online shop requirement

[missgirl]

Hi,
I have some questions about opening an online shop, because I am a totally newbie there:

I want to create a website where people can purchase online health products like certain vitamine tablets and minerals etc..The payment shall be done through credit cards.

Since we have only 15 different items, which type of hosting do I need and how much space is required, also for the shoping cart, credit card processing and so on. Do I neet my own server or can I just book normal webspace which supports mysql and php?

For any ideas I am very thankful

missgirl

[ckarg]

If you're starting from scratch, you might want to take a look at some of the off-the-shelf ecommerce store offerings. Typing "ecommerce hosting" into your favourite search engine should give you plenty of leads.

While its quite possible that you'll outgrow such a solution quickly, its the fastest way to get started. If you want to put all of the bits and pieces together yourself, it helps to have played with one of the pre-fabricated solutions first. And building an entire ecommerce business from scratch is a non-trivial exercise.

[Corey Bryant]

You might contact Martin over at SiteTutor - they have shopping carts, hosting, etc

-Corey

[missgirl]

ok, thanks this I will do, but any idea how much webspace I need for hosting?

missgirl

[RailMan]

don't rush into the first recommendation you get - spend a bit of time reading in here, looking at what your (thousands of) competitors are doing, what shopping carts and payment systems they have etc

take your time and plan things well and you stand a better chance of success

[lorax]

>> any idea how much webspace I need for hosting

hard tellin not knowin ;)

Most packages will give you at least a few GB disk space and that should be enough to get you started with only 15 items. The primary consumer of space at this point will be the catalog/cart script.

[missgirl]

thanks for your replies,

ekmpowershop looks good, any ideas about ez-powercart.com, there one can also apply for a merchant account

missgirl