Getting ready to install osCommerce - MS2 vs MS3?

[Induction Concepts]

osCommerce is bundled with my webhost. The version they list to install is 2.2 MS2.

 

Is this the most current version?

 

I looked through the feature list on the site here and there were some features that said (MS3) beside them. I'm guessing these features aren't available with the 2.2 MS2?

 

When will MS3 be out? What is MS3, what does it stand for?

 

 

Here are the items I'm talking about:

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Template struture implementation to:

 

allow layout changes to be adaptive, easy, and quickly to make (MS3)

 

allow easy integration into an existing site (MS3)

 

 

Administration area secured with a username and password defined during installation (MS3)

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Those first to seem like pretty key points for ease of installation and integration with my existing site?

 

I guess I just want to make sure it's pretty simple to install and make changes to give the same look and feel as the rest of my site (header, footer, sidebar nav, color scheme, etc.).

 

Thanks in advance.

[ozcsys]

The milestone version ms2 is the one you want to install and use for a production store. MS3 is a work in progress and yes while it will have things by default the ms2 does not now have if you want to open your store anytime soon you need to go ahead and do so with ms2 as there is no time frame when the next version will be finished. Most of the nice things you want are available as contributions that you can add to the default install.

 

If you want to match osC to an existing site and are familiar with html and not php then I suggest you take a look that the sts template system. This makes it much easier to match it to an already existing html site. One thing however is that osC is pretty much a stand alone product and does not really integrate well with an existing site if you are talking about just adding the catalog and checkout to something you already have. You can match the looks or replace what you already have but adding pieces of osC to your site is not going to work well.