20 reasons to switch to osCommerce. Reason 1 - Control

[osCommerce-Official]

My name is Vadym. I'm just one of many of the team osCommerce. It is my birthday in 20 days. And in 2022 we celebrate 20 years since we built our first osCommerce website. So I decided to publish a post every day for 20 days to share why I, personally, see osCommerce as a great Ecommerce platform that more and more people shall use to build their new online shop, and switch to osCommerce from anything else they use. 

It is my personal but also professional opinion and I'm going yo share it with you. Some posts will be short, some long, but they will all contain truthful and nonbiased information. 

osCommerce is the optimal Ecommerce platform for small, medium, and large businesses. 

There are many other Ecommerce platforms and solutions out there. So why choose osCommerce to power your business? 

Reason number one is how osCommerce allows business owners, managers, and staff exercise CONTROL over the Ecommerce website. 

It is not about your normal product catalogue (yes I write it the British way), or site name. Or even content pages. It is about being able to control each and every aspect of the website. To make it exactly the way YOU want it. 

With osCommerce you (or your development partner) are in charge of the look, feel, content, and functionality of your online shop. 

You want to change permissions of your staff who can do what in the back end? Done! 

You want to add a lot, and I mean - a lot of images to the product? Done! Video? Done! 

You want to change the logo, colours, styles? Done! Want to go into CSS - please, be our guest! 

You don't like the "Add to cart" line on the button, and prefer "Add to Bag" - sure, not a problem at all.  

Show tax during the checkout? Sure. Not show it on the invoice? Of course! The other way round (actually makes more sense)? Not a problem at all. 

The site is your oyster, to rephrase the popular saying.

All actions can be performed from its advanced backend, with no or minimal understanding of coding. Even if you use an in-house IT team, they will appreciate the level of control they get without the need to change anything in the code. 

 

 

[GetSirius]

So, you are saying that there are people currently working at osCommerce-Official who were involved in the original version of osCommerce?

[osCommerce-Official]

54 minutes ago, GetSirius said:

So, you are saying that there are people currently working at osCommerce-Official who were involved in the original version of osCommerce?

Not exactly. We built our first site using osCommerce in May 2022. We liked it, so did our clients. That's how our journey with osCommerce had started. 

[freakystreakefc]

I stumbled across this topic and I have to say it's good that you're outlining why people should move to OSCommerce. Sadly though, after a good few weeks since it's official launch, OSC4 is a nightmare to understand straight out of the box and also a challenge to create a store exactly how you want to appear and function. One main area where it fails is the documentation. There are a lot of features included which have no documentation on the official wiki page. The wiki is very bare-bones and most screenshots do not represent the actual release (on the admin side). We (the users) need guidance. This is totally new to the community. I'm impressed with the amount of included features and options, but when you look at them, there's no detail as to what they do or are intended to do.

I have managed to work some stuff out myself but it was a long process. I understand this is a new project and there are some things that will be improved over the next year or so but this has been in development and beta for some time and I feel personally that it will put a lot of potential users off moving to the platform. Please don't feel this is an attack on what you're doing. I really like what you're doing but just if it was explained more with maybe some video tutorials. We haven't worked with this software as long as you guys have so we need more help.

[osCommerce-Official]

8 hours ago, freakystreakefc said:

I stumbled across this topic and I have to say it's good that you're outlining why people should move to OSCommerce. Sadly though, after a good few weeks since it's official launch, OSC4 is a nightmare to understand straight out of the box and also a challenge to create a store exactly how you want to appear and function. One main area where it fails is the documentation. There are a lot of features included which have no documentation on the official wiki page. The wiki is very bare-bones and most screenshots do not represent the actual release (on the admin side). We (the users) need guidance. This is totally new to the community. I'm impressed with the amount of included features and options, but when you look at them, there's no detail as to what they do or are intended to do.

I have managed to work some stuff out myself but it was a long process. I understand this is a new project and there are some things that will be improved over the next year or so but this has been in development and beta for some time and I feel personally that it will put a lot of potential users off moving to the platform. Please don't feel this is an attack on what you're doing. I really like what you're doing but just if it was explained more with maybe some video tutorials. We haven't worked with this software as long as you guys have so we need more help.

Thanks for sharing this! It is important for us to hear back from users (businesses and developers) and ensure they can use all the features, all the benefits of osCommerce.

May I suggest you PM us to organise a quick chat offline to answer such questions.