Web designer who can do OS Commerce templates?
January 19, 2009 8:25 PM   Subscribe

Web designer who can do OS Commerce templates?

At the suggestion of a really good person that I've met here, I'm submitting the following question:

Where can I find web designer who can do OS Commerce templates or has experience doing commercial sites with off the shelf software?

I have idea in my for a site that I would like to have created but the missing piece of the puzzle is finding someone that can help me create the eye catching site that I envision at a reasonable price :)

Any and all ideas welcome! Thanking you in advance.
posted by seeminglyshy to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)
 
OS Commerce is no harder not easier than skinning any other CMS/PHP application that supports themes. I usually find it best to actually disconnect the designer from the implementation, and have two different people do it. That way your designer (who may not know your product) can be unrestrained, while your programmer (who is horrible with graphics) can implement it. Its usually more cost effective this way as well!

That being said; I am sure there are local web-design firms in your area.
posted by SirStan at 9:02 PM on January 19, 2009


Best idea: post this in MeFi Jobs.

And really, it's sort of up to you to define reasonable. In a recent MeFi "how much should this cost?" conversation I can't find about an ecommerce site for books, I think metafilter's web designers and developers ranged from $900 to 5K.

OScommerce is, btw, absolute shit in my opinion. The category layout is crap, the cart itself looks like ass, and it has the most cumbersome checkout known to man. I'd look at the sites in portfolios of designers interested in your project and pay attention to not only who has the best looking sites, but what those site are like for customers, right through checkout.
posted by DarlingBri at 9:12 PM on January 19, 2009


In terms of effort OsCommerce (and some of its, IMHO, better counterparts like Zencart and Magento) offer a range of options. Installing a vanilla version of the design is very simple and cheap: swap out some placeholder graphics for your own logo, connect the thing up to something like a Paypal account, load on some stick records and you can rapidly be trading. With this kind of setup you do get to determine which elements you are going to use and perhaps to apply a standard visual theme to your design. Your site will look and behave like many others for better or worse. If you are laissez-faire about the details you could probably entrust this to somebody with relatively little experience.

On the other hand, if you want absolute control over how the site looks and behaves - so that it conforms to your original vision - then you will need somebody who has a deeper knowledge of how to modify the more subtle aspects of the visual design. You will also probably need more in the way of plugins and add ons. All the products mentioned here have active support communities - but I would look for somebody who has a track record of doing this kind of customisation to produce a result you like.
posted by rongorongo at 3:23 AM on January 20, 2009


rentacoder.com . You can probably get this done excellently for under $100 by outsourcing it.
posted by TomMelee at 5:48 AM on January 20, 2009


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