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osCommerce

The e-commerce.

Utterly and Hopelessly Lost


kcskorner

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Oscommerce came as a part of my hosting service, Vendio Webhosting. When in my administration panel, I click on scripts then oscommerce and your administration page comes up. I add products, edit them and they disappear. When I view the store, it's a sample store. I then downloaded from your site and my computer won't open the installation file - it wants to go onto the Internet to find a program to open it.

 

I'm lost. Is this a real store, or a sample store? How do I make changes to the look and add content such as FAQ, Company Information, etc.? Is there any sort of beginners manual anywhere? If this is a real store and not a sample store, where are the files I need to upload to my server?

 

This is my first attempt at creating a store and my frustration level, as you can imagine, it reaching new heights.

 

In other words - how do I do this "easy to use" ecommerce shopping cart program?

 

A (young) grandma lost in Cleveland,

Cheryl

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Young Grandma,

 

I am in the same boat. I have added couple of products to my "store". Now, I can't even find my store or its URL! Yeah, that sample store is awfully confusing. You don't know what to make of it. To make matters worse, it is now showing a product I added to "my" store. It is gonna be a long road.

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for your ease of mind, and to make sure you have things setup properly, download the latest from here, osCommerce. Some hosts have an older version and it will create problems down the road.

 

In the Wiki documentation it shows the proper installation procedures, etc.

 

On another note, I am going to be in Cleveland next weekend! visiting a customer there, helping them setup their network and store.

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Since my hosting service is literally brand new, I'm fairly certain it's the newest version. For being "easy to use" it's very difficult. A help screen for each screen of setup would be very helpful. If you are going to advertise this as an easy store to set up, it needs to be one where you don't have to know all this computer jargon. I think I'll go back to my old shopping cart program that takes about 10 seconds to add products to. No where can I find a manual that remotely helps me out here.

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I agree Cheryl..

 

I was commenting on this last night to a friend.. this really is almost impossible to use if you're not a programmer. (Note I say 'almost' impossible).

 

Something needs to be done about that.

 

A perfect example of what I mean is the templating. In short - there isn't one. All the HTML is intimately tied to the core installation itself.

 

That's a no-no.

 

Edited to add:

 

By the way, what current shopping cart are you using? Please send me a Private Message to answer - I don't want your response to be construed as advertising here.

 

Just below my post there's a "PM" button.

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I'll probably be lynched for saying this but I disagree. I am an IT Professional but not a programmer by any means. I have attempted to use a ton of other php-based shopping programs and osCommerce is by far the easiest to install and configure, even better than the ones I paid for!

 

If you have the latest version, that sample page you see when you first log into the "catalog/index.php" actually tells you where to find the files to change the default looks, etc.

 

I must admit that in order to totally customize the look and feel of the site you need to be pretty savvy with web design or maintenance, but to get it up and running should be fairly straightforward.

 

Get the text editor program EditPlus from www.editplus.com. It makes opening and configuring your php files REALLY easy compared to Notepad.

 

Hope you don't give up, it really is a good product.

 

SM

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Oh! I agree that installation is pretty easy. My beef is with how difficult it is to change the appearance of the site.. and I don't mean text.

 

I mean, changing the actual layout - the site's layout is intimately dependent on the "left column, right column, content" layout, but what if I want "header, left, content, footer" layout?

 

It's not too bad if the changes you want to make are simple..

 

Well, I can't complain too much as it's still great software and I AM a programmer so I know my way around, I just expected it to be easier than it is. Guess I shouldn't have expected that :D

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