newbie to sell software products on his website

sell

[ecommerce2003]

Hello Webmasters-

I am a newbie trying to build an e-commerce site for a local merchant. He wants the following features on his site:

- Only registered users can make purchases

- Standard template for all products (image on the left, description to its right. Price just below the image with add to cart button, special instructions in red on the right below the product descriptions

- Inventory information is maintained in a database and when a product is sold, the count should be decreased to reflect the available quantity in hand

- Search functionality on product names

- Initially the volume of sales will be very less. He wants to try this with very little cost for the setup.

- Transaction history after customer login.

My thoughts:

A database will store all product information- name, description, price, quantity available, images etc. A cgi script will pull this information from the database using the product id passed as paramer. A table will be generated by the cgi as shown below.

----------
¦img ¦desc¦
----------
¦$$ ¦inst¦
----------

Search functionality can be provided by matching product names from the prodcuts or inventory table.

How do i proceed now with this idea. I have looked at osCommerce, but the hosting provide pairNetworks uses shopSite shopping cart and it doesn't have features to create a products template page as i thought and it is not clear how i will update the inventory count when a product is sold.

This should run inside a transaction. If the credit card is not valid, no changes should be made and an error should be displayed. When a update to database is not successful, rollback the money in to credit card account.

Please guide me how do i go about from here. Million thanks to you all!
-SD

[Macro]

Check out a product called ProductCart from Early Impact.

[ecommerce2003]

Thank you for the suggestio. But, ProductCart is very costly!

I am looking at Microsoft's IBuySpy Store Documentation.
I just need something like this. I am wondering modifying this code and hosting it on a service provide with .NET and a DB support is all I need. Am I missing something? There are many shopping carts out there for $$. What extra features do they provide? What else should I look for hosting a complete E-commerce site. Any more pointers?

Thank you!
SD

[Big_Balou]

I seem to be becoming an Oscommerce convert where's Lorax when you need him :). But well, Oscommerce will do everything that you have in mind pretty much with the stock install. There are contributions made by the community which can add fuctionality and I noticed a new one called "Simple Templating System" which will help even a newbie to change the look and feel pretty easily.

You'll have to make a few changes to make the url's SE friendly but it is possible.

By the way it's open source=free, besides the time you invest in getting it set up the way you want it.

[derekwong28]

Try cubecart (formerly eStore)

It appears to be a clone of OS Commerce but it is much easier to use.

You can use it for free unless you want to remove the copyright notice for $60

[ecommerce2003]

Big_Balou, derekwong28: Thank your suggestons. I appreciate it very much.

Big_Balou: I agree osCommerce seems to have lot many features. On the sponsor page on the osCommerce website it says-

"Pair Networks, osCommerce' Preferred Hosting Company"

On their site there is no word about osCommerce in the commerce package
[pair.com...]
Moreover they seem to use Americart Shopping Cart, costs $15/month. It didn't make any sense to me. I guess I am completely out of the way....

There are many other hosting providers starting from $7.95/month- I don't way to pay someone for using their shopping cart.

I liked the IBuySpy portal for the reason it is completely clear about their site functionality from docs. I can easily make changes to their code to include my custom functionality. But there are some posts that indicates some sites using ths code are hacked, I am little scared.

How do I start using osCommerce now? Is there a hosting provider supporting osCommerce?

I will try cubecart now.

Thanks again for your suggestions.
SD

[Big_Balou]

ecommerce2003,

Pair is just the company providing hosting for the site. It has nothing to do with the cart itself. Get decent hosting for whatever you can afford and go from there. I've never been one to buy into "Ecommerce" Packages offered by host. Once you have decent hosting look at adding your cart.

As far as getting started go to the forums there and read...the best way to get you're head around it. Unfortunately the documentation from the core group of developers is not as extensive as you might want but if you read through the Wiki documents you'll get a basic understanding of what's going on.

As far as hosting goes you will find there are loads of host which offer the cart pretty much pre-installed. The downside is you'll be working with an older version of the cart. Some companies will specify that they provide Oscommerce. Don't count on indepth support from the host though the best line of support is the Oscommerce forums. I've only seen one host so far that provides support and they offer a modded version incorporating some of the more popular contributions from the community. I have no idea how they are as host though.

The best bet is to download a copy of the latest milestone 2.2ms2 from the Oscommerce site and read the documentation. The installer they use now is ok but not the greatest. Usually you can have a test store up and running in about 10-15 minutues with the test data they include. Then take a day or two and just play with it.

[webtress]

I just put a oscommerce site up for a client their host is ipowerweb.com who also offers 2 shopping carts one being oscommerce however the version they have is an older version and I wanted to use 2.2. All I had to do was install oscommerce on the webspace provided. The host cpanel was user friendly enough to maintain the files and database. This was my first time using oscommerce and it is loaded with features. I'm starting to convert. Another host you may want to look into for php is hostsave.com
Good Luck

[ecommerce2003]

Thanks a million Big_Balou, apsunick and webtress. I was under the impression that the hosting provider shopping cart. Wiki docs were very helpful and after reading them it makes a lot of sense to me. Will let you know when my site is running.

Thanks again for being very nice. you all are wonderful!