Is OSCommerce the solution for me?

[psage]

I am trying to find a platform that will let us migrate away from Yahoo Store. Yahoo Store, although it has lots of problems, does have some features which seem to be difficult to find elsewhere.

 

So I'm trying to get an idea of which of these features OSCommerce has or can easily be made to have, and which it doesn't have and can't be easily made to have.

 

Thanks for any help.

 

Features:

- ability to fully customize the look and feel of the site to be exactly like our existing site

- ability to use arbitrary HTML and include files (php include or ssi, etc.)

- static pages (for search engine optimization).

- URLs which are the same as our existing URLs (ie: www.hostename.com/productname.html)

- cart which does not require customer to create an account before purchasing

- can allow different levels of free shipping for different order quantities

- ability to restrict shipping options by destination

- ability to restrict order by country

- ability to do an AUTHORIZE and AVS verify at time of purchase, then send the resulting order with AVS return status in a simple XML format to our fulfillment partner via HTTPS post. This system must not lose any orders if communications is down.

- ability to receive shipment status from fulfillment partner, and to then CHARGE orders which were fulfilled.

- ability to receive inventory information from fulfillment partner via http(s) query.

- ability to modify orders

- ability to set discount prices

 

Reporting:

- ability to see (preferably in graphical as well as tabular form), for any given time period:

# orders

# unique users

orders/user (to see conversion rate)

revenue

#carts (to see cart abandonment rate)

#pageviews

#pageviews/user

- sortable list of referrers

- click trails (preferably ability to view all clicktrails, just clicktrails which resulted in an add-to-cart, just clicktrails which resulted in an order.

- ability to see, when looking at an order, if the order is from a repeat customer (this means we don't have to verify address again if we have experience with them).

- ability to see, when looking at an order, what the referrerring URL for the order was

[Guest]

yes, but you'll have to search through the contributions to see which user-contributed modifications will bolt-on to osCommerce to get the functionality you're looking for.

 

You see, that's the beauty of it. It'll do anything you want; because you (or someone else) can code it in if it's not there already.

 

-jared

[burt]

- ability to fully customize the look and feel of the site to be exactly like our existing site

Yes.

 

- ability to use arbitrary HTML and include files (php include or ssi, etc.)

No.

 

- static pages (for search engine optimization).

No.

 

- URLs which are the same as our existing URLs (ie: www.hostename.com/productname.html)

No.

 

- cart which does not require customer to create an account before purchasing

No.

 

- can allow different levels of free shipping for different order quantities

Yes.

 

- ability to restrict shipping options by destination

No.

 

- ability to restrict order by country

No.

 

- ability to do an AUTHORIZE and AVS verify at time of purchase, then send the resulting order with AVS return status in a simple XML format to our fulfillment partner via HTTPS post. This system must not lose any orders if communications is down.

No.

 

- ability to receive shipment status from fulfillment partner, and to then CHARGE orders which were fulfilled.

No.

 

 

- ability to receive inventory information from fulfillment partner via http(s) query.

No.

 

- ability to modify orders

No.

 

- ability to set discount prices

No.

 

- ability to see (preferably in graphical as well as tabular form), for any given time period:

# orders

# unique users

No.

 

orders/user (to see conversion rate)

revenue

#carts (to see cart abandonment rate)

#pageviews

#pageviews/user

No.

 

- sortable list of referrers

No.

 

- click trails (preferably ability to view all clicktrails, just clicktrails which resulted in an add-to-cart, just clicktrails which resulted in an order.

No.

 

- ability to see, when looking at an order, if the order is from a repeat customer (this means we don't have to verify address again if we have experience with them).

No.

 

- ability to see, when looking at an order, what the referrerring URL for the order was

No.

 

All answered from a base install of Oscommerce. To change "no" to "yes" for any of these would require extra work in the form of adding already made contributions and paying for new modules to be made, also possibly by thinking abstractly within the base modules (particularly for your shipping needs).

[psage]

Thanks for the replies.

 

I know that anything can be coded, because anything can be coded from scratch!

 

The question is: what can be done fairly easily in OSCommerce?

 

What would be really helpful would be to know which contributed modules do any meaningful subset of what I need to do, so that I can get an idea of:

 

- how much would have to be written from scratch

- how much is already there

- how many modules would have to be added and what each one does

 

I am trying to get an idea of the size and complexity of doing what I need to do. If it's a 1 week integration task that's very different from a 2 year development task!

 

Thanks for any help.

[WS Evolution]

Looks like four -> six weeks work ... many of your requirements should be available as contributions, others can be coded with a little PHP & OSC experience and some are not practical at all with OSC.

 

Look through the contributions available and the OSC documentation..

[psage]

Looks like four -> six weeks work ... many of your requirements should be available as contributions, others can be coded with a little PHP & OSC experience and some are not practical at all with OSC.

It would be very helpful if you could say which are not practical!

 

Thanks again!

[Guest]

impractical:

- static pages. all osC pages are PHP, dynamically generated based, but are just fine for search engines (including Google)

- URLs that are the same as existing URLs. PHP pages will have a .php extension, not an .html extension. If you're worried about 404 errors, there are contributions that will allow you to return site search results for the words in the non-existent path rather than simply return "page not found."

 

much of the other items can be done through customization. It's difficult to decide if the cost of implementation (time, programming expertise, etc) is worth the results. That's a question only you can answer.

[psage]

impractical:

- static pages.  all osC pages are PHP, dynamically generated based, but are just fine for search engines (including Google)

Actually, the latest info from the search engine conference is that many search engines, notably Yahoo, still don't like URLs with query strings in them.

 

Could mod_rewrite be used to "fix" this and map the URLs we have been using to the query string based URLS of OSC?

 

- URLs that are the same as existing URLs.  PHP pages will have a .php extension, not an .html extension.

 

.html can be remapped to .php in the types of apache, as I recall. Would that work with OSC or is there some reason it wouldn't?

 

much of the other items can be done through customization.  It's difficult to decide if the cost of implementation (time, programming expertise, etc) is worth the results.  That's a question only you can answer.

 

The problem is that I can't answer that question, because I still have no idea what the cost of implementation would be, even in very general terms.

 

That's why I'm asking here (and still hope to find out) what things would need to be developed, what's already there, and how difficult the development tasks would be.

 

Thanks again!

[Acheron]

Sounds like you're looking for that magical answer that no one can provide. Nearly everything you have asked about can be done with osC with little more than your time. Most of the issue ahve already been addressed through contributions but many of the contributions will take some time to implement, particularly b/c few of them have perfect install instructions and even if they did, some mods cause other mods not to work 'out-of-the-box.'

 

Really it's an issue of whether or not you can and are willing to spend the time. It will be a good deal of work, without a doubt. However, you will be left with a store that is much nicer looking than those sub-standard Yahoo template stores and much more functionally diverse (imho) than an HTML site.

 

If you want to know what's been developed and what needs to be, visit the contributions section as a number of people have already suggested. There's a link on your top right and a search engine to get you through it.