Breaking the mold of osCommerce

[Dabrowski]

So, could you customize an osC site so that you wouldn't even know it was an osC site? I mean, to the typical user? I found this link ( http://www.fordpartsmall.com/ ) in the live shop list, and it doesn't look like osC. Either the answer to my question is "yes," or this shop is a left-over link that has gone on to another shopping cart. Any input?

Edit: I've been pouring over the live shop links, and there are a lot of link farm-type sites (complete with blocked pop-ups) and dead sites. I might not be surprised to see that the links aren't well maintained. Therefore, who knows if that site is osC. I'd be glad to know if anyone can tell me. Also, maybe provide some links to sites that really do break the mold.

[stevel]

That site is definitely NOT osC. The "live shop" list on the osC site hasn't been maintained in a couple of years.

You can disguise the look of an osC store quite a bit, and many do, but it takes a lot of work. Harder is to disguise things such as filenames and query parameters.

[Dabrowski]

Yeah, I'm only worried about what the web user sees. I'm currently working through it right now, and I don't see why an osC site has to even be recognizable as osC.

How did you conclude that the site wasn't osC? By looking at the URLs? Even that doesn't bother me. When I say "what the web user sees," I just mean cursory viewing. Not analyzing URLs or links or anything.

[tacimala]

You can make an osC site look any way you want really. It's a pretty powerful cart with a lot of features. I've worked on 2 osC sites that aren't really recognizable to the user that the site was made with osC until you look at the links and start getting into the checkout areas as those are easily distinguishable pages.

On that first link though, it's funny to see that the designer spelled catalog.php as catelog.php in the URL's.

[stevel]

I looked at the URLs of various links - nothing even closely resembles osC.

[aragorn231]

It looks like this cart is made by Enterprise Systems (http://www.enter-sys.net), which would explain the "Powered by Enterprise Systems" at the bottom of the page.
Also, if you look in their list of clients (http://www.enter-sys.net/clients.html), this website is mentioned there...

@tacimala: catelog.php is not the only typo in there it seems:
<td><a href="ordering.php"><img src="images/btn_odering.jpg" width="61" height="20" border="0"></a></td> :)

[tacimala]

That's crazy that they would do that. Not only does it look really sloppy, but in all honesty it can hurt their search engine rankings and possibilities as well. For example, a search for "Ford parts catalog" would rank higher if the page was actually spelled correctly. Site is nice though, too bad. (Sorry to go off topic a little!)

[Dabrowski]

It looks like this cart is made by Enterprise Systems (http://www.enter-sys.net), which would explain the "Powered by Enterprise Systems" at the bottom of the page.
Also, if you look in their list of clients (http://www.enter-sys.net/clients.html), this website is mentioned there...

@tacimala: catelog.php is not the only typo in there it seems:
<td><a href="ordering.php"><img src="images/btn_odering.jpg" width="61" height="20" border="0"></a></td> :)

Actually, it still could be any kind of shopping cart, or anything else. Powered by can be just about anything, hosting, design, etc.

So does anyone have any links to an osC site that uses a significantly different template?