Looking for a shopping cart to add to my site

[eaglepi]

Every shopping cart I have seen is a site that has to be customized to look like your website. I've tried most of them and find them way above my head.
Is there a such thing of a shopping cart that can be added to a current website?

I would also be interested in a system that would have Paypal buy now cabibilities but instead of going right to Paypal to pay, the otems be added to a shooping cart and then once done shopping the person can go to Paypal and pay for the total of all the items they have selected.

Is this possible?

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

Paypal provides a shopping cart service. All you have to do is place their "add to cart" buttons on your site and this will give you the model you are looking for.

Google Paypal shopping cart for information on this.

[Barb]

I'm currently adding Mal's E shopping cart. Very similar to the PayPal shopping cart, but you can use a number of various payment gateways, such as PayPal.

It took me just a short time to get the hang of how to code each product for drop down boxes (option choices) and to link the "add to cart" button to the shopping cart. Otherwise, it's fairly easy.

Just my opinion. The Paypal option mentioned in the previous post works just as well also.

[lorax]

>> Is there a such thing of a shopping cart that can be added to a current website?

No and Yes.

You will always need to provide some form of template if you want the cart to look like your website.

That being said, there are services that offer you the shopping cart capabilities but you don't need to (or can't) change the way they look with the exception of choosing a preformatted template, adding your business name and some copy, and/or changing a few fonts and colors.

[CernyM]

Couple of solutions:

1. Mal's ecommerce. This is a hosted cart that is designed to bolt onto your existing site. We used it for our first 18 months of business and never had a problem with it.

2. LiteCommerce. Has a bolt-on mode.

[etechsupport]

I would suggest to add a shopping cart that using OOP technique and which is SE friendly.

[peco]

Is that to say with something like osCommerce, you have to have what your given? So far as the look of the site is concerned I mean.

[travmed]

Peco, osCommerce like many other packages are easily customizable with templates. I have little to no knowledge and designed my site with nothing more than paint shop pro. A little knowledge in style sheets and html is a plus though.

Contributions are out there to help you change templates and such. It seems overwhelming but is really not once you get the hang of it.

[peco]

Thanks travmed.

I have a good knowledge of html and css but the php thing is all new to me.
I have designed a site that I want to be an ecommerce site. Will I be able to keep the design I have made and incorporate osCommerce? Or will that need a real in depth knowledge of php?

I know some Javascript and have started to learn php, they don't seem a million miles away from each other.

[sem4u]

I would try using Mal's Ecommerce. It is easy for people not used to setting up ecommerce sites to use.

[peco]

Thanks sem4u.

I have been pointed in that direction and it seems straight forward enough.
I did want to keep all the pages within my domain, with Mal's E-Commerce solution this wouldn't be the case. I think!
Having said that, I need simplicity so it would probably be the best way to go.

[webtress]

peco, I think the solution that would be easier for you to use may be ecommerce templates the generic one allow you to create your design pages and add the shopping cart code to your design. It intergrates with most major payment processors including paypal. Unlike oscommerce the file structure is easy to work with and is available in both ASP and PHP.

[Barb]

I started with getting Mals set up, but finally went with OsCommerce cause I needed a database driven cart. I have no experience with CSS, PHP, MySQL, etc, but have been able to load the cart into my domain, begin changing the CSS to give it the look I want, and have started adding products - all within the last 4 days. I've been learning on the fly as something comes up. I just go to the forum they have, ask my question and in a short time someone has a solution for me. The cart also comes with a file that gives you a step by step easy instructions on how to change the cart, looks and functions, to suit your needs. The real test will be when I go live, but so far it's been a pleasant experience overall.

I think all the carts have their pros and cons - all depending on how much upfront work you want to put into getting the cart set up and loading your products. With carts like OsCommerce, once you have your cart tweaked to your liking, adding products is a snap. Carts like Mals and PayPal, you have to constantly type out code for each product you enter (most of the time you can copy/paste that code from product to product, just changing unique info).

*shrugs* It's not like you can't start with something easy like Mals and on the side, begin working on OsCommerce or the like and then do a switch when you're ready with relatively little down time.

[peco]

My real problem, I think, is I downloaded osCommerce with no way of having a real good look at it. When I unzipped it, there is so much, I thought...Woa!
Now I have just got Wampserver and once I have set that up, I will be able to have a better look. Then I hope it won't look quite so daunting.
I have a good knowledge of html, css and I am not lost with Javascript. I am also, so far, picking up php quite good so I think I will be ok. If not, I have all you guys on here.

[henry0]

Cube cart will be your friend
Pay for a license (very affordable)

Great forum support and many hacks available

but the real beauty is that if you are CSS knowledable
you could really make it feel as you own.

I do not work or get kickback from them
I only did a few installs for a few clients with a low budget that needed a fast installed E-solution.

[enchant]

It seems that every modern shopping cart program I see is 1) database driven, and 2) php. I definately don't need the database and I don't know php. If I could find a decent cart that uses php, I might be willing to learn it, but I haven't found that yet.

Primarily, I do NOT want to have to load my products into a database and have the shopping cart software dictate how my website is going to look. I know HTML and CSS very very well and can make nice looking websites. My customers hire me because of this. I've spent the past ten years becoming proficient in HTML and I don't want to toss all that experience out the door to learn how to manipulate pre-laid-out templates.

All I want of my shopping cart is to handle the shopping cart parts of the application and leave the product display to me.

Is there anything out there like this? Preferably perl-based? If there's a good cart and a decent support system (forum or whatever), I'd put in the time to learn php.

Thanks.

[henry0]

Read what I said
this is your cart definition
the PHP is the engine
you do not need touching it

just edit the CSS

BTW
you can grab it for free and only pay if you decide to use it without its own branding logo and footer

[peco]

Thank you henry0, I have just looked at CubeCart and it seems to be what I need. Is is well cheap too, if you don't want a small link as a footer and a credit in the title.
I had a look at some live sites and they seem personal, so it is obviously customisable.

Thanks again.

[enchant]

> Read what I said

I read what you said. What you said was, "Cube cart will be your friend". I don't need another friend. What I need is a good cart that doesn't force me to use its product database. And unless the features listed on the site are wrong, this is exactly what Cube Cart is.

* Inventory Stock Control
* Unlimited Images/Photos per Product
* Product can be placed in unlimited categories
* More control over the store layout (e.g. No. products per page, multi column categories and ordering)
* Multiple stores with one database
* Multilevel categories so that products can be located easily and logically
* Product search facility
* Sale mode on/off
* Add/Delete/Edit products and categories within admin
* Upload & delete category/product images in *.jpg, *.png or *.gif format
* Database backup facility

This sure sounds like a product database to me!

* Easy to customize site theme from settings

I don't need a "site theme". I'm a website designer and graphic artist.

[henry0]

Glad to share input :)

<Edit> Enchant, I do not try to be a smart ***!
My previous post was directed to Peco
</edit>

[enchant]

Sorry - it just looked like you were replying to me.

[henry0]

Order of posting does create funny stuffs :)

[peco]

enchant, maybe Mal's E-Commerce is what you need. From what I know of it, you link your items directly to his cart. No databases! Or have I got that wrong?

[enchant]

I took a quick look at Mal's, but the idea that he'll host that cart for you at no charge doesn't sound right. Nobody does nuthin' for free. There's got to be a catch there, but I don't know what it is.

At first glance, it appears that Agora Cart might do what I need. It has database capabilities, but it is also designed to work from static html pages containing the product info.

[travmed]

Enchant, depending on how many products you have Agora might be a dog. I have 32,000 products on one of my sites and couldnt use Agora.

[enchant]

Thanks for the input, travmed. Most of my customers have very few products. A couple only have one. How do you find that it's a "dog"? Slow?

[RailMan]

I took a quick look at Mal's, but the idea that he'll host that cart for you at no charge doesn't sound right. Nobody does nuthin' for free. There's got to be a catch there, but I don't know what it is.

no catch - just simple business
you get the basic cart free of charge
if you want extras, or you want to integrate with certain payment providers, you pay a few $ per month
that's all there is to it
it's a simple business model and it works - just look at the number of companies using mals
there are a couple of other carts like that in the uk - fastcart and romancart - all 3 are very good

[travmed]

I was testing both Agora along with other carts. Once I loaded Agora with around 10-15k of products the response time was horrible. With the test products that came installed I saw no issues.

My testing took place some time ago and since I have not kept up to date with changes or updates with Agora. It is possible that the problem may be resolved now in later versions.

It could have been the database server but I doubt it since I was using oscommerce on the same server with the same amount of products with no problem.

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

I just bought a template, a plain vanilla version of Ecommercetemplates for PHP/Dreamweaver and I installed is no problem at all. The only criticism I would offer is that while all the help information required is there it appears to be a bit disjointed. It needs reindexing.

Has anyone had any speed/performance issues with Ecommercetemplates?

[webtress]

BeeDee..

Has anyone had any speed/performance issues with Ecommercetemplates?

the template has been exensivily tested for a large product database both the MS Access and the MySQL, I am currently working with a site that is going from 1400 products to over 10k and as of yet we are not experiencing any performance issues. Most performance issues are host related or images that have not been optimized properly. If you are experiencing performance issues check with your host or post on ecommercetemplates support forum.