Anyone recommend a good package for an off the shelf website, easy to customize and add text and stuff, and that has a built in shopping cart that will integrate with paypal? Been looking on the web and there seem lots of off the shelf solutions, Oscommerce seems very popular. Any one know if these are good? They look good on the web, just need a ready made site that can be quickly customized and filled with products and check out details, etc, rather than design a site from the ground up. DOnt want to spend more than about £250 on such a package so any recommendations appreciated. Will be running on a standard host server with CGI and all the usual options for web sites......so really something easy to set up and where you dont spend days configuring files to get the shopping cart to work, etc....

Was writing my own site but decided to scrap that as it looked awful, no time anyway so need a quick solution that is very user friendly....

There is Actinic ( http://www.actinic.co.uk/products/shopping-cart-software.htm ), which i have used and its great and simple for most stuff and comes with paypall by the looks of it, but its about £400, you do get great tech support tho. Thers also Erol ( http://www.erolonline.co.uk/ ) which i havent used much, not sure about paypall integration, its about £270. These are based on your computer, they generate the site and upload it to a specified server, and when people buy stuff the orders are retrived from the server to your computer. There are many other packages, most are server based like oscommerce, im sure google will provide you with a good list :)
Hope it helps :thumbsup:

If you like the look of OScommerce check out zencart, it started as a spinoff of oscommerce so it has a similar look and functionality but they have added alot of extra features that aren't in oscommerce and a better template system. It's really easy to setup and integrates with paypal from the box.

CubeCart is pretty good (I use it on one of our domains) and is available as a free or licensed product. Details at CubeCart.com (http://www.cubecart.com/site/home/).


On a different (though related) note there's E107 (http://www.e107.org), which is a CMS that has 2 or 3 ecommerce (shopping cart) plugins available.


Both are relatively easy to customise (though cubecart requires a little knowledge of PHP to get the best results).

Look at mambo, oscommerce and their combination moscommerce. All free and very good.

www.mamboserver.com

cheers for all those ideas....downloading CUBECART now.....like the different'skins' you can download for it as well.....is this actually a website package as well or just the shopping cart bit?

Originally posted by goldenfleece
cheers for all those ideas....downloading CUBECART now.....like the different'skins' you can download for it as well.....is this actually a website package as well or just the shopping cart bit?

It's basically a complete store (admin area allows you to add/delete/edit items, set postage on individual items plus much more;)).

Cant use CUBECART...just found out no PHP/MYsql support on my hosting server, CGI only....rather basic service but it was cheap...

also found a simple free online cart solution at
LINK (http://www.online-store.co.uk/)

very basic and primitive yes, but can be merged with any web site easily using templates.. tried it out and it runs fine on my cheap hosting package......dont want to spend hours messing about with complicated files on web servers........not the most attractive solution at all but its fine to start up with....if I get plenty of sales up and running I will think about improving the cart facilities a bit in the future.......

Php and sql are the most popular amoungst open source and freebies/cheapies.
CGI cheapies might be hard to find.
You would be better upgrading your hosting.

Originally posted by Pete1024
Php and sql are the most popular amoungst open source and freebies/cheapies.
CGI cheapies might be hard to find.
You would be better upgrading your hosting.

Totally agree.

Also, PHP & MySQL are a lot less resource intensive. CGI (Perl, C etc.) will eat resources & bandwidth.

Originally posted by goldenfleece
CGI only....rather basic service but it was cheap...

Have a look @ resourceindex.com (http://cgi.resourceindex.com/Programs_and_Scripts/Perl/Shopping_Carts/) which have some free perl shopping cart scripts.

There's a few free ones also @ ScriptSearch.com (http://www.scriptsearch.com/Perl/Scripts_and_Programs/E-Commerce/) and HotScripts.com (http://www.hotscripts.com/CGI_and_Perl/Scripts_and_Programs/E-Commerce/index.html).

Yes will have to look into these shortly....how much would anyone charge here to actually configure a quality shopping cart for me, ie make sure all the php stuff is working, install the package on the server and configure access for me, etc, as I dont have a clue about to install such a package like CUBECART. The instructions are all greek to me, so need some help. Will get a more modern hosting package sorted soon as well.......