Developing An Online Store For A Relative Newbie - Help
Thanks in advance. Best place ever for advice...
BACKGROUND:
I'm using Dreamhost (PC) right now to host my standard HTML site.
I'm going to be starting my own online store in a month or two. My funds are very limited. I'm going to build it myself from scratch. The products I'm going to sell will be dribbling in as I become more and more adept at selling. It will start slow. I'll also be using eBay.
I've used PC's and know my way around them. I've also installed and screwed around with Linux. BUT I'm a MAC guy. Macs are the best by (IMHO) far... sooooo I'll be developing this on a Mac. I'm using a DualGig OSX right now as my primary computer. I also have a 600Mhz Athlon PC that's dead right now. (had W2K and Red Hat Linux dual boot on it.) I can get it going again but I'm not gung ho on it.
I have some idea about what I need to learn. I'm very good with Photoshop/Illustrator, pretty good at HTML, Dreamweaver/BBEdit, Flash and I can write some JavaScript. I've written some damn complex Java but I don't have the mind that does JAVA well. I've never really gotten over the object oriented hump.
I'm thinking I'm going to need to get facile with CGI, Perl, PHP possibly so I'm looking into buying two or three books in that area.
QUESTION:
1) What should I do?? Should I set this up a server on my Dreamweaver PC account? Or should I start from scratch. Should I use all open source?
2) Should I invest in any books or should I try to do all this with free online information like the w3.org provides. I noticed the w3.org does not have a Perl or PHP section.
3) Database - Ouch - do I have to deal with this right away? I'm not looking forward to it.
4) Credit cards and particularly shipping. I'm determined to let my customers know what shipping will be on each item BEFORE they give me the info. I'm a usability nut.
Lady Orelinde posted this at 02:35 — 13th October 2004.
They have: 2 posts
Joined: Oct 2004
Hey,
I don't really have any information for you regarding your questions, however, I wanted to ask you...the site you posted, alogical.com.... I went there and on every page that I clicked on, it shrunk down my browser window. I don't know if you knew about that, but I figured I'd let you know so that you can fix whatever that glitch is, so your visitors don't get bugged.
BB,
Lady O
teammatt3 posted this at 01:03 — 14th October 2004.
He has: 2,102 posts
Joined: Sep 2003
Hm, where to start...
I recommend you check out opensourcecms.com and check out the demos of some of the shopping carts. I think all of them are in PHP, and use databases but they are very easy to install. Even I can do it
As for the books, I don't think you'll need them right away, but they might help you if you really want to customize your shopping cart.
Hope that helps
Troy1960 posted this at 10:19 — 14th October 2004.
They have: 152 posts
Joined: Sep 2004
I think there is a consenses when it comes to the free shopping cart provider Oscommerce. It intergrates well. 2Checkout.com is another service that I personally use to actually handle credit card transactions.
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