becker Posted December 21, 2005 Posted December 21, 2005 Hello, I'm thinking about going with oscommerce...... First off, thanks to all the contributors for making this software available, if I can make it work I will be one very happy dude! (I'm not much of a techie but I can learn) I plan to have just a basic storefront (I really like amritdirect.com) with a few added features.... I'll be selling natural medicinals, hemp goods, some books, eventually adding fresh nuts and dried fruits, basically products I use and recommend myself. Hopefully someone can kindly answer the following questions for me: 1. Does the basic oscommerce allow me to give multiple options for certain products. For example can I have dropdown menus for color (black, blue, green) and size (small, medium, large) for a certain product? 2. Are there contributions that allow real time inventory tracking at the option level. So that when I run out of large, green hoodies, that choice will be hidden from view? (I think I read something about QTPro for this) 3. Does basic osC allow me to include multiple thumbnails/images for each product or does that require a contribution? 4. If I use paypal for my payment gateway, and a customer uses paypal to pay with a credit card.... if they want to return the product, can I refund the money to their credit card? Do I need an advanced paypal account to do this? Thanks, John
wheeloftime Posted December 21, 2005 Posted December 21, 2005 1. Does the basic oscommerce allow me to give multiple options for certain products. For example can I have dropdown menus for color (black, blue, green) and size (small, medium, large) for a certain product? 2. Are there contributions that allow real time inventory tracking at the option level. So that when I run out of large, green hoodies, that choice will be hidden from view? (I think I read something about QTPro for this) 3. Does basic osC allow me to include multiple thumbnails/images for each product or does that require a contribution? 4. If I use paypal for my payment gateway, and a customer uses paypal to pay with a credit card.... if they want to return the product, can I refund the money to their credit card? Do I need an advanced paypal account to do this? 1) yes, possible by default through the admin interface but more ?ser friendly options are available through the contribution section 2) QTPro should be the one but I would suggest to read the instructions and forum thread about it carefully to get a good idea if it is what you are looking for. I believe it is but I have no personal experience with this contrib. 3) No, but there are many contributions which can take care of this 4) Paypal offers a refund link for, I believe, 30 days which should suffice n most cases and you can always refund directly to a buyers account (but then Paypal takes another fee :-)). To be able to accept credit cards through Paypal you need at least a premier account. HTH
becker Posted December 21, 2005 Author Posted December 21, 2005 Thanks Howard, that was very helpful! I will do some more investigating and probably come up with some more ?s... meantime, if anyone would like to help with the following it would be much appreciated: 5. I read that the next milestone may be released in February and I am wondering what would happen if I start using the current milestone and then upgrade to the next one in a few months. Would this be a simple process, or a challenging one for someone with little coding experience? 6. Also, I am currently undecided about my domain. Would I be able to build a website using one domain and then change to a different domain and keep all the settings/contribs I added? Is this a simple matter that can be done automatically, or would I need to go into the code and rename a lot of things? TIA
becker Posted December 21, 2005 Author Posted December 21, 2005 oh yeah....... 7. Is "guest checkout" available in the basic osC or is that a contribution? I would like customers to have the option of making a purchase without having to login with a password.
wheeloftime Posted December 21, 2005 Posted December 21, 2005 Thanks Howard, that was very helpful! I will do some more investigating and probably come up with some more ?s... meantime, if anyone would like to help with the following it would be much appreciated: 5. I read that the next milestone may be released in February and I am wondering what would happen if I start using the current milestone and then upgrade to the next one in a few months. Would this be a simple process, or a challenging one for someone with little coding experience? 6. Also, I am currently undecided about my domain. Would I be able to build a website using one domain and then change to a different domain and keep all the settings/contribs I added? Is this a simple matter that can be done automatically, or would I need to go into the code and rename a lot of things? TIA 5) I don't know that myself yet 6) no, should be just a matter of updating the two configure.php's there are and yes, you can keep the settings and contribs you added. Only hard coded stuff directly related to a certain domain (path) should be changed accordingly but it's very unlikely you will encounter a contribution with such setup 7) Guest checkout = Purchase without Account (PWA) is not standard osCommerce but a contribution for this is available.
becker Posted December 21, 2005 Author Posted December 21, 2005 Thanks again Howard! osC seems to have everything I need so far, I'll start looking into payment gateways. I think I do have a premier paypal account but I may want to use another gateway. I plan on hosting with Lunarpages, btw. Should save a lot of $ if I can make all this happen. All the best, John.
wheeloftime Posted December 21, 2005 Posted December 21, 2005 Thanks again Howard! osC seems to have everything I need so far, I'll start looking into payment gateways. I think I do have a premier paypal account but I may want to use another gateway. I plan on hosting with Lunarpages, btw. Should save a lot of $ if I can make all this happen. All the best, John. All the best to you to John ! Without exagerating I dare to say you will have the most flexible solution with osCommerce. With a devoted community behind it and so many freely available contributions you can't go wrong even without being a HTML and/or mySQL/PHP expert. Just do yourself a favor and don't save on hosting (btw. no discussions are allowed about a favorable or less favorable one here). Howard
becker Posted December 21, 2005 Author Posted December 21, 2005 Ok, good deal... and I'll keep host talk on the qt. Thanks for all your help. I may add some more ?s to this thread as they arise....... now if I could just think of a good domain, hmmmm... Peace, John All the best to you to John ! Without exagerating I dare to say you will have the most flexible solution with osCommerce. With a devoted community behind it and so many freely available contributions you can't go wrong even without being a HTML and/or mySQL/PHP expert.Just do yourself a favor and don't save on hosting (btw. no discussions are allowed about a favorable or less favorable one here). Howard
becker Posted December 21, 2005 Author Posted December 21, 2005 4) Paypal offers a refund link for, I believe, 30 days which should suffice n most cases and you can always refund directly to a buyers account (but then Paypal takes another fee :-)).To be able to accept credit cards through Paypal you need at least a premier account. HTH Cool, just thought I would add (for anyone following along) that paypal allows me to refund even up to 60 days with their "Website Payments Standard" package, and they allow partial refunds too. They also have "Website Payments Pro", which I need to take a closer look at. John
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