I'm looking for a website building solution that will let me create my own stores, a few of them, which need to look very different from one another, and will not require me to know any coding.

I've tried oscommerce and think it's a great product but I can't customize it the way I want to, graphically.

I'm a graphic designer and I can design a web page layout in Front Page or Dreamweaver but that's all I can do. I have no idea how to turn it into a shopping cart. I don't like the limitations of oscommerce being that I don't know how to really move things around and make drastic changes. I need a great deal more flexibility than simply changing colors & fonts and turning boxes on and off.

I'm looking at StoreFront. The rep told me that it's basically a plug-in for Dreamweaver or Front Page. Does that mean I can design my store however I want and use StoreFront to generate the shopping cart code for me? I'd prefer to have this question answered by someone who doesn't have a vested interest in my purchasing their product.

I'm sorry if my questions are stupid, I'm just so confused.

What I'm doing is setting up stores selling products for myself from drop-shippers. I need a few of the sites to have a more high-end look and feel than oscommerce or Zen Cart seems to be able to provide.

Since I can design the sites myself I'd rather not have someone else create the site for me. And money is an object, especially since I plan on creating more stores in the future.

If anyone can give me any advice I'd appreciate it. Thanks.

What kind of server side language - ASP or PHP? You are still going to need to know a little of one code to help you along.

StoreFront I think is ASP while the others are PHP. Both are pretty different languages designed to be run on different platforms.

How advanced are you looking for the carts to be?

Hi jdessell - try taking a look at Zen Cart - its based on osCommerce - but, XMS/css driven - you should be able to easily use your graphics skills to design a custom template for it.. Also - all modules can be moved in the admin - wuickly and easily - hope this helps..

BTW - Corey brings up an excellent point - you should decide on platform first - however - you do not have to be platform limited - if you find the right solution for you and its not a platform supported by your current host - worse case scenario is you have to change hosts...

Thanks for the responses.

I'm just looking for a pretty straightforward cart, I don't need any special features at this time, at least nothing more than something like oscommerce offers as far as the checkout process and catalog.

I've found a lot of carts, including oscommerce and Zen cart, that provide me with what I need as far as functionality. It's combining those features with what I want as far as layout and design that's giving me a headache.

As far as platform, I guess I'm not sure.... I know I can use php on my server...

Originally posted by Cartika
Hi jdessell - try taking a look at Zen Cart - its based on osCommerce - but, XMS/css driven - you should be able to easily use your graphics skills to design a custom template for it.. Also - all modules can be moved in the admin - wuickly and easily - hope this helps..

BTW - Corey brings up an excellent point - you should decide on platform first - however - you do not have to be platform limited - if you find the right solution for you and its not a platform supported by your current host - worse case scenario is you have to change hosts...

Cartika,

I don't know how to customize Zen Cart past the simple changes you can make in the Admin interface.

Are there any good providers of Zen Cart templates out there? I used OSCoders.biz and I was happy with a template I used from them but they never responded to help tickets, I filed 3, with a pretty basic question about customization. I'd rather, if anything, deal with Zen Cart, and if there are any good template providers I'd be interested in seeing them.

I'm familiar with TemplateMonster.com but the templates on that site that I like cost around 3 grand if I want them coded. I don't want to spend 3 grand on one site. The OSCoders templates come ready to go out of the box, integrated with oscommerce, for about $200. But like I said I'd prefer Zen Cart if I go with something free.

I'm willing to pay for a template and use something like Zen Cart if the templates are a really nice quality. But if something like StoreFront works in the way I think it might, where I can design whatever I want and StoreFront "does" the coding for me, I would consider that too....

I'm so CONFUSED.

Hi Jackie - the graphics on Zen Cart are REALLY easy to play with - However, I do understand your concern... Any host that supports Zen Cart should be able to help you - especially if youre willing to do your own graphics :)

Andrew

I have not played with Storefront, but I did with another software that integrated in FP once. A client was using something & she just could ot get it to function right. She sent me to software & it was one of the worst things I ever so. I ended up coding it myself.

Do you have a specific budget for the cart?

Jackie,

You can drastically change OSCommerce.

You just have to role your sleeves up!

I would have a look at the contributions on the OSCommerce site.

If you spend time on it, believe me you will learn that you can change anything and everything about the way OSCommerce looks.

You have to know anything about PHP to be honest.