First venture into e-commerce

[Philip Herlihy]

I've (just) been asked to build my first e-commerce site, selling small
consumables online. I'm a programmer of 20 years' experience, and have some
exposure to ASP, and (given time) could surely hand-code the whole thing
from scratch in any suitable language(s), but there's no point reinventing
the wheel! I use FrontPage when I want quick results, and use
HTML/CSS/JavaScript/ASP otherwise, but will happily learn new tools if
there's a reason to. I'd be grateful for any pointers from anyone who's
been where I am!

--
######################
## PH, London ##
######################

[Richard Watson]

Post by Philip Herlihy
I've (just) been asked to build my first e-commerce site, selling small
consumables online. I'm a programmer of 20 years' experience, and have some
exposure to ASP, and (given time) could surely hand-code the whole thing
from scratch in any suitable language(s), but there's no point reinventing
the wheel! I use FrontPage when I want quick results, and use
HTML/CSS/JavaScript/ASP otherwise, but will happily learn new tools if
there's a reason to. I'd be grateful for any pointers from anyone who's
been where I am!

Yes there's no point writing your own when there are (at least) two
very goot Free ecommerce packages out there:

OSCommerce - http://www.oscommerce.com/
Interchange- http://www.icdevgroup.org/

Out of the two OSCommerce seems to be the simpler to implement, but
not so versatile. Interchange is harder work but probably more
scalable and definitely more easily customisable in the long run.

I would definitely suggest Interchange if you want to develop your own
templates. It has its own tag language which is quite straightforward
and is extensible in perl if you know that. On the whole it's well
worth learning.

[nigel]

If you have 20 years experience it would be just as quick for you to write
it as it would be in implement oscommerce etc. it is for us.

Nigel
www.naughtymutt.com

Post by Richard Watson

Post by Philip Herlihy
I've (just) been asked to build my first e-commerce site, selling small
consumables online. I'm a programmer of 20 years' experience, and have some
exposure to ASP, and (given time) could surely hand-code the whole thing
from scratch in any suitable language(s), but there's no point reinventing
the wheel! I use FrontPage when I want quick results, and use
HTML/CSS/JavaScript/ASP otherwise, but will happily learn new tools if
there's a reason to. I'd be grateful for any pointers from anyone who's
been where I am!

Yes there's no point writing your own when there are (at least) two
OSCommerce - http://www.oscommerce.com/
Interchange- http://www.icdevgroup.org/
Out of the two OSCommerce seems to be the simpler to implement, but
not so versatile. Interchange is harder work but probably more
scalable and definitely more easily customisable in the long run.
I would definitely suggest Interchange if you want to develop your own
templates. It has its own tag language which is quite straightforward
and is extensible in perl if you know that. On the whole it's well
worth learning.
--
Richard Watson
http://www.opencolo.com/
High Quality, Value for money colocation

[Grunff]

Post by nigel
If you have 20 years experience it would be just as quick for you to write
it as it would be in implement oscommerce etc. it is for us.

I'd call that a fairly ill informed sweeping statement.

While building and testing a simple basket + checkout system
would take about the same amount of time as properly installing
and configuring OSC, this is not the case if you want additional
features.

OSC comes with a whole bunch of desireable features which would
take a very long time to build + test. Like a full customer db,
a nice management interface for the shop owner, nice little
things like product reviews, tell a friend, multi-currency
support, multi-language support to name but a few.

If you're saying you can build + test all these things in the
time it takes me to install OSC, then either you're really fast
or I'm really slow.

[Philip Herlihy]

That's one of the reasons for my post, but 20 years experience still isn't
enough to know everything!

--
######################
## PH, London ##
######################

Post by nigel
If you have 20 years experience it would be just as quick for you to
write it as it would be in implement oscommerce etc. it is for us.
Nigel
www.naughtymutt.com

Post by Richard Watson

Post by Philip Herlihy
I've (just) been asked to build my first e-commerce site, selling
small consumables online. I'm a programmer of 20 years'
experience, and have some exposure to ASP, and (given time) could
surely hand-code the whole thing from scratch in any suitable
language(s), but there's no point reinventing the wheel! I use
FrontPage when I want quick results, and use
HTML/CSS/JavaScript/ASP otherwise, but will happily learn new tools
if there's a reason to. I'd be grateful for any pointers from
anyone who's been where I am!

Yes there's no point writing your own when there are (at least) two
OSCommerce - http://www.oscommerce.com/
Interchange- http://www.icdevgroup.org/
Out of the two OSCommerce seems to be the simpler to implement, but
not so versatile. Interchange is harder work but probably more
scalable and definitely more easily customisable in the long run.
I would definitely suggest Interchange if you want to develop your
own templates. It has its own tag language which is quite
straightforward and is extensible in perl if you know that. On the
whole it's well worth learning.
--
Richard Watson
http://www.opencolo.com/
High Quality, Value for money colocation

[News Clara]

Post by Richard Watson

Post by Philip Herlihy
I've (just) been asked to build my first e-commerce site, selling small
consumables online. I'm a programmer of 20 years' experience, and have some
exposure to ASP, and (given time) could surely hand-code the whole thing
from scratch in any suitable language(s), but there's no point reinventing
the wheel! I use FrontPage when I want quick results, and use
HTML/CSS/JavaScript/ASP otherwise, but will happily learn new tools if
there's a reason to. I'd be grateful for any pointers from anyone who's
been where I am!

Yes there's no point writing your own when there are (at least) two
OSCommerce - http://www.oscommerce.com/
Interchange- http://www.icdevgroup.org/
Out of the two OSCommerce seems to be the simpler to implement, but
not so versatile. Interchange is harder work but probably more
scalable and definitely more easily customisable in the long run.
I would definitely suggest Interchange if you want to develop your own
templates. It has its own tag language which is quite straightforward
and is extensible in perl if you know that. On the whole it's well
worth learning.
--
Richard Watson
http://www.opencolo.com/
High Quality, Value for money colocation

I'm surprised the hosting site doesn't have interchange or at least one free
cart system installed. Every account I've ever bought does.

[Philip Herlihy]

Post by Philip Herlihy
I've (just) been asked to build my first e-commerce site, selling
small consumables online. I'm a programmer of 20 years' experience,
and have some exposure to ASP, and (given time) could surely
hand-code the whole thing from scratch in any suitable language(s),
but there's no point reinventing the wheel! I use FrontPage when I
want quick results, and use HTML/CSS/JavaScript/ASP otherwise, but
will happily learn new tools if there's a reason to. I'd be grateful
for any pointers from anyone who's been where I am!

I'm grateful for these replies, and I'll be following up all the products
mentioned.

One thing that's exercising me is what to aim for in a first iteration.
I've had most success when I've delivered, quickly, the minimum worthwhile
system and then gone from there. Obviously, a "full" e-commerce system
could involve B2B links with suppliers for automatic re-stocking but I very
much doubt my customer will want that level of complexity. I guess the
simplest conceivable system would be little more than a secure email order
form, but what do folk here think consitutes a minimal "starter" system?
This is a new venture for my customer too!

--
######################
## PH, London ##
######################

[Kudzu]

What about DreamWeaver? And which version of it? Does it
work on WinME?


On Sat, 8 Nov 2003 18:09:34 +0000 (UTC), "Philip Herlihy"

Post by Philip Herlihy
I've (just) been asked to build my first e-commerce site, selling small
consumables online. I'm a programmer of 20 years' experience, and have some
exposure to ASP, and (given time) could surely hand-code the whole thing
from scratch in any suitable language(s), but there's no point reinventing
the wheel! I use FrontPage when I want quick results, and use
HTML/CSS/JavaScript/ASP otherwise, but will happily learn new tools if
there's a reason to. I'd be grateful for any pointers from anyone who's
been where I am!

[Timbo]

Post by Philip Herlihy
I've (just) been asked to build my first e-commerce site, selling small
consumables online. I'm a programmer of 20 years' experience, and have some
exposure to ASP, and (given time) could surely hand-code the whole thing
from scratch in any suitable language(s), but there's no point reinventing
the wheel! I use FrontPage when I want quick results, and use
HTML/CSS/JavaScript/ASP otherwise, but will happily learn new tools if
there's a reason to. I'd be grateful for any pointers from anyone who's
been where I am!

I am now a website owner and used a company called E-commerce
consortium based in Guidford WWW.E-cc.org ,they may be of help. They
were fantastic getting WWW.sharedinterests.co.uk off the ground.
Tim Sims