Help Needed-Lost job in Recession!

jtmorrissey

Hi All
I'm trying to establish without much luck what freeware program would provide me with the tools to start a fairly standard information based website which also has online retail functionality. Basicly i need a free web development tool reccomended primarily and also a reccomendation on a shop that i can integrate into this website. A fairly intuitive Web Dev program would be great as I'm no expert..yet

Thanks
J

jhegarty

http://www.oscommerce.com/ should do the job.

Axwell

Just be sure if you do choose it that you get the latest version and patches cos it can be buggy.

jtmorrissey

Lads thanks for the help. Greatly appreciated. When I make my first million i'll come looking for ye

forbairt

I'd say to steer clear of oscommerce to be honest ... steaming pile of .. *coughs*.

Its in
- osCommerce Online Merchant v2.2 RC 2a
- v3.0 Alpha 5
so a release candidate and an Alpha release and these are the two versions available ... erm...

If you're really set on using oscommerce look at one of the alternative flavours of it even the commercial versions it'll save you a hell of a lot of time code hacking. ( Basially when you start wanting to hack it you're into a world of pain )

Take a look at Magento Commerce http://www.magentocommerce.com/ steeper learning curve ... much shinier though

jtmorrissey

Thanks Fobairt, I'm no expert so if any one thinks they can advise better than OSCOMMERCE please do!!
Not having to learn to use the product for a few monthS would be a great advantage, although a shiny looking website is always good!!

forbairt

jtmorrissey wrote: »

Thanks Fobairt, I'm no expert so if any one thinks they can advise better than OSCOMMERCE please do!!
Not having to learn to use the product for a few monthS would be a great advantage, although a shiny looking website is always good!!

Default magento install will basically have you up and running pretty handily ... after this .. you can

1: Buy a template
2: Start Hacking things your own way
3: Get someone to do it for you

I was hacking an oscommerce site for a client before and I kept on holding off cus it really was a steaming pile ... (all the plugins ... compatibility issues .. tables use ... lack of proper mvc framework ... embedded styles / padding ... nested tables and so on) nightmare ...

jtmorrissey

How much would that cost Fobairt? Like i've serious cash flow issues so a bit cash outlay is a problem.

Cheers

forbairt

looking at your basic costs here

1: Domain (probably want to get .com and .ie ... therefore about 32 quid)
2: Hosting (probably about 50ish quid a year go irish if your market is irish .. can't recommend hosting on here unfortunately)
3: Magento - Is open source and free to use

Getting it up and running .. your time.

4: SSL cert .. probably cost erm not sure of costs at moment 100 - 200 quid a year

5: There are free templates out there for magento .. may require a link back to the creator of the template

Basically you're looking at a fair bit of your time to get it up and running as you've not much of a background.

Approaching a webdev / company you're going to be looking at anywhere from 1k - 25k .. its the old .. how long is a piece of string question.

jtmorrissey

Thanks for all the help Fobairt

jtmorrissey

Sorry i mean Forbairt

Eoin

What about online payments - do you have a merchant account jtmorrisey?

b.m.s

Hi all, thanks for the replies...working on this thing with JT so have a few questions as well..

By these merchant accounts do you mean things like PayPal etc, can all these types of add ons be easily incorporated into these open souce programs??

Also are they pretty scalable, eg can we start small but add in differnet elements like blogs, message boards, photo albums etc...

Eoin

A merchant account is when you can accept credit card payments directly. If you don't have one, then you would use something like paypal or 2checkout. Most open source eCommerce apps will have support for these payment gateways by default, and the payment gateways themselves will often have a patch you can install on some open source eCommerce apps.

Also are they pretty scalable, eg can we start small but add in differnet elements like blogs, message boards, photo albums etc...

Obviously you can just install a new application to your website in a different folder. This is the easy part. But integrating them all might be the tricky part.

nellyshark

Would the site be mostly content based or cart based?

I suppose I'm querying what you mean "fairly standard information based website which also has online retail functionality"