Newbie Web designer (1 Viewer)

DavidRS

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Can anyone help?

I hope I've posted this in the right area. My wife runs a small business online via ebay. We're thinking about expanding our horizons and setting up a website to attract other buyers. Trouble is, I have limited knowledge about designing a site and handling sales online. What are best, reasonably priced, packages that we can use to develop the site and where should we have it i.e. ISP provided site, independent host etc.? We'll probably use PayPal to handle payments but are there any better ones?

Many thanks in advance!

David
 

DanG

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Everyone will have a different opinion.
I have never used one myself, but have looked into them and played around with them. So what it's worth, here is what I know...
Big names in what you are looking for are Zen Cart, OSCommerce and I think Cube Cart (?). Best of all they are free of charge (last I checked). Most of these are in PHP and are a full package ready to go and very flexible and well documented.
You will need a host that has PHP/MySql databases (which most do). I myself use Lunarpages as a host and like them very much. Again, you will get as many different opinions about host as you will shopping carts (that's a good thing).
I will say I was a bit concerned about OSCommerse for security reasons as the made you run it with you registered globals "ON" so you may want to see if that is still the case as I have not checked it out in a while.

Good luck!
 

SikSlk

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I have used Oscommerce on a couple of shops and although i dont have PHP skills the forum has ample help on the customization and help fixing things you may break :p

Im biased because it was free and its done what I needed at the time. I suggest you have a look on the site and there is also a gallery of other shops using it to illustrate the ability of what it can look like.
 

Stitcho

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OSCommerce is definately one to look at. Its very easy to install and configure and lets you handle all of your order management, products, paypal integration, etc, etc. There are a whole host of templates you can buy to fit in with it as well if you are not really up to doing the design yourself.

Host wise you have loads of options on the market depending on what you want and what you can afford. I personally use 1&1 Internet but your other options are people like Streamline.net, Easyspace, Namesco, etc, etc. They all offer very competatively priced packages.

I however found OSCommerce wasnt as flexible as I needed when it came to doing certain things so I purchased the Webassist eCommerce suite (including eCart) which plugs into Dreamweaver and allows you to fully customise your shop and database. It comes with some pretty handy tutorials and sample shop databases and their technical support is second to none in my opinion. It also has PayPal, CcBill, etc integration to handle your payments aswell as plugins for handling your shipping (very handy). It does cost about $500 but well worth the money if your looking to develop yourself.
 

zelld

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i have heard people swear by oscommerce. i design websites on the side and am seriously thinking of putting up a similar site (currently searching "oscommerce" on a separate tab)
 

Surjer

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+1 for OSC.. REALLY easy a flexible package. You will need to get around in PHP but there is SOOO much help for it its mostly just

Find this text..

and replace with this text..

So if you can think logically and follow instructions from other members you should be set to go!
 

frankok

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A lot of my friends have started to use google checkout, becuase it gives you money off google adwords, or the other way around.

Might be worth looking into.
 

mighty

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A lot of my friends have started to use google checkout, becuase it gives you money off google adwords, or the other way around.

Might be worth looking into.

Yep, google checkout is really trustworthy for us.
 

Atomic Shrimp

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Some hosting packages come with online shop functionality in the deal - these are likely to be easiest to set up, as the hosting provider typically gives you some kind of wizard to configure it, so you don't need to be a MySQL DBA to set it up.

I just checked mine (I'm on 1&1 'Home' hosting) - it includes 'easyshop' - which looks like it offers a pretty comprehensive shop package - it allows you to manage products (including automatic stock levels), it integrates with eBay (so items bought via ebay show up in the same pile of orders, and decrement the same stock as orders placed through your site's shop interface) - and it's all administered through a GUI in the web control panel.

I haven't had cause to use it - so can't really recommend it, but on paper, it looks pretty good - and I'm sure some other hosts probably have similar offerings.
 
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bendix

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A lot of my friends have started to use google checkout, becuase it gives you money off google adwords, or the other way around.

Might be worth looking into.

Yeah, I think google checkout is a great way on.... in web design thing it is better to consider....
http://www.slingshotseo.com
 
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Atomic Shrimp

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Re: IT Service Support

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