What script for online store?

I’m thinking of starting a new business and would like to know what would be the best option in terms of online store software. Should I use something like oscommerce or should rather I buy something.

 

Have a good look around for some hosting that has an e-commerce package free with it. There's plenty of them. Makes it a great deal easier for you to set up.

Col

 

don't use vs-asp or digishop.

 

I’ve got some experience installing scripts so the installation won’t be a problem. What I don’t want is after spending money on a template and coding to discover that it was a bad idea to use oscommerce for whatever reason. I want a reliable option.

 

Depends..For subscriptions, use aMember (amember.com)..For other items, use OScommerce

 

What I pretend to do is great a full online store to sell my products. I would require things like customer account creation, add to basket, listings, etc…
I’m looking for a professional solution not one that isn’t stable or buggy.

 

I use Oscommerce for one of my stores and really like it. Best of all it's open source and there are many addon contributions available giving you many nice features. Form what you've posted, it's just what you're looking for.

 

Thanks
Have you found the software to be 100% stable? Is it very hard to maintain the site, will I need to hire someone to help me?

 

Yes, very stable. I was able to sucessfully install it plus many of the addon contributions with very limited knowledge of PHP and MySQL. If you decide to go with it, try installing and configuring it yourself. If you run into any problems Oscommerce has a pretty busy forum which you can get answers from. If all else fails there are some good prgrammers on this forum always looking to make a few bucks.

 

Thanks for your replay. I think I’ll stick with oscommerce since so many people recommend it.

 

Another vote for osCommerce. Most things you will want to add to it are already done, no need to re-invent wheels. And if you do need something, there's around 1000 freelancers on GetAFreelancer who have plenty of osC experience, or you can easily hack it up yourself. The source is very readable IMO.

 

Does osCommerce still require register_globals to be on? That's the one thing that's kept me away from it

 

I don’t know, what exactly is that?

 

I've seen tutorials on how to make it independent.

Register_Globals turned on could be perceived as a potential security risk. Though if you code properly there should be no risk at all.

 

Yep... I'm sure the developers are careful, but whilever it's required, I'm going to steer clear of it. For two reasons, really: the first is the fact that it's a risk but the second is the fact that for a project with it's status, register_globals should no longer be required. If the developers can't seem to get to fixing that kind of an issue, it makes me more worried about the rest of their development 'philosophies', I guess.

One on those things where (to me, at least) it indicates a bigger problem if you get my drift...

Emperor: register_globals essentially defines variables automatically for you if it's passed in via POST or GET in the URL.

The problem being that code may assume that a variable is undefined and hence use it one way but in reality, a bad user may have passed in a value that may force the code to do something else... the biggest problem is that the developer is essentially using variables without necessarily defining them themselves.

 

osCommerce code does date back as far as 2001 I believe - it's certainly not the most modern code. But that also means it's one of the most tried and tested code bases probably. Their team has some issues, the V3 version was supposed to have been out early this year. But it looks like they are progressing so if you want a really clean, up to date version you might want to hold out a few months. Or indeed try elsewhere.

 

This is the information I wanted to know before I started spending money. Are there big online stores using oscommerce and is it easy to get someone to create a complete professional template for it?

 

I know DP members who have revenue in excess of $1m annually and yes, getting professional templates is dead easy. Go on GetAFreelancer.com and spend $2-500 depending on your requirements and you're set for business.

 

I used OS commerce over at my company (which is for sale) at xcessiveperformance.net

Absolutely love the versitility.

 

By the way, here are the contribs that I have installed for a few more features and to help out in the search engines. I would suggest giving these a look at the Osc site:

For SEO:
Ultimate SEO URLs
Page Heading Title Better
Meta Tag Controller
All Products
H1 Tags

For Features:
OT Discount Coupon Codes
OSC Affiliate
Supertracker
Also Purchased
Whos Online HTTP REFERER