Should I switch to Oscommerce?

[seanpaul]

Hi all,

 

I am presently running a succesuful online store using Actinic V6. I have only recently discovered oscommerce. Could anyone point out any reasons for changing over to oscommerce from Actinic?

 

Thanks :)

[Harald Ponce de Leon]

Hi all,

 

I am presently running a succesuful online store using Actinic V6. I have only recently discovered oscommerce. Could anyone point out any reasons for changing over to oscommerce from Actinic?

 

Thanks :)

 

osCommerce is the worlds best ecommerce solution....

 

...is that the sort of answer you were expecting?

 

The only advice I can give you is to try any solution you have interest in. The only thing osCommerce will cost you is your time installing it and playing around with it.

 

Otherwise you will blindly accept one solutions strengths without knowing its weaknesses which is critical if you want to setup an online store to do business with potential customers.

 

If you don't trust the solution you choose, then you can't expect your customers to trust it themselves.

[seanpaul]

Ok, what I was looking for was something along the lines of Oscommerce allows these incredibal features...

 

The thing is I am happy with Actinic, but as it is developed by a single company there are limitations on what you can do with it. the majority of the code within Actinic is a little difficult to tamper with (Actinic dont want you to tamper with it). So as I say it is a limiting package. If your using Oscommerce of course this is quite different as it is share wear.

[mattice]

share wear

 

Swear ware ?

 

:D

 

osCommerce is Open Source and released under the GNU Public Licence.

For a quick overview of the features take a look at the Demo on www.oscommerce.com (although that is ancient.. ) or any of the live shops.

 

To see what can be achieved with some serious hacking check the Featured Shops. (Note that you will need some coding knowledge to get that far)

 

The main site also shows a summary of the main osCommerce features.

Furthermore there are loads of contributions which can extend functionality in several ways.

 

HTH

Mattice

[seanpaul]

Share wear, swear ware! Whatever! :?

 

Am interested in how easy it is to create your own functionality within an oscommerce site as this is my main problem with Actinic, in Actinic you make simple changes to the code and end up with bugs and knock on effects all over the place.

 

Are there any resources out there with info/advice on getting started with oscommerce apart from the main site?

[mattice]

Share wear, swear ware! Whatever!

You'll find out the difference at a certain point...

probably the point where you think 'I wish I'd gone for Open Source'.

 

Check out www.oscdox.com

 

Just download the package and install it. Play with it. Investigate the source (if you know PHP), see how it works.

 

That's the best advise I can give you.

[Jan0815]

osCommerce is a robust and stable solution with a strong and helpful community behind it. As it is brought to you under the terms of the GNU/GPL you get the complete sources for free.

 

The out-of-the-box features are sufficient (or even too much ;-) for many users, as you can see from the live-shop list.

 

Many users have started modifying osCommerce to better fit their needs. A lot of these modifications and enhancements are then shared with the community as contributions. This is exactly what we wanted to achieve and we are quite proud of that ;-)

 

So you now have a huge pile of contributions that can 'morph' your osCommerce in many directions.

 

Whenever you need help you can search the forums or ask questions. These services are for free. Compare that to what you have with your current solution and read up a bit about the consequences of using GNU/GPLed software and you can make a decision.

 

My suggestion is that you simple install a current snapshot and play a bit with it to see if it does what you want to. Nothing to loose, a lot to gain :-)

 

HTH

[seanpaul]

gr8, I will go ahead and have a play around.

 

In theory this open source solution appears ideal, I v much like the idea of sharing knowledge & experience in this kind of way. As well as the fact that there is such a large amount of development going into oscommerce from many different individuals etc makes it appear a much more exciting solution than my present one.

 

my site is http://www.telecoms.co.uk if anyone see's any obvious areas that I'm lacking as a result of my ecommerce package I would be interested to hear.

Thank you all for the help :D

[mattice]

I think you can rebuild that site on osCommerce fairly easy.

You'll have to use some contributions though, mainly for the bulletinboard.

I even think the default osCommerce navigation will improve finding products on your site although I personally do not like osCommerce 'expanding' categories box.

 

and as for comments:

 

Installer Section - we are adding a FREE installer section to the site on November 1

 

Time to change that :D

 

The good thing about Open Source is you get FULL control of the sources.

So you can adapt them / hire someone to adapt them for you exactly as YOU want it to be, not as some vendor thinks it should be.

 

Let us know what your findings are,

Mattice

[Adam]

From one Adam to the another!

 

We recently made exactly the move that you are contemplating Actinic to osCommerce. Why? Flexibility, flexibility, flexibility!

 

Tonight, I just emailed every customer who has bought a product in December a ?10 gift voucher which they can redeem, hopefully in January against more products. You can only dream of that in Actinic. It's part of Ian Wilson's brilliant 'add-on' or contribution as we call it here.

 

Next week I will be attempting to add the excellent affiliate contribution from the Snowman and Henri. I can build up an affiliate network of my own, manage it, set my own rates, etc, etc. If you are using Actinic dream on maybe when they get around to it, if they have to, one day, possibly someone at Actinic might do it.

 

Using phpMyAdmin I can create tab delim files of our catalog and use third parties such as Altura to stream these into Lycos shopping, etc. If you are using Actinic you get to do that by hand, manually.

 

Sounds good, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. The sky is the limit.

 

But, and I stress but, to make the most of it you have got to invest a bit of time learning the basics of mySQL, PHP, HTML. I would argue that it's about time that people who make a living on the net know more about the technology that underpins it. It's not as easy - point and clicky - as Actinic, but once you get to grips with it you can build features that only the Amazon.com's usually have.

 

This might sound sad, the only area that I find Actinic does better than osCommerce in is search engine positioning. Because Actinic produces standard html it is very search engine friendly. Something that osCommerce isn't really yet. (Although probably will be in the next stable release, Im guessing, friendly URL's?!) So I maintain a version of our old actinic site but I built a natty redirect into the Actinic templates to bring customers to my new osCommerce site, while Actinic keeps the search positions going. Glad I'm not wasting the money that we spent on it.

 

One last point, although some of our senior posters can get a bit prickly if you use terms like 'Share Ware' out of context, they are amazingly helpful. Any questions that you have will be answered. Further, as I have discovered recently, some (Linda McGrath, thanks again!) will actually spend time on your site trying to help you out. Can you imagine anyone at Actinic saying 'Ok give me the URL and I'll try and fix it for you'. No.

 

Finally there is information on the development of the product, where the core team under Harald are going next and what they hope to achieve for the product. You actually feel a part of the community, involved. I care what happens to this product and I care about the people who are involved in developing and shaping it. Although I have done no development I am actually quite proud of the product. You don't get that with Actinic, do you?

 

Make the change, learn the technology - you'll never look back, promise.

[Aqua121]

gr8, I will go ahead and have a play around.

 

In theory this open source solution appears ideal, I v much like the idea of sharing knowledge & experience in this kind of way.

 

 

I haven't read all the comments above, but you won't be disappointed if you try OSC!

 

great store, lots of contributions, huge community

what else do you need? :wink:

 

Have Fun!

see you around! :D

[Aqua121]

oh, and don't forget to check out the Showcase for many great looking stores there!

You'll get lots of ideas fromm seeing how people use / change their stores. :wink:

[seanpaul]

Quite right you don't get that with Actinic. In defence of Actinic it is a sturdy secure solution for ecommerce especially if codings not your thing but as weve established its not v versatile and the direction of the products development is not clear.

 

I have to say I am sold on the theory of oscommerce. Now comes the tricky bit. I have downloaded the snapshot so its time to play around.

 

Am sure I'll be back with technical queries.

 

Thanks all for the input :D

[microsuperstore]

Sorry to but in to this thread..

 

I just found the oscommerce website and I am amazed with this product. We currently use Actinic on numerous ecommerce sites.

 

Oscommerce looks brilliant but I can't understand what oscommerce get out of offering free software. Some of the threads I have read state Oscommerce is free is this true ? If so how can it be free ?

 

Can somebody please explain because I also want to upgrade to Oscommerce from actinic

[Harald Ponce de Leon]

Oscommerce looks brilliant but I can't understand what oscommerce get out of offering free software. Some of the threads I have read state Oscommerce is free is this true ? If so how can it be free ?  

 

Can somebody please explain because I also want to upgrade to Oscommerce from actinic

 

Before getting a straight answer, could you inform me of what text on the support site confuses you as to how this project is for free?

 

The areas I am talking about mainly exist in the About section of the support site.

 

This provides us a possibility to improve the description of what this project is about to provide a clearer definition to the general public.

[microsuperstore]

The text doesnt confuse me..its the concept. How do you make a profit ? How do you make any money ?

 

So sorry to sound dumb but Ive been sppon fed with Microsoft products (and the rest) all my working life and all this open source stuff amazes me.. it just sounds too good to be true

 

So basically I can download oscommerce use it on all my websites and not pay anyone a penny ? (currently pay ?349 for 1 actinic liceance)

[Aodhan]

The text doesnt confuse me..its the concept. How do you make a profit ? How do you make any money ?  

 

So sorry to sound dumb but Ive been sppon fed with Microsoft products (and the rest) all my working life and all this open source stuff amazes me.. it just sounds too good to be true

 

So basically I can download oscommerce use it on all my websites and not pay anyone a penny ? (currently pay ?349 for 1 actinic liceance)

 

Basically, yes. I sent you an email with a little more detail, but I would suggest going out to google or a variant and searching for GNU/GPL, and reading a little on the open source concept :)

 

Aodhan

[mattice]

So basically I can download oscommerce use it on all my websites and not pay anyone a penny ? (currently pay ?349 for 1 actinic liceance)

 

Welcome to the wonderfull world of Open Source...

Say hello to Bill (or Steve nowadays) from us will you? :D

[Harald Ponce de Leon]

The text doesnt confuse me..its the concept. How do you make a profit ? How do you make any money ?  

 

So sorry to sound dumb but Ive been sppon fed with Microsoft products (and the rest) all my working life and all this open source stuff amazes me.. it just sounds too good to be true

 

So basically I can download oscommerce use it on all my websites and not pay anyone a penny ? (currently pay ?349 for 1 actinic liceance)

 

Speaking of pounds, osCommerce will cost you ?0.00 :D

 

Actinic, much like every commercial ecommerce solutions provider, sell licenses to their products, solutions, and services. As stated on the front page of our support site, there are no license fees involved with this project. The only thing the project will cost you is your time learning it :)

 

Here is a snippet from our Philosophy page that explains our motivations:

 

The motivation for working on Open Source software originate at different sources, which include working on the software for fun as a hobby, to make the software meet requirements, and to bring commercial interest into the software.

 

However, one main motivation from store owners who setup shops are to make a profit. We increase that profit by making the solution free, and hope the store owner is kind enough to donate to the team developers and/or remain active in the community by helping others out or providing their extra features back to the community for others to use.

 

This shouldn't be seen as a take only opportunity, but thats the moral side of things. Your freedoms with the project lay with the GNU General Public License, as that's what the project is released under.