good e commerce software?

[wmmk]

Hello everyone!
A friend of my mom's started a small business making jewelry and decided she needs a website. I've done a few 'sketches' in photoshop, one which she likes. Now I have to turn that into html and css, and find a good php back end for her webstore. I was talking to my friend's dad, who is a web applications programmer, today, and he said that coding my own ssl shopping cart would take forever. Anything open source doesn't seem like it'd make sense because then people would be able to reverse engineer the security portions, right? Anyway, this business is very small and will not be getting tons of customers, as only this one woman is making the jewelry. What should I use?

 

[Aperture]

I've never used any personally, but here are a few from cPanel on my site.

CubeCart
OS Commerce
Zen Cart

 

[timmillwood]

I use OS commerce for one of my clients (http://www.thebluesstore.com) It is quite good, and customisable, but this store is relatively unchanged since 2002 so i am currently looking to upgrade to the new version which looks better.

 

[mduser63]

Anything open source doesn't seem like it'd make sense because then people would be able to reverse engineer the security portions, right?

Just wanted to point out that this is not true. Having access to the source code doesn't mean you have access to the encryption key stuff. In general, Open Source systems can be more secure because people are able to inspect the source code and find holes (and then fix them).

 

[wmmk]

I've never used any personally, but here are a few from cPanel on my site.

CubeCart
OS Commerce
Zen Cart

Interesting. So if I get a host with cPanel, I wouldn't even have to pay for a web store. Attractive. What host do you use?

Just wanted to point out that this is not true. Having access to the source code doesn't mean you have access to the encryption key stuff. In general, Open Source systems can be more secure because people are able to inspect the source code and find holes (and then fix them).

Ah, thank you. I was posing this as a question, and now I have an answer!
Are there any specific open source stores you recommend?

 

[stevep]

Interesting. So if I get a host with cPanel, I wouldn't even have to pay for a web store. Attractive. What host do you use?

A Small Orange use cPanel. They're the only web hosting company I have used so nothing to compare them with, but they seem very good to me. You can get them to sort out a domain name for you when you sign up, or you can get your own through someone like godaddy.com

 

[wrc fan]

I've used OScommerce from both a consumer and developer point of view and didn't like it. If you don't already have hosting set up, I'd recommend Shopify, as there is no monthly fee, just a small fee per transaction. Which is good for a small store which might not sell enough per month to pay for the hosting.

 

[Makosuke]

I've set up a store that runs SunShop ( http://www.turnkeywebtools.com/ ), and I've also test-driven one of the open source alternatives (ZenCart, I think), but that was nearly two years ago so my comparisons aren't really valid.

SunShop is reasonably priced, relatively easy to set up, and nice feature-wise, but the admin panel is ugly and has a tendency to spaz out on anything other than IE. At the time I selected it, at least, it was the best value of the commercial options.

At the time I compared to an open source package, the OS one was much nicer in terms of design--better code, easier to template, more attractive admin panel--but lacked a few key features. I'd guess that's no longer the case.

 

[wmmk]

I've used OScommerce from both a consumer and developer point of view and didn't like it. If you don't already have hosting set up, I'd recommend Shopify, as there is no monthly fee, just a small fee per transaction. Which is good for a small store which might not sell enough per month to pay for the hosting.

Why didn't you like OScommerce? I don't know much about it yet, but it seems interesting. This business also sells a lot locally, so besides having a web store, being able to have a gallery of available products for people who could just pick up orders by hand is fairly essential. Unless shopify integrated extremely well with the rest of our site, I think it'd be a no-go because we can't have it on our services. Also, although we won't be getting very many individual orders, this woman makes very fine expensive jewelry, so even a single order a month would pay for the cost of hosting and then some. I definitely need something that can be designer friendly. I don't want to have to muck around with php and other server side scripting languages.

 

[wrc fan]

I don't want to have to muck around with php and other server side scripting languages.

I don't mean to disregard everything you said, but this is the reason why I like shopify. It uses a really easy template language, called liquid to mange the design, and they offer a really neat tool for you to create your own design. This is one of the reasons I didn't like OScommerce from a developer's perspective. I felt that integrating it into the existing design was extremely difficult, and if you want it to not look like any other OScommerce site structurally, that's just impossible. Shopify charges 3% on your sales if under $10k, and 2% if more. So if you project that is more that is more per month than hosting the other options, then it is probably not a good deal for your situation. I just recommend it based on the ease of design and low cost for low income stores. One positive for OScommerce is that it is widely used and has lots of interesting add-ons and such that (when they work) can do neat things. It is certainly a valid option, just not my preferred.

 

[Aperture]

I host my site (lilstewart, too) with user: "itasor". He has a server that he rents out to some people on here/etc. I pay $2.50/month for 500Mb and I *think* about 2Gb bandwidth. If you are interested, just PM him and he can make a custom plan for you.

cPanel comes with Fantastico which has tons of things you can install. Anyway, good luck with your project.

 

[ChrisWB]

You could easily set something up with a credit card merchant, or if you're desperate - Paypal. For a small site you don't need a huge payment system. I recommend getting a free account at somewhere like authorize.net and simply using their shopping cart script.

 

[ChicoWeb]

We use OSCommerce or CRE Loaded, which OSCommerce on steroids. Both are free and both are easy to install, BUT NOT EASY TO INTEGRATE!!!

Examples:
lemontreepaperie.com - Copy Paste Please
lulusfashionlounge.com - Copy Paste Please
http://lucky.chicodev.com/ - Currently in dev

 

[D0ct0rteeth]

We use OSCommerce or CRE Loaded, which OSCommerce on steroids. Both are free and both are easy to install, BUT NOT EASY TO INTEGRATE!!!

Examples:
lemontreepaperie.com - Copy Paste Please
lulusfashionlounge.com - Copy Paste Please
http://lucky.chicodev.com/ - Currently in dev

Never used CRE loaded, but I'll check it out.

OSCommerce is a fantastic product! Ive used it dozens of times.

 

[TuckBodi]

We use OSCommerce or CRE Loaded, which OSCommerce on steroids. Both are free and both are easy to install, BUT NOT EASY TO INTEGRATE!!!

Both are free? It looks to me that CRE Loaded, while the main component is $10 donation and everything else costs $$$. The Free Downloads area is empty and most (if not all ) modules cost something. At least most of the stuff up on OSCommerce is free.

Back to the original question -- I've used OSCommerce and ZenCart and while OSC has many, many more modules to integrate you have to be not only careful which ones work together but also which version works with which version of each module and OSC. ZenCart is much easier to implement but the available expanability (modules) is much less (ZC is a spin-off of OSC with the thought of compatibility the key and not all OSC modules work with it).

A couple of CMS related commerce solutions I've played around with include:
- Drupal E-Commerce http://groups.drupal.org/e-commerce which now works with Drupal 5.0
- VirtualMart (Joomla) http://virtuemart.net/

Good Luck!