I sell books and my question is with all the changes in the last 15 years in coding etc, what are my best options to have my site redesigned without spending an arm and a leg. I want to redesign it because a) I'm tired of the look and b) the people that originally helped create the site have been charging me about $100 a month for hosting and "maintenance" fees for all these years -above and beyond the considerable cost of originally designing the site. I haven't notice much, if any "maintenance" since 2002. I do own the domain name and am in the process of having it transferred to a far cheaper and very reliable hosting service. Would an OsCommerce solution be a smart choice. I've been researching some osc templates and am thinking of going down that road. I have some basic knowledge of html but not much else and any advice would be appreciated.
I hate seeing people get charged continuous 'Maintenance' fee's when there's nothing to fix. Unfortunately happens a lot but good to see you've now picked up on it and are stopping it seems. Although a lot of users here on the forums would probably recommend the free/cheap ecommerce stores, I would personally go for one of the best eCommerce shop builders called - Shopify. They have a fantastic range of features and it's so easy to add, edit and update your store. Along with a 30 day free trial which is nice. Here's a link if you want to check it out - Shopify
To not be charged for "maintenance" you should choose some standalone shopping cart script. There a lot of them on the market, you should try to choose the one which suits you the most. I personally like CS-Cart.
i really like interspire shopping cart. its user friendly. it really works great-> http://iscexperts.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2081