Existing or Custom shopping cart & field lengths

[scrumpy]

I've been in two minds about whether to use an existing shopping cart eg. osCommerce etc. or to build my own (I program using PHP, XHTML, CSS, XSLT & ADOdb).

Initially I will setup an online catalogue and receive emailed orders. The emails might be manually sent by customers or perhaps via customer's completing an SSL'd order form that then sends encrypted emails.

After adding the postage & packing cost I will email the customer an invoice or possibly send them a PayPal invoice.

If business goes well and after I've gained more experience with online sales, I will simplify purchasing by integrating customer orders, online calculation of the total price and payment processing.

Does anyone here know if osCommerce can be setup to just email orders but not to proceed to the payment stage i.e. to act as just an online catalogue with an order form?

Later on I could enable osCommerce's payment stage but I don't wish to do that from the outset.

I have another couple of questions regarding osCommerce :)
1) How many databases does it require? (this may impact which HM plan I can use)
2) I'm not that keen on it's default design. Is it 'easy' to customize/change the design using (X)HTML/CSS so that it can look quite different i.e. not just another clone?

If I program my own cart, provided that I structure it well, I can launch it as just an online catalogue and later add an order form, calculation of shipping charges, payment processing etc.

As soon as the cart requires customer's to input their personal data, I need to ensure that the various fields' lengths can be used for payment processing eg. address line 1 and the zip fields are used for AVS.

Can someone point me to an online resource which lists required fields and field lengths for online, 'international' payment processing i.e. the 'zip' code field can accomodate UK postcodes?

Hope I haven't asked for too much in one posting! ;-)

Cheers,
Scrumpy :)

[SumBodyElze]

Does anyone here know if osCommerce can be setup to just email orders but not to proceed to the payment stage i.e. to act as just an online catalogue with an order form?

osCommerce has quite a list of payment options including COD. I'm sure it can be set up the way you describe.


I have another couple of questions regarding osCommerce :)
1) How many databases does it require? (this may impact which HM plan I can use)

Just one. It uses 50-60 tables, but it's all in one DB.


2) I'm not that keen on it's default design. Is it 'easy' to customize/change the design using (X)HTML/CSS so that it can look quite different i.e. not just another clone?

Well.... if you add in the right "contributions", it can be fairly easy to modify the look. Right now I am evaluating another cart called Zen Cart (http://www.zencart.com). It was created by a group of osCommerce users who became frustrated by the lack of interface and usability improvements. Zen Cart is based on the osC open source code, but they rolled lots of popular contributions into the core code, vastly improved the interface, and cleaned up the code significantly.

I'm considering migrating my osC stores over to Zen Cart (http://www.zencart.com). Check 'em out.


Can someone point me to an online resource which lists required fields and field lengths for online, 'international' payment processing i.e. the 'zip' code field can accomodate UK postcodes?

Can't help you much there, but since osCommerce and Zen Cart are are already set up for international orders, you could peek into their DBs and see how they're set up.

[scrumpy]

Just one. It uses 50-60 tables, but it's all in one DB.
That's good news.

I'm considering migrating my osC stores over to Zen Cart (http://www.zencart.com). Check 'em out.
Yeh, I've seen that one before and it's supposed to be easier to customize.

Due to the convenience of having osCommerce as an installation option with Fantastico, it's a shame it doesn't have more design/layout flexibility built-in. Anyway, I don't mind manually installing Zen Cart if it turn's out to be more suitable (I'll probably install it locally for testing).

Can't help you much there, but since osCommerce and Zen Cart are are already set up for international orders, you could peek into their DBs and see how they're set up.
Hehe, I thought about that but was looking for the red carpet treatment :-) If I install Zen Cart locally then I'll do that.

Thanks.