Comments on: Select A Free Shopping Cart – Create A Profitable Online Store Part 3

By: Make Extra Money with an Online Store | PT Money

Make Extra Money with an Online Store | PT Money — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 11:18:21 +0000

[...] manage shipping and allow for a multitude of sale and discount options. These days, many of these shopping carts are open source and free which makes it easy for anyone to get [...]

By: nawallace

nawallace — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 21:24:23 +0000

Hi Steve. I’m in the process of installing oscmax. Unfortunately, the very last step (enabling the template) just isn’t working for me. The url that they gave me ends in php. I wonder if for some reason my computer can’t read php extensions? Do you know if there’s something I can download to be able to read it? Thanks!

By: SEO Updates

SEO Updates — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 18:44:46 +0000

Impressive article.

By: Phil

Phil — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 23:44:48 +0000

Hey Steve,

Would you be willing to post the mods/add-ons that you use? I have been looking through the community site and there are a ton of them and some of them are duplicates so I am not sure which is the one to use.

For instance, monthly sales reports? There are several add-ons for this, same goes for coupons, etc.

Thanks,
Phil

By: Kerrin

Kerrin — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 13:38:54 +0000

I think the template override system in Zen Cart is a real winner. When their much awaited Zen Cart 2.0 is released, it will really shake up the open source shopping cart space. I’m really looking forward to it! The great support through the Zen Cart community forum is worth it’s weight in gold too.

By: Steve

Steve — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 16:59:05 +0000

Hi Phil,
OSCMax is simply OSC with a lot of the essential plugins pre-installed. Our online store is a heavily modified version of the OSC base install. Having installed many plugins by hand, I can definitely say that it’s a major pain, not to mention the fact that you have to thoroughly test your cart once you are done. The people who maintain OSCMax install the plugins for you and do the testing as well.

I always prefer to use a standard install as well but the OSC project has been taking too long to integrate new features in the cart. You kind of have to rely on other people’s plugins in order to have a fully featured cart. This guide is meant for newbies as well. It’s much easier to have something working out of the box and tested which is why I recommend OSCMax and ZenCart as a good starting point. The last time I checked, the base install of OSC was missing some key features.

The templates for OSC that you can purchase online depend on the version you are using. For most versions of OSC, the term “template” is a bit misleading as it’s not so much a template that you get but installation files that you copy over the base install when you make your purchase. It’s definitely not as nice as when you use a cart with a built in template system.

For my cart, I did all of my modifications by hand, but I have helped several friends with their online stores in which purchasing a template first and then making minor modifications was the right choice. In general, I can’t recommend the base install of OSC to non-tech saavy people. There are just too many manual changes that need to be made.

By: Phil

Phil — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 15:47:04 +0000

Why would you choose OSCMax if you moved away from your current cart? I know OSC itself is old if you are using 2.2 but it is solid and just works. Why would you add a cart that is just OSC modified by people that didn’t originally develop OSC. I always hate to work with something that wasn’t developed directly by the author of the original program.

As for templates, how are you getting OSC to use templates? Did you modify it to use BTS or one of the others?

Thanks for your blog it is very informative.

By: How To Outsource Inventory And Product Fulfillment Operations For An Online Store | Wizpress.com

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 16:36:10 +0000

[...] can be easily integrated with all of the shopping carts I recommended in my article on Choosing the Right Shopping Cart Software. As orders come in, they can be automatically sent electronically to Shipwire for [...]

By: How To Outsource Inventory And Product Fulfillment Operations Of An Online Store | MyWifeQuitHerJob.com

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 13:31:04 +0000

By: Find A Webhost And Domain Name – Create A Profitable Online Store Part 1 | Wizpress.com

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 14:49:10 +0000

[...] Part 3: Select A Free Shopping Cart [...]