New to Shopping Carts

[Jedi Power]

Hi all,

I have been with PowWeb for about 8 months now. I know we have a huge list of site tools and shopping carts are available. Are they all free to use? Meaning is there a fee involved with activating the software so I can have the cart?

I use MS Frontpage for my website and would need something compatible. I don't really want it to plug in directly, because I don't use the publishing tools. Which would be easy to learn and maintain, but still look professional?

I run a Star Wars website and I want to start selling my collection of collectibles. I have a PayPal account and can recieve money that way. Can I accept credit cards directly?

Any help and advise for getting it set up and started would be nice. Thanks!

[stevel]

PowWeb does not charge for any of those listed for automated installation, but at least one of them requires a license fee paid to the developer if you want to remove their copyright notice. I am not familiar with every one of the packages.

I recommend against using the PowWeb auto-installers, as they tend to select incorrect defaults. Instead, download your desired package from the script provider, unpack to your local PC, and upload it to your site in the folder you want.

Frontpage is perhaps not the best as most of these scripts are PHP and FP doesn't help you much with PHP editing. But it will work.

Professional-looking is really up to you. Most of these look awful in a stock design. All of the carts, as far as I know, let you collect credit card info for offline processing and can work through PayPal and other payment gateways.

My recommendation is to go visit the web sites for each of the carts, visit some sample stores, and see what you like and don't like.

[juanfperez]

PowWeb does not charge for any of those listed for automated installation, but at least one of them requires a license fee paid to the developer if you want to remove their copyright notice. I am not familiar with every one of the packages.

I recommend against using the PowWeb auto-installers, as they tend to select incorrect defaults. Instead, download your desired package from the script provider, unpack to your local PC, and upload it to your site in the folder you want.

Frontpage is perhaps not the best as most of these scripts are PHP and FP doesn't help you much with PHP editing. But it will work.

Professional-looking is really up to you. Most of these look awful in a stock design. All of the carts, as far as I know, let you collect credit card info for offline processing and can work through PayPal and other payment gateways.

My recommendation is to go visit the web sites for each of the carts, visit some sample stores, and see what you like and don't like.
I would like to have a store at my web site (hosted by Powweb) and would like to find out where I could find instructions how to do this, I already have a PayPal account.

Not sure if I am asking the right question

Thanks

[juanfperez]

if you "I recommend against using the PowWeb auto-installers, as they tend to select incorrect defaults. Instead, download your desired package from the script provider, unpack to your local PC, and upload it to your site in the folder you want."

Which one do you recomend and where can I find it?

Thanks

[stevel]

I don't know which one would be right for you. I use osCommerce (www.oscommerce.com). osCommerce is very much a "hands on" solution that requires some knowledge of PHP to customize well.

Zen Cart (www.zen-cart.com) is an offshoot of osCommerce that is supposed to be easier to install and customize. It also has more features built-in. (With osCommerce, you would have to install "contributions" to add features, requiring editiing of sources.

I am not really familiar with the others.

[ld101]

Hi, you recommend against using the powweb auto-installers, this is one of the features that makes want to switch to powweb. My current host provides Fanstico, which does a great job in auto-installing scripts. PowWeb says their auto-installer is better than Fantastico. So, how would you say PowWeb auto-installer compares to Fantastico?

Thanks.

[stevel]

I have never used Fantastico. I recommend against the PW autoinstallers because they make it TOO easy to install scripts without understanding what they do and how they should be configured. The auto-installs choose defaults that may not be right for you. (And in fact the PW auto-install of osCommerce, at least, makes a rather bad mistake in this area.)

My preference is to get the script distribution from the source, unpack it to my local PC in the layout I want, read the documentation, then decide how I want it to appear on my site. I spend a lot of time in this forum helping people who have simply clicked on an auto-install link and expect a full-blown web store to magically appear, and wonder why things aren't the way they expect.

[ld101]

Thanks, just another quick question, does the PW autoinstaller install updates when they become available?

[stevel]

No. I would hope it wouldn't - that could wipe out someone's customizations.

[ld101]

It depends really, I have Zen Cart store and since to customize it you use an override system- you put your customization in a separate folder and core files are never touched, so updates using Fantastico are a snap.

BTW, I'm just reading about 777/666 permission restrictions, I think Zen Cart uses some of those permissions, are Zen Cart installations on PowWeb working fine?

[stevel]

Anyone who recommends using 777 is just being lazy. Zen works fine on PowWeb. Anyway, you can set 777 if you really want to, PowWeb just makes it harder to do.

[ld101]

I was just at the Zen Cart forums and it says it has to be 777 for all the features to work. So how can you set to 777 like you say it's possible? I guess there's no reason for me to use PowWeb as host if I can't use Zen Cart. :(

[extras]

Zen cart can be installed easily by Instant installer, without setting insecure permission.
And using insecure permission like 666/777 on shared hosting is suicidal, especially for e-commerce ...

These days, majority of responsible shared hosts are using PHP as SuExeced CGI,
and there is absolutely no need to use 666/777.
If someone dosen't understand that, s/he doesn't know well about how things work,
and you can ignore such remarks.

If 666/777 is needed on shared host, it means the host is using mod_php and not very safe.
If 666/777 is required even with the PHP running as SuEXECed CGI, the script isn't written very well.

[ld101]

Thanks for clarifying.