[UKBDF]

Hi,

I’m looking at playing around with some free E-commerce software and just wanted to know what you guys would advise as the best and easiest to mod?

I have looked into things like

Oscommerce
Zen Cart

Not sure what others are out there?

[RedEvo]

If you are prepared to spend a modest amount the options dramatically increase. IMHO.

d

[KingPin]

Probably the most "easiest" to play about with, with the most features has to be ZenCart.

KP

[consultant]

goto www.testacart.com and play around with the front an backends of the more popular carts.

[da8iwr]

My First post here on A1, but i use UKBF a LOT under the same username.

The best solution i found for my clients, is

Joomla and Virtuemart.

This is because it is expandable, allowing you to add other components into the system as and when required.

For example if you have Osc, Zen, Cube Cart etc, you are stuck for any future development of your site.

If you want to add a forum, blog, gallery, community system, etc etc, you will have to kind of add it in as a separate system. This means if people sign up to the shop, they will then have to sign up separately for the forum, and then again for the blog and so on.

This is because the database that holds all the records or user names and password etc, works only with your shop, and the database you use for the forum etc is also standalone, so they done talk to each other.

Joomla is a modular system though, that works with the same database. So you sign up to Joomla, and the logged in user can use any component that you have added to it, such as

Virtuemart - ecommerce
Fire board - forum
RS Gallery - gallery
and so on.

You can see all the extensions, all 3386 of them (a few are made by me )
http://extensions.joomla.org/

You dont need any code knowledge to install, you just down load the extension as a zip file, and upload it in to the system. The system takes the zip file apart and pops all the files in the right places and even adds entries into the database if needed.

You need to think if your going to run your business, you should be looking at expansion at some point as you dont want to stay as a one man band. So even though at this moment you may not need a forum, gallery, diary system, ticket support system or anything else, but you never know what you may want in the future.

Also there is no commercial system with more features than virtuemart, and only a handful of systems are equal in W3 standards as virtuemart and joomla, which are completely W3 compliant.

The closest ecommerce system for W3 and DDA compliance is tradingeye in Newcastle . Check out that demo, and look at how clean the code is, they have won awards from all over the place, and even had a huge mention in The Times because of its SEO (search engine optimization) and DDA (Disability Discrimination Act), for braille readers etc.

As Actually Oscommerce is about as bad as you can get for SEO and DDA, and with the DDA it is actually breaking UK laws in many places.

http://www.rnib.org.uk/xpedio/groups...legalcase.hcsp

Oscommerce has terrible code, as it is the same system that was developed in 2003, and hasn't been improved since. So most of the children of that system (Zen Cart, CreLoaded etc) also have the same problems as the parent system does. So that is one system i would stay well away from.

They keep threatening to make a V3, but they have been saying this since about 2006, and haven't got out of Alpha testing yet, so not sure what the situation is there, but i think your looking a t long time form now before a stable version is launched

Regards
Ian

By The way i have no affiliation with Trading Eye, i used to live with the guy at uni who started the company which is why i know it so well, but in fact he is in direct competition with my company www.newworlddesigns.co.uk, i only promote it, because the system is so damn good.

[RedEvo]

I agree with most of this being a huge fan of Joomla. However, I take a slightly different approach to ecom preferring for SEO and usability reasons to use a third party (external) cart.

d

[da8iwr]

I take a slightly different approach to ecom preferring for SEO and usability reasons to use a third party (external) cart.

Hi there, what SEO or usability benefits do you get using a standalone cart from the main site?

[RedEvo]

The problem with ecom systems IMHO is they decide how to do stuff, they have to. If you don't like way they do stuff you either have to hack - with all the implications of having a non standard install, or put up. You are also stuck if the system doesn't support a particular payment method such as buy now pay later.

Add to that iffy URL's, Titles, onpage tagging and I prefer to craft pages - using Joomla, present products in a way that converts (hopefully) and generally not haveto live with any aspect of a page simply because the ecom system 'does it that way'.

I guess it's down to control.

d

[openmind]

God people are gonna love OMC v1.3.0

[da8iwr]

Originally Posted by RedEvo

The problem with ecom systems IMHO is they decide how to do stuff, they have to. If you don't like way they do stuff you either have to hack - with all the implications of having a non standard install, or put up. You are also stuck if the system doesn't support a particular payment method such as buy now pay later.

Add to that iffy URL's, Titles, onpage tagging and I prefer to craft pages - using Joomla, present products in a way that converts (hopefully) and generally not haveto live with any aspect of a page simply because the ecom system 'does it that way'.

I guess it's down to control.

d

Thats not true at all
The whole of Virtuemart is modular, so you can turn bits on and off as needed. Like the shipping, parts of the admin, Gateways, Coupons, etc.

That also includes if you have tech ability (or you can buy/download custom made ones) to produce a new module to make it work differently.

I have made a site (which i cant link to as im a wee nipper ) but if you search for "spot-ontv" in Google its top, which has a Buy Now Pay Later system.

Its a Payment Gateway and a custom made component that works like a normal gateway at the end of the cart process, but it shows a form, that collects all the info. The new component is used to store the info for later on so the admin can collect it.

There is also one of the best SEF systems i have ever used in my career called Artio. It allows you to build the URLs up from the categories and products in virtuemart. so it will be something like this

/category-name1/category-name2/product-name

You can modify the way they are structured completely, how many category levels you want adding etc.

It also has a custom function, where you can edit all the auto made URLs, to what ever you want. So you can rewrite the URL as
/sausages-and-eggs/
if you like.

The titles are adjustable per page and so are meta tags, so I'm not sure what you meant by that. You can add in a global setting of title and meta data, and then modify it per page/category/product.

The reason I'm being as strong on this subject, is because when i read through forums, i find that people give wrong information about products usually because they haven't used it properly, and then give wrong feedback/advice, which is actually worse than not giving any info at all.

If i was as green as grass to all of this and was asking for a little help, i would believe that responses were some where near correct and it could persuade me to do something different which may not be the right choice. But if there was no response at all, then i would have to look else where and find the correct info elsewhere by people who have used it properly.

The response of using a separate system because it is better for SEO is completely wrong in every way. It has no affect at all on SEO, the system doesn't do anything with seo in any way, it is simply a system that fills in the code of XHTML templates. So as long as the template is well structured, and you can control the meta tags (which makes almost no difference on Google anyway) and you can manage the URL. It is the same as even making a page by hand in notepad.

The CMS just makes it easier for the admin to build and maintain the site, nothing else, the templates do the SEO work.

This isn't my opinion, this is how websites should/are built. No customer wants to sign up 4 times to get into 4 parts of the site (Shop, Blog, Support, Forum for example), when there is another system (available for free) that is a one stop shop type of product.

SEO is only a small part of getting a customer, prob about 20% or less, because once the customer clicks on the site, they need to be handled carefully to persuade them to hand over their hard earned cash. And making them sign up all over the place multiple times is not one of the ways.