December 17, 2004

12:04 AM

I've been roped into volunteered to design a website for my Mom's new business, as a means of selling her goods online. The hosting provider I chose offers CubeCart, OS Commerce, Zen Cart, Agora Cart, and Interchange. I do have PHP & Perl skills. Which will be the easiest for her to use and manipulate from time to time, (assuming she's only going to have 10-20 different items to sell)? Which one integrates easily to credit card, check, and P.O. processing, and what's the best way to get that ball rolling?
posted by stovenator to (7 comments total)

I've used oscommerce and agora cart and have found that once you get it set up, OSCommerce is the easiest. Agora Cart didn't seem to have all the built in features that os commerce did, nor was it as easy to use. For what it's worth.
posted by damnitkage at 4:18 AM on December 17, 2004

The credit card "check" guys I use (way over in Sweden) even have oscommerce modules so that you can use them and oscommerce without too much hassle.
posted by dabitch at 4:20 AM on December 17, 2004

Haven't used it myself, but there's a mod to osCommerce called cpCommerce, and it apparently offers more flexibility (in terms of layout, modules, etc.).

Our company uses a different store, with much less flexibility than I would like. "Fully customizable!" the store advertised before we bought it. Bleh.
posted by Alt F4 at 5:27 AM on December 17, 2004

oscommerce also has one of the largest and most helpful development communities out there - a huge factor when it comes to customisation and integration issues that you may not be able to sort out yourself.
posted by angry jonny at 5:44 AM on December 17, 2004

I cast my vote for ZenCart. Its basically a fork of OSC so there are lots of similarities, but seems, to me at least, to currently be more actively developed. And they have a very friendly and helpful support community too. But in reality, none of them take too long to just do a default install and tinker around with them. Whichever makes the most sense to you, go that way.
posted by spilon at 8:00 AM on December 17, 2004

Thanks for the help guys and gals. Sounds like OS Commerce is the one most people are using. I'll give it a look, and see what happens.
posted by stovenator at 9:43 AM on December 17, 2004

OScommerce is a good pick as far as shopping cart goes.
As far as a credit card / check payment gateway, I use and like FastTransact. They have *the* most helpful technical support I've ever seen and quite literally will bend over backwards and then some for you. Might be too expensive for what you're doing, though.
posted by SpecialK at 12:39 PM on December 17, 2004