Inspire Me

April 2, 2005 5:22 AM

My sister has recently requested that I build an online web store to sell her one a kind purses and other one of a kind fabrications.

My plans are for a simple website that will showcase her products well and be easy to navigate through. The makeup will be html and css.

This will be a separate site (as opposed to an ebay store) and Paypal will be used as the sole source for payments.

Can you point me to some good examples of personal web shops online for me to get an idea of where to head with this project.

Other suggestions and recommendations are welcomed and encouraged.

posted by chiababe to computers & internet (15 comments total)

http://www.foofpod.com ?
posted by fire&wings at 5:43 AM on April 2, 2005

this - http://www.madebymolly.com - is a fairly well designed site for someone I knew in college who sells jewelry. Very similar. She sells one-of-a-kind watercolor pendants - and other stuff.

so just static html, eh? who is going to do all the content maintenance? having a product catalog screams out for using a database of some kind.
posted by frufry at 6:12 AM on April 2, 2005

Give Believe Jewelry a look.
posted by Hankins at 6:46 AM on April 2, 2005

Poise.
posted by eatcherry at 7:09 AM on April 2, 2005

Check out this demo using Ruby on Rails, as posted in the blue.
Not sure how much time you have but suggest you look into it.
posted by nj_subgenius at 7:29 AM on April 2, 2005

You should go to http://ibuydiy.com and view the list of shops they have there - another good resource for diy webshops is http://theswitchboards.com.

Some of my favourites are http://boygirlparty.com, http://sarahsoda.com, http://mypapercrane.com and http://morningcraft.com
posted by annathea at 8:20 AM on April 2, 2005

I've been using a product called CartManager which is pretty handy. The shopping cart code is all self contained and when you want to add products to the cart, you submit a pipe-seperated string to the cgi (i.e. Red Purse | 199.99 | ground shipping | etc. ) Since all the info is passed like this, the shopping cart doesn't need to have any pre-existing knowledge of the items and you can add new items to your store just by cut-n-pasting a bit of html. The cart itself is pretty skinnable so you can bring the branding of your site along without too much trouble as well. Take a look at the store I built with it if you want to see it in action. Oh, and the company that runs CM has their own credit card processing gateway too, so they can help you set that up too.
posted by idontlikewords at 8:23 AM on April 2, 2005

idontlikewords writes "you submit a pipe-seperated [sic] string to the cgi (i.e. Red Purse | 199.99 | ground shipping | etc. ) Since all the info is passed like this.... "

Since all info is passed like this, I can fill up my cart with 23 cent hats just by sending the right (wrong) HTML POST to your site, or even by massaging the HTML on the way in with Proxomitron or Greasemonkey or whatever:

<input type='hidden' name='additem4' value='oremowlz|New Era Game Cap VAR4|23.00|VARquantity|4||Price|||||||'>

<input type='hidden' name='additem4' value='oremowlz|New Era Game Cap VAR4|0.23|VARquantity|4||Price|||||||'>
posted by orthogonality at 8:42 AM on April 2, 2005

Good point. I'm definitely going to run that one by the CM guys and see if they can answer your challenge. Thanks!
posted by idontlikewords at 8:58 AM on April 2, 2005

Software called OSCommerce is good for this kind of thing
posted by delmoi at 10:39 AM on April 2, 2005

Check out this demo using Ruby on Rails, as posted in the blue.
Not sure how much time you have but suggest you look into it.

That's not Ruby on Rails. As discussed in the thread, Ruby on Rails is a server-side backend technology that wasn't used in the design of cabel's store.

And to throw my own two cents in, definitely consider the use of a technology like Yahoo!'s Small Business Merchant that handles the back-end work for you securely. For $39.99/month, you get the back-end hosting and your own domain name (www.awesomejewelrybyyana.com), plus you get to customize the front. As pointed out earlier, there are a lot of ways to write a compromisable web site. Good luck finding the right solution for you!
posted by onalark at 10:58 AM on April 2, 2005

Paypal has their own cart system, too, which can be easily set up with a little clicking and pointing on the Paypal site.
posted by Aquaman at 3:19 PM on April 2, 2005

Seamripper (which is closed now, but keep an eye on it)
Blissen
Fresh Eggs
Pink Thread
Superfantastico
Uplifting Arts
posted by kmel at 7:39 AM on April 3, 2005

A little too much Flash in a shopping site for my tastes, but I think the Majland site is clean and cute.
posted by safetyfork at 7:33 AM on April 4, 2005

Re: "I can fill up my cart with 23 cent hats."

I asked CartManager about this issue and this is their suggested solution:

Inventory Control
posted by idontlikewords at 10:39 AM on April 4, 2005