I'm looking for a PHP based shopping cart software. This is for a client who will be selling 3 or 4 DVDs (physical) and also 3 or 4 video downloads (digital versions of DVDs) Not looking for something too complex, just something to get the job done. The thing I'm having a problem with is finding a cart that will handle both physical and digital goods. I thought that OSC was able to do this with a plugin, but I can't find it anywhere.

Looking for something free or close to it.
Thanks,
Kevin

Hi Kevin,

I did some searching and found this URL on the OSC Web site:
http://www.oscommerce.info/kb/osCommerce/Administration_Tool/Configuration/162

Not sure if that helps or not? There are some other PHP-based carts available such as ZenCart, X-Cart and many others but I figured I'd toss the above out to you since you had already explored OSC.

That is exactly what I was looking for. I've only looked at OSC because I've used it before, whereas I've never touched zencart or x-cart. Do you have experience with either of them? Better or worse than OSC?

Glad it was helpful. :)

OSC and ZenCart are pretty similar. It is my understanding that ZenCart was based upon OSC. X-Cart is more of a higher grade commercial solution.

I have heard lots of positives on all three. My suggestion would be that if you are looking for a solution and you want direct support, X-Cart might be the way to go since it is a commercial solution.

On the flip side, if you are looking strictly for open source and community support alone, then the other two can also work very well. I don't think you'll go wrong with any of the ones you mentioned though. :)

Awesome. Thanks a lot for that link to that contribution too. it was exactly what I needed.
Kevin

Sure thing, best of luck with your implementation! :)

I've only used Cubecart and compared to OS/Zen cart it was super simple to setup and configure. I had ti configured for digital downloads of photos. Worked pretty good and you could set up how long the downloads were active for and how mnay tires a customer had to attempt the download.

Thanks - I'll check it out.

OK, an update here..
I went with the oscommerce solution and it's going to work beautifully. My next question is about usability...What is the preferred format for uploading digital video? Is it OK to leave it as an MPEG, or should I zip it up and offer the zipfiles to download?

a suggestion might be to offer both. most people who are downloading a vid have broadband... but there are the dsl crowd and the cable/t-1 crowd. if the vid is big, the dsl crowd would def appreciate the smaller chunks I think. the customer will prob want to put some sort of digi signature on the video or it will end up on limewire or torrent feeds after too long.

just my opinion and .02

The folks downloading these videos aren't the most technical people in the world, which has me worried about having them unzip a file, ya know? There is a warning on the page that says to only choose the download option if you have a broadband connection. I am thinking of doing two separate encodings too. One that is full screen (~500 MB) and one that is a bit smaller (maybe 200ish MB)

Any links or writeups on this digital signature thing you mentioned?
Kevin

Get creloaded - it is an extensively modified and community maintained oscommerce modification. Its hard to say that it is a modification even, because people actually seek 'creloaded developer' when getting things done for it, or 'osc/creloaded developer'. Its specialized to such an extent.

cubecart at least has some security audits where oscommerce and carts based on oscommerce are risky.

I recommend: oscommerce, creloaded, zencart, cubecart & WebPro Shop

Don't forget about the templates if you are planning to sell the cart to other customers. A few of the carts mentioned here offer more templates than others. Search for them on the Web too since there are third-party templates for them as well.

www.cs-cart.com

As you can tell by my name I am very new at this! I just signed up with a hosting company, and want to get a shopping cart. The free ones that are included are Agora, cube cart, os commerce and zen cart. I was hoping that someone could point me in the direction of which would be the easiest to use. I am starting a small business selling handmade items. I would really appreciate any help at all. Thank you!!

My fave is viart cart, its extremely good and easy to use - www.viart.com

I had kind of a horror story with LiteCommerce. I am a web designer and implemented a custom design of LiteCommerce for a customer. It was fine with testing and everything, but then it started getting really slow and timing out and spiking the load average on the server with not much traffic at all. We troubleshooted for months, installed it on different servers, etc. The staff basically said they couldn't do anything because we couldn't give them steps to reproduce the problem. I reported other bugs, which they refused to acknowledge until I replicated it exactly on their demo site. They are based in Russia, which isn't always bad but it's frustrating sometimes and the language issue is there. Overall it was a nightmare.

So, long story short, my colleague and I decided to create a cart we actually wanted to use. We ended up creating ClearCart, www.clearcart.com. It's based on Pinnacle Cart, www.pinnaclecart.com, which we chose after an exhaustive search of PHP programs. They are based in the US. We redid the skin, and tweaked the usability, because we wanted a cart that was actually nice looking right out of the box without custom design work.

So that's my story and my plug. Hopefully it will be helpful to someone. =)