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osCommerce

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Commercial Cart vs. osCommerce & 2checkout vs. PayPal


ComposerDainis

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Posted

Hello All!

 

I'm new to osCommerce and the idea of free, community-developed software. My first experience with such software was with http://audacity.sourceforge.net/, and I am quite pleased with the philosophical premise, the sense of empowerment, and the results...so let's see what osCommerce can do!

 

My topic could really be divided into several posts, but I hope it will be OK for me to just describe my situation and see what folks think.

 

SHIPPING

I've recently activated my studio project's website at http://www.bloomfront.com. It's a music project, and I would like to sell our CD online. Upon configuring PayPal, I realized that I had a real problem with calculating shipping costs. My fans are located in several countries, and I want to be able to give them shipping options. Also, my target audience expects a high level of professionalism, so an option like "4.95" for international shipping doesn't quite cut it.

 

So, I located http://www.webmastercart.com and http://www.cyberstrong.com/ before coming across osCommerce. The commercial carts seem to offer extensive features (http://www.webmastercart.com/features.html), and Cyberstrong also creates a search engine page (http://www.cyberstrong.com/eshop/engines.asp). I realize that osCommerce has a http://www.oscommerce.com/about/features page, however, I'm new here, and I've been wading, wading, wading, and wading through ecommerce options for just over a week now, and I guess I'm ready to have someone else wade through my rambling (if you can stand it), and maybe give me some advice.

 

The main thing I want to do is give my fans accurate shipping options, the model against which I am comparing osCommerce is described at http://www.cyberstrong.com/eshop/shipping.asp. Basically, do the osCommerce shipping modules do the same thing? The customer selects the number of CD's to buy (usually 1); enters his/her address info and whether the CD should be gift wrapped (plus a notes field for a card with the CD); the system calculates shipping according to weight at USPS, UPS, and maybe FedEx; the customer selects the shipping method and completes a secure payment.

 

2CHECKOUT VS. PAYPAL

OK, so I've read horror stories about both, with 2checkout seeming to be the lesser evil (am I right?). Still, I need to be straightforward here, with my fan base, I'm looking at, I'd say, a "sure sale" of about 300 CD's (and that in the first couple months). I'm looking into marketing strategies (any suggestions?), but I simply do not have a guaranteed sales volume. I've trodded through so many ecommerce solutions, it's making me dizzy! At any rate, am I right in saying that it's either about $50 a month + a per transaction percentage, or I need to go with either 2checkout or PayPal?

 

What if someone gets a damaged CD? What if some psycho-fan (sorry, but they are out there, and it's very sad what they can do...) complains to PayPal or 2Checkout, and all of a sudden, I don't have access to the funds to be able to ship?

 

So, which combination do you guys suggest for me? osCommerce + PayPal or 2Checkout or another service? Do you suggest that I pay for a shopping cart, to process the shipping charges?

 

I understand that this is a long email, and if you've gotten this far...thanks!

 

Sincerely,

Dainis

Posted

I think osCommerce is perfect for what you are looking to accomplish.

 

If you pay for a shopping cart, you will still need to customize the cart for your needs. If you run into a problem trying to customize it, you will probably need to pay to get the help. I have never looked at the other carts you speak of, but I assume their community is not as large as the community here at osCommerce. Even if they are, they will probably charge you for customizations.

 

osCommerce is free. It also has this great community to help you with any problems that may arise while you customize it to fit your needs.

 

PayPal v 2Checkout... I cannot give you much advice on this one. 2checkout does not accept my personal or business credit card (I have no idea why and there support does not answer my emails). Paypal is available to most users, but they do not work in all countries.

 

For a small shop such as yours, osCommerce will get the job done.

 

Regards

Wayne Wetterhahn

Posted

Thank you for your reply...well, well, it looks like I'm going to delve into osCommerce, then. My needs are:

 

1) Live shipping calculations

2) Gift wrap option

3) Payment system does not require a "sign up"

4) Pay per transaction

 

So, osCommerce will work for #1&2. Are there any other thoughts out there, warnings, or examples of sites using osCommerce that do what I need mine to do? I'll check around as well.

 

Any suggestions out there for #3&4?

 

Thanks Wayne,

Dainis

Posted

Hi Greg,

 

What I mean by pay per transaction is a PayPal or 2Checkout type of solution. Am I right that merchant accounts are generally about $50 per month? I don't want to pay $50 per month to sell my initial run of 1,000 CD's. I prefert to "pay per transaction" for now. It seems that PayPal and 2Checkout are the only reputable options for such online CC sales, and that PayPal is caught up in several lawsuits. Should I avoid PayPal and go with 2Checkout? Any thoughts, suggestions, recommendations?

 

Also, I have to say that I'm getting cold feet on using osCommerce. I just downloaded the "daily snapshot" for today, and I've been surfing around reading about "crazy product weights" and all kinds of other problems. I've spent a number of years in technical writing, training, and web development, so I'm fairly technically adept, but I'm not a programmer, I've always been an "end user advocate," and I really don't want to get into a development nightmare with osCommerce.

 

Will I be able to implement osCommerce and do live shipping calculations with a gift-wrapping option?

 

Any sites out there doing live shipping calculations with USPS or UPS lookup?

 

--Dainis

Posted

I am new to os but have used 2 checkout for several years with no problems

 

also PayPal the customer has to register 1st before they can pay with paypal and from what I have read chargebacks are high with paypal

Posted

Hey Dainis,

 

Thanks for clarifying that for me.

Yes, merchant accounts are very expensive to use unless you have the volume of business to offset the costs. Paypal, 2Checkout, and C2it would probably be your best bet. All of them have their advantages and disadvantages. I've been using paypal for several years and have never had a problem with them at all. I would suggest you check out all 3 options and decide whcih one(s) would best suit your needs. I wouldn't go with a full merchant account until you have developed a very steady monthly business. With regards to Paypal's lawsuits....don't worry about that. Their always in some kind of lawsuit. Just a drawback from being one of the most popular e-payment companies in the market, however it hasn't (by what I can see) affected their service level in any way. With regards to M4's comment about chargebacks....all credit card companies chargebacks are high, just Paypal's are made a little more public than private CC carriers, and it's much easier to submit chargebacks with paypal. No disrespect intended towards M4 but have you ever read anything about say...Citibank's level of chargebacks?? I'm sure they're high. Don't get me wrong...I'm not promoting the use of paypal and/or any other form of payment options, as I said, all have their advantages and disadvantages, you need to weigh the options and decide what best suits your needs and financial position.

 

With regards to the shipping stuff. Both of the shipping modules you inquired about contained within OSC are calculating shipping costs directly from the appropriate websites. Please keep in mind that shipping cost will most likely be just "estimates" as most packaging varies according to the product(s) ordered and quantities. This is true of ALL shopping cart systems. I just did a test calculation on a product from my store. I configured OSC to be exactly what I entered into UPS's website and the shipping costs came out to be exactly the same (with the exception of the $2.00 handling fee I have built in) So shipping costs should not be a problem for you. As far as gift wrapping option....There's a contribution out there that would provide that for you also.

 

In my opinion.....Don't get cold feet with OSC. I'm in the process of switching my cart system to OSC right now. I've used others and looked at many, and I must say that for the price (and even if it cost $$$) This is an absolutely incredible cart system. Yes, OSC is experiencing growing pains as Harald and the rest of the crew are streamlining the code, however for the flexibility it offers and the dynamite user base creating all these wonderful contributions, I personally feel you can't go wrong with it!

 

Hope this helps a little more!

Greg

I only do what my Rice Krispies tell me to do!

Posted

Let me address some of your other concers from your first post......

 

What if someone gets a damaged CD?

Check out the RMA contribution to handle this:

http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,1136

 

What if some psycho-fan (sorry, but they are out there, and it's very sad what they can do...) complains to PayPal or 2Checkout, and all of a sudden, I don't have access to the funds to be able to ship?

What if they complain to their private CC company...the funds will get frozen for a while until the issue is resolved. Paypal and 2checkout will only freeze the funds in question. Not a problem

 

If you pay for a shopping cart, you will still need to customize the cart for your needs. If you run into a problem trying to customize it, you will probably need to pay to get the help. I have never looked at the other carts you speak of, but I assume their community is not as large as the community here at osCommerce. Even if they are, they will probably charge you for customizations.

 

osCommerce is free. It also has this great community to help you with any problems that may arise while you customize it to fit your needs.

I think Wayne pretty much said it all here!

 

As I mentioned earlier, I'm in the process of converting my cart to OSC, so I'm kinda new to the system myself. However, in my opinion, Harald and the crew have done a superb job with it, and it just rocks!

 

Greg

I only do what my Rice Krispies tell me to do!

Posted

OK, Wayne, Greg, I'm slippin' on down the osCommerce slope, getting lulled by your words of encouragement...

 

At any rate, I just lost a post, so here's the info again.

 

From http://wiki.oscommerce.com/helpInstallNew:

Using phpMyAdmin or other tool, create your database and user, and assign that user to the database. Write down the name of the database, login, and password for this database for the install fields later on.

 

...never used phpMyAdmin before, but OK, I looked it up and downloaded it.

 

http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/progra.../tutorial4.html says I need both PHP and MySQL, is that right?

 

Also, my site is on an NT server, so it will take 3-4 business days for my ISP to convert the site to UNIX.

 

Can I install oscommerce, php, phpMyAdmin, and MySQL on my machine (Win2k) as a test environment while I wait? Is that all I'll need, or will I need anything else?

 

Sincerely,

Dainis

Posted

Sorry, can't help ya with that one...I'm not an NT person, however, once your hosting provider gets ya converted, you should have all the tools and utilities you need with the account. If you don't, you should look into another web host. I can give you a recommendation if you need one!

 

Just doing some quick research, looks like MySQL can be loaded into an NT system, however I'm not sure about PHP and phpMyAdmin. You may be looking at a much bigger task than you want to undertake for testing purposes.

 

Greg

I only do what my Rice Krispies tell me to do!

Posted

I probably shouldn't poke my nose in, but..... I have no practical programming experience and before OSC I knew nothing about shopping carts,PHP, MYSQL,etc...I had my store up and running in a couple days. It took forever to add all my products 1800+(I had to enter every one by hand). I got a lot of great help here in the forums to overcome all of the problems I ran into, which weren't really that much. Now I've been able to add a bunch of contributions without any problems. The point is, if someone as technically inept as me can do this, it should be a breeze for you. This is by far the best program and support forum I have ever seen.

Posted

Hi Dainis,

 

Yes .. you can set up your osCommerce store on a Windows system and then transfer the store to a UNIX server system. You'll need to make adjustments with the following files:

 

/catalog/includes/configure.php

/catalog/admin/includes/configure.php

 

Within these files, you'll need to adjust the parameters of the system such as where certain directories are located and what database the store is using and of course the password to access the database. Pretty simple really. Unfortunately, I don't have the reference info for you to look up but there's lots of info in both the WIKI and this forum.

 

I installed the osCommerce on my Windows 2000 Pro. I used the following method (downloaded and installed):

 

1) Apache HTTPD Server. I didn't want to use any Microsoft products as I was going to transfer the store to a UNIX server. Apache HTTPD Server is a Web Server. Similiar to Microsoft's IIS or Personal Web Server.

http://www.apache.org/dyn/closer.cgi

 

2) PHP Server (extension I think). This allowed me to run PHP code on my Windows system. Most UNIX systems already have this installed but Windows doesn't.

http://www.php.net/downloads.php

 

3) MySQL Database Server. Again, I wanted to stay consistent with systems set up on a UNIX server and therefore did not want to use other products or databases.

http://www.mysql.com/downloads/index.html

 

4) phpMyAdmin. This is an easy to use interface between you and the MySQL database(s).

http://www.phpmyadmin.net/

 

Install all the above and you pretty well have all the tools you need to set up a store on your Windows machine. You may have noticed that you didn't have to buy any of the products you downloaded and installed. These products are very powerful and well supported by the Internet community. This is one of the reasons for it's continuing growth and success.

 

I hope this helps,

 

 

Dave

http://www.netfrog.ca

Make it your next Internet hop!

Posted

Thank you for your comments, they really help. Yes, I went ahead and placed the request to transfer from NT to UNIX.

 

At mrsfieldsgoodies.com, you write

"When you proceed with making your online purchase, you will be transferred to the Paypal site where your transaction will be processed. In order to purchase here you will need a PayPal account, if you do not have one, relax. It takes only a few seconds, its free and best of all its the safest and most secure service in the world."

 

How long have you been online? Have you had any problems with PayPal? What about all of the warnings at paypalsucks.com and nopaypal, etc. etc. etc.?

 

Just as a "return favor," I was cruising through your site, and I decided to go through to the point where I would be paying by PayPal. I got to the payment section, and, presto:

 

"Parse error: parse error, unexpected '}' in /home/mrsfield/public_html/checkout_confirmation.php on line 277"

 

I'm going to go ahead and try osCommerce, but I really want a good customer experience.

 

Thanks for your comments, it really does seem like this forum is pretty active!

 

--Dainis

  • 1 month later...
Posted

Hi,

 

I'm starting to run into some real problems with osCommerce and the forum. No one is responding about "media rate," and it seems like the issue has been completely ignored by osCommerce for over a year. There are several posts with folks looking to implement the "media rate," and I can't find any with adequate responses -- actually, many have no responses.

 

Now, it seems like I'm being accused of:

The problem these days is that people expect open source programmers to write mod explicitly for them, and for free. That's not being very realistic.

and possibly even bullied into paying to have "media rate" work on my single product store.

 

You were all very positive with your help in the beginning, and I relied on the posts made to this thread in making my decision to use osCommerce. It's true that I didn't mention the term "media rate" in my initial posts, but at that time, I didn't know that a "media rate" existed -- and I did make it clear that I'd be shipping a music CD and that I need accurate shipping costs -- so I figure my need for "media rate" would have been pretty obvious to the more experienced folks on the forum.

 

My posts about media rate have basically been ignored as well, and I hope very much that you guys will be able to help me out.

 

Sincerely,

Dainis W. Michel

Posted

It looks like there's some interest in getting media rate to work -- grrrreat! I've now learned that "media rate" has not been in existence very long.

 

So, my statement:

No one is responding about "media rate," and it seems like the issue has been completely ignored by osCommerce for over a year.
is now false, and I'm hoping that the forum will forgive me for getting upset.

 

Honestly, I felt like I was in a "bait and switch" situation, and I am now seeing that there are people out there willing to help. Sorry for misjudging the forum.

 

Sincerely,

Dainis

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