Hi, I'd like some input about which platform to go with in creating a t-shirt eCommerce site. I'm trying to decide between osCommerce, ZenCart and WordPress + eCommerce plugins. I'm mostly concerned with the ease of customizing the template, as branding will be pretty important for me here. Aside from that, I'd like to be able to structure the site like bustedtees.com, where the designs are prominently featured. Thank you in advance for your input!
You should use either prestashop or Magento(if you really want to do it right). See: http://www.magentocommerce.com/blog/category/magento-spotting/ loads of high dollar t-shirt shops. Prestashop is easier to design than your other options and much friendlier across the board from ease of use to SEO. hope that helps, Nigel
Virtumart ecommerce Bundle for Jooma is good for yur T-shart Shopping cart to download this package brows vitumart.net Zen cart also very easy to install from cpanel. see more information visit http://blog.dplanetbiz.com
Well, it depends on the size and seriousness of your site, but given the above comments, I would first look into Magento.
Looks like Magento is out of my budget, unless I go with the community edition. It looks like a lot of the features are unavailable though, and the website makes it sound like i'd need to do a lot of programming/tweeking. Am I correct in this assumption? There won't be more than 20-30 products, and as far as seriousness, I'm looking for a quick/inexpensive solution to start and should things get going, I'd upgrade if necessary with whatever revenue it brings in. Thanks for the input so far!
No, the Magento community edition is fine. The enterprise version does things you will not likely need like content staging etc. Multiple shops with their own admin login and so on. Nigel
Maybe you should try all that already been mention and choose which one is the most suitable for your business. Sometime, it depend on how many times you have to manage your store productively. For easier way I also recommend Magento.
I already said this in another thread, but I highly recommend Magneto for eCommerce. I've found it easy enough to skin, and it's one of (the?) most popular eCommerce script.
Does Magento have a built in product feed? I found a module that you need to buy, just thought I'd confirm with you guys first. OpenCart has a built in product feed (ie, google base), right?
Yes, and Magento 1.4 rolled out last night. I was up half the night importing a zen cart site into it. Google base feed is built right in along with a ton of other cool features now like widgets, etc. This stuff just got even better Nigel
I figured I'd come report back for the benefit of others who had the same question. I went with Magento and must say that while the feature set is amazing, I am very very disappointed. From the beginning it was a hassle. I have shared hosting with GoDaddy, so the installation was extra complicated. But once I got past that, I needed to reinstall it almost 5 times because of a variety of problems that arose from me installing extensions/themes. So I decided to go with one of the original themes that come with the system and not install any extensions yet. From there, I still had problems. Responses on the forums are scarce for some problems. It wouldn't import my configurable products and their associated simple products while maintaining the association. Fortunately for me, I only have 15 products with three sizes each. So I had to import the configurable products, and then individually create the separate sizes for each. My latest problem is that attribute sets won't save (and others have posted on the forum about this with no response), and when I mark up text in the product description, the theme spits out the actual code instead of applying it. I've developed plenty of sites from scratch several years ago, so I'm not entirely technically deft, but given all these problems, it's a huge hassle. I don't want to have to dig into the code every five minutes to fix a new problem or waste time scouring the forums for a solution that's 1) up to date (most of the solutions posted are from years ago) 2) actually works 3) doesn't break something else. I can't even imagine what I'd do if I had hundreds of products to deal with. Unless you have a lot of time and don't mind digging into code, stay away from Magento.
what type of monthly fee are you looking at? I am looking for something similar that is totally free to use. I have no desire to pay a monthly fee of any kind.
Stick with OScommerce! Highly documented, highly monitored forums, free add-ons! Need I say more!! Always go OS if you can....