newbie starter question

[marciak]

My host server has the option of using OSC and a MYSQL database. I have a front page website with a purchased template. My question is, is there enough explanations of what I will need to do to set up an online shop with the documentation included? I've been using paypal and tables on my site but I will be expanding the shop greatly and need a shopping cart. I'm pretty good at figuring things out but when I search this forum, I'm kinda lost! Especially the database...I am googling for some help with that but any sites anyone knows of with tutorials that can help will be greatly appreciated.

 

I'm sure I'll have real questions when I get this started, I just need to know that it will be intuitive and explanatory when I download it. It requires an upgrade to my website host that my company can ill afford.

 

TIA for your help and I'll continue to look through the forum.

 

Marcia

[Danbob]

My question is, is there enough explanations of what I will need to do to set up an online shop with the documentation included? ---- I'm pretty good at figuring things out but when I search this forum, I'm kinda lost! Especially the database...I am googling for some help with that but any sites anyone knows of with tutorials that can help will be greatly appreciated.

 

I was in the same boat last year when I started customizing a cart for our company. My advice:

If you experience a problem, chaces are 99% that someone else worldwide had it too. Learn to use the 'advanced search' options on this forum! The difference in results from searching 'paypal return page' and '+paypal +return +page' are huge. This was the key to my success in getting our cart up and running...this forum is so huge (beacuse so many people are using OSCommerce) that it's hard to find what you need! If you really get stumped, be sure to Google your question, sometimes Google indexes things so well it cuts right to the posting you need to see.

 

You'll also need to learn where the key files to customize your cart are located. There are many files that have the same name, but are in critically different dirctories. Hint -- anything that feeds text to the user can be easily changed, and are located in /catalog/includes/languages/english (pick your language here).

 

You'll hardly need to touch the database -- if there's a contribution you want to install that needs changes to the database (like adding another field, etc.) , there will be detailed instructions in the contribution docs on what you need to do, step by step.

 

Good luck! The support here on the forum is really excellent, but there's so many threads going on that it's hard to find what you need -- information overload. Advanced search is the key.

 

DAN