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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Nov 2005
    Location
    Los Angeles
    Posts
    5

    * Easiest shopping cart available?

    Let me start by saying I'm a designer and I've been asked to look for an alternative to Cart32. Cart32 is a system I'm just beginning to learn. I find the documentation and help files hideous for it. Almost no help at all to me, a newbie!
    I believe I'll be setting up this new cart and maintaining it for the company. We sell labor posters to distributors who in turn sell them to the public. I'll need a cart I can easily and quickly set up for our distributor companies when they desire one. We hope to start pushing alot more out the door soon. Any advice about a shopping cart system for a complete newbie?

    Sincerely,
    Andre

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Feb 2004
    Location
    Daytona Beach, FL
    Posts
    12
    There are alot of different carts out there. Like you, I am a designer first. So when I began searching for a shopping cart for customers, I looked at how easy it was to customize in terms of the look. For some time now I have been using a perl based shopping cart. But as of late I have begun working with a php based shopping cart, which is easy to install. Very easy to manage and set up. And pretty flexible in terms of design layouts, and alteration. It is called PHP SunShop from TurnKey Web Tools For the price about $189.00 it is cost effective. I know many users out there like open source free carts, but so far in my experience I have found these types of solutions to be idea for me, as well as my customers.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Mar 2005
    Posts
    291
    Yea, there are several carts out there that we have used (including custom carts that we've designed from the ground up). It really depends on what sort of functionality you're looking for out of the box and what language you're looking to develop it with.

    What language are you looking to use? ASP/.NET/CF/PHP

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Nov 2004
    Location
    Finland
    Posts
    536
    there is a lot of free & commercial shopping carts, altho, just about every & single one of them contains a common bad side: hardness of customization, code structures & methods are very fussy and "hideous", hard to get in. (this gets us to the conspiracy talk of: this is how open source projects profit, lol)

    Anyways, some are good some are bad.
    My friend has made an shopping cart which is VERY easy to modify, uses Smarty for templating so it's easy for designers to change the templating, and it's done really smart way == easy to modify.

    Plus, the code level :: easy to do modifications, or add new things to it.

    PM me for more information about it, i think he won't want much for a license to use(but not resell).

    PS. it is in use on many commercial solutions here in finland
    Pulsed Media: Dedicated Servers and Seedboxes

  5. #5
    have u used midicart.com

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Sep 2000
    Location
    Alberta, Canada
    Posts
    3,146
    Both osCommerce & ZenCart can do what you want plus they are Open Source and provided by most Hosters, although, either one is easy enough to install manually. Both also provide fairly good support in the way of Forums. No matter how you slice it though, you will need to either be familiar with the coding yourself or know someone who is very good.

    Have yet to see any Shopping Cart that does not need to be customized in many ways. First, there is the layout itself and then there are the features. Besides being able to accept various types of payment -- and keep track of those payments -- there are addon Modules for things like; shipping, file uploading, special pricing for certain Clients, applicable taxes, adding multiple Cart items at one time, etc.

    The biggest problem with any Shopping Cart is that one gets tied to it. I've known people to spend Months, searching out a Cart that suits their needs and someone to install / manage it for them. Then it can take 1 to 4 weeks to install, debug and setup, before ready to go live. Best to put a lot of thought and research into any Shopping Cart, before making the commitment.
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  7. #7
    Join Date
    Mar 2005
    Posts
    291
    What language do you prefer the system be in? CF ? ASP? PHP?

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