to ask.

[Sidorino]

Oscommerce has its own forums you may get all the needed info there