iAddict Posted July 27, 2006 Share Posted July 27, 2006 Well, I was planning on getting a template until I heard all the problems about them. I don't want to hire someone to do my site as I have tons of products so they are charging a lot. I don't know all that much about osCommerce and to be honest, some of the sites I have seen around that are customized didn't look all that great. I know there are tons exceptions but I know I won't be able to create a very professional site if a lot of others cannot. Would my best bet be just to go with a template and try to fix the bugs myself? Opinions and advice are needed very badly -_- Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cbp Posted July 27, 2006 Share Posted July 27, 2006 I have worked on a website in osCommerce for the past year and I have to say that it takes a lot of time to do it yourself. A lot of time. Consider the following in your decisions: - What is your budget? If you can afford a programmer find someone and let him do all the dirty work. Try freelancers. - If you want to do it yourself what is your programming background: php, mysql, etc... - Make a list of all the requirements you need and check the contributions to see what exist and what not. Search a lot and under different synonyms. - If all your requirements exist as contributions then you can try to do it yourself and save some money, but not time. If you know nothing of php, mysql, and some requirements have to be programmed manually, hire someone to do just those and thus save some money. - Advertisement, advertisement this is the key to everything. Also this eats all your budget so take it into consideration. - Finally, what are your long term goals. Will you update the site a lot? If so, better start learning php, mysql, osC, or you will have to pay someone else to do it. Took me one year to find a bug, and almost as much to realise that looks are not enough. There is a thing called page rank and advertising. ------------------------------------- Now about the "changing a lot" products there is easy populate. The store I am working on has about 4000 products which change prices about twice a week. Easy populate and chinese staff (in china) helps a lot. As for the template think about it? Will you be changing the template often? If not then a templating system is not for you. Do changes manually. about 50 files to be changed in 5 or 6 places. (<-- crazy me. did it manually :) ) If you will change the template often, i.e. holidays, activities, rebates, etc...; then STS is for you. Downside is that it has a few bugs. Hope this helps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iAddict Posted July 27, 2006 Author Share Posted July 27, 2006 Well I am pretty good with optimizing my site for search engines and advertising in general. I will be updating my site quite a bit as I receive new products. I'm hitting the high hundreds to low thousands of products (I may be completely off, it's hard to say). I'm not completely sure yet how many there are but it is growing fairly fast. I know a little here and there about programming as I have taken classes. Nothing major though and to be honest, I am not great at the designing part. I have tried Guru.com to find some people to help me out but as I stated before, they are charging tons of money which I am out of right now. I'm hoping to start the site on a fairly low budget, if I generate revenue, I plan on enhancing my site. That's why I was orginally thinking of getting a template, it's low cost, looks good, saves time, and there's not a lot of risk if the business flops. I heard of some problems about them but I'm sure I can figure them out or come back to these forums for help. And seriously, I don't care if my site uses a template, I bet 99 percent of people who go onto my site won't even know. It's hard for me to find all that time to try and do it myself. I have only about a month of spare time (right now, that's why I'm here). So I think I have made up my mind, I'll use a template, accept the problems and try to fix them, and later possibly hire someone to design/customize a new site. Or maybe... I'll just stick to my template :blush: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anne Gaudette Posted July 27, 2006 Share Posted July 27, 2006 Well I am pretty good with optimizing my site for search engines and advertising in general. I will be updating my site quite a bit as I receive new products. I'm hitting the high hundreds to low thousands of products (I may be completely off, it's hard to say). I'm not completely sure yet how many there are but it is growing fairly fast. I know a little here and there about programming as I have taken classes. Nothing major though and to be honest, I am not great at the designing part. I have tried Guru.com to find some people to help me out but as I stated before, they are charging tons of money which I am out of right now. I'm hoping to start the site on a fairly low budget, if I generate revenue, I plan on enhancing my site. That's why I was orginally thinking of getting a template, it's low cost, looks good, saves time, and there's not a lot of risk if the business flops. I heard of some problems about them but I'm sure I can figure them out or come back to these forums for help. And seriously, I don't care if my site uses a template, I bet 99 percent of people who go onto my site won't even know. It's hard for me to find all that time to try and do it myself. I have only about a month of spare time (right now, that's why I'm here). So I think I have made up my mind, I'll use a template, accept the problems and try to fix them, and later possibly hire someone to design/customize a new site. Or maybe... I'll just stick to my template :blush: Hey, I was exactly at the point you are about 2 months ago. My store is located at wabo.org/shop I knew ZIP about this process when I started. Doing it on your own is very time consuming. I have found the forums are a great help, but tedious to look through. Fortunately, I have the time to do that. I do know who you should avoid. Template Tuners. Their customer service is totally unhelpful and they are rude! I had them upload my template because I wanted to avoid problems. They did that, but then would not give me the url to my new store. It took me two days to convince a woman who first language is NOT English that if they uploaded my store they created the url. sigh... and it got worse from there. The templates don't have problems per say... it is trying to customize them to your own needs that creates problems! Which is the whole point.. yes.. yes! Do you know if your webhost offers C-Panel? Most of the tutorials are based on that program. Things that are fairly easy to change are: Adding products, changing pre-done wording on your page, uploading new pictures (although making them sharp and clear is not so easy). If you run into a problem, post it on the forum with a catchy cry for desperate help. They got noticed faster. Best of luck! PS If you only have a month to make this all happen you will need to get the easy populate module or don't sleep. Your call and you might want to court a designer to clean it up after you do all the grunt work. Otherwise, you time frame is not realistic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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