Is osCommerce for me?

[evalguy]

Hi,

 

New member here, and hoping that someone can help me with a few quick answers prior to my signing up with a host that has osCommerce. Yes, I've been googling for days, spoken with support from various hosting companies, and read some of the docs and posts on this site, but a few questions remain.

 

BTW, I'm moving an existing Cart32 shopping site to a new host and want a more popular ecommerce package, so I'm free to move if I ever hate my host provider again. I've narrowed down to osCommerce and Miva at this point.

 

This is what I want to do...

Phase 1: use my existing web pages, but add a couple buttons to each page for Add-To-Cart, Checkout, etc. The checkout pages should be customizable to look like the rest of my website. After checkout, the order details should be stored on the host/server and I just want an email that an order has been placed. If the order details are not available, that's not a problem. But I need some email that an order was placed. It should not send the credit-card details by email. I would log into the host/server to get that and I'll run the credit card thru manually.

 

Phase 2: I'll later add direct credit-card processing.

 

Will osCommerce do this?

 

Also, I've read some articles/reviews that stated there were security issues with osCommerce, and that ZenCart or other spinoffs were recommended. But those articles seemed like they were over a year old. Is this really a current problem with osCommerce?

 

Thanks.

[stevel]

osCommerce CAN do what you ask. In fact, the credit card handling is pretty much the way you describe - the details are recorded in the database and you are (optionally) sent an e-mail. It can also work with external payment gateways, but you don't seem to want that.

 

Where osC is weakest is in the ease of adding it to an existing site. osC is designed to BE your site, or at least a subset of your site. But you can make it work with "add to cart" buttons on existing pages, as long as those pages can run PHP code.

 

There is a recent update to osC that addresses all known security issues.

[evalguy]

...

Where osC is weakest is in the ease of adding it to an existing site. osC is designed to BE your site, or at least a subset of your site. But you can make it work with "add to cart" buttons on existing pages, as long as those pages can run PHP code.

...

 

 

Wow, thanks for the speedy reply. Yes, I do intend to get php with whichever new host provider I choose since I need to get away from all the static product pages soon.

 

At this point I'm considering getting hosting with *edited* (just found them recently). I figure for $5, it would be a quick simple testing ground to see if I can get when I want out of osCommerce. I doubt that for $5 they'll have the level of service and performance I'll need for the real production site though.

 

Thanks.

[stevel]

I'd suggest visiting a bunch of osCommerce-powered sites (see Live Shops under Showcases above, and you can also look at mine listed in my profile) to see what people have done with osC. The further you get from the stock look, the more work it is, but the results can be very nice. You WILL need to learn at least some PHP in order to do anything significant with osC.

 

As for a $5 host - hard to say. I pay about $7/mo for my host and I'm quite happy with it. But as you say, if you're just dabbling, then most any host that provides the required services will do.