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View Full Version : How long does OSCommerce take to configure?

Dabrowski
11-7-04, 12:50 PM
Other than designing a website around it, how long does it take to configure and get an OSCommerce store working?

I'm becoming more familiar with PHP and mySQL, and I'm considering hitching a client who would probably want to sell online. They already accept credit cards, so hooking up to that account shouldn't be too difficult, right?

I saw that OSCommerce sites kind of have the same set up as Nuke sites, in that you can see the template. And the rest of the site pages are secondary to the catalog navigation. Does the flexibility exist to make the site very unique? And does OSCommerce have similar security problems? I just hear that Nuke is basically an invitation to hackers, so I was just wondering.

So I would just like to get a general idea of how long this stuff takes so I can give a good quote.

Thanks.
tacimala
11-7-04, 01:30 PM
As far as giving them a project timeline, I broke down my last proposal into different areas. Site design, shopping cart and e-commerce integration with design, credit card processing setup, shipping and taxes setup, content management, testing and quality assurance, and project management and training.

You really need to find out how much work they are going to want you to do for each area and then you can base your pricing accordingly. Explain about how this will give them the default options and adding modules and making the site work outside of those default options will also raise the price. You really need to lay this out in a contract or else it could take you a really long time to please them!

Making the site unique can definitely be done but it just requires you to edit a lot of the pages. Best bet is to strip it down initially and get rid of everything they won't use. If they don't plan on doing any type of international orders, delete the different languages right away, no need for them. Once you strip out those pages that you don't need just edit the header and footer to your needs and then you can see the page start forming. Just make sure you only have one set of <html>, <head>, and <body> tags though when the page loads. On the last site I made we switched around where those were called up so it required a little more editing. Once you start playing though you can really customize it as much as you want.

As far as security, PowWeb now makes it very easy to use SSL on the form pages and you can also secure the admin section of the site very easily to be viewed under an SSL connection behind an .htaccess/.htpasswd passworded section.

As far as the hours for the entire job, that mainly depends on your client. Find out what they need and base your proposal and income on that using the different sections I gave in the first paragraph. You might under or overshoot on this first one, but you'll get better at it as you go along.
stevel
11-7-04, 01:46 PM
osCommerce 2.2-MS2 has no known security vulnerabilities. But it does have some configuration issues you need to take care of:

1. Secure the admin folder with .htacess password protection. In addition, I recommend renaming "admin" to something else - doesn't matter what, as long as you know it. I get a lot of people trying my store's admin folder, but they get 404s....
2. Remove admin/file_manager.php - it is a disaster waiting to happen.
3. Be sure to pick difficult to guess passwords for your site's Member Operations login, ftp login and admin password.

You can get a stock osC site online in a few hours - but you won't want to leave it that way. Customizing osC can be very time-consuming. If you don't mind the standard layout, and just want to tweak graphics, colors, font, and what pieces go where, there are a few common files you edit and the rest falls into place. See my Cheshire Garden site for an example of this.

There are "template" contributions which can let you graft osC onto an existing design, within limits. I have not used these myself.

If you know PHP reasonably well, and the customer's requirements for store design aren't too bizarre, you can probably do a good job in 3-4 weeks. A lot of this is experimentation, and looking at various contributions to see which appeal to you.
Jade Dragon
11-7-04, 05:46 PM
*setup a stock osc 2-4 hours. (configuration, securing, basic entries in the admin panel)

*change colors and graphics around the boxes, and a header - still using their code. 1-2 hours if you are good at css.

* setting up text for main page, shipping, policy, etc. another 1-2 hours. You *will* get errors when trying to edit these stupid things. :rolleyes: The php parses the pages to strict html only. And errant ' or whitespace can really through things out of wack.

* customizing the layout and output of the various scripts. At *least* 20 hours to more than 60 hours.

* teaching your customer how to use it. many many hours going back and forth. I usually try to either sit down with them if they are local, or do an online chat session for quick one-on-one questions. Plan a minimum of 1 hour if the people are computer litterate and upto 4 hours for those more challenged. ;)

Above all else, you will need patience to work through the files. Even one seemingly basic change could have you editing a dozen files.

=)
Jade