free eCommerce software?

[Celial]

hey, im playing with the thought of putting up an eshop in a month or two.

i thought of a joomla based system, but there are surely other things out there. can you recommend something? there should be translation-packages for it, since i need it on german...

the shop should also contain additional informations about the topic, so i would need a CMS with a built in shop...

i can get a webspace with php 4 or 5 and one mysql-databse.

thx in advance

[Niki]

Hey Celial. Cool that you are putting up an eshop. If you want to learn more and even testdrive different kinds of e-commerce/cms solutions try CMS Ratings - OpenSourceCMS .

Everything is categorized and then sorted on popularity.

Good luck.

[ragtag]

I've set up a shop with Joomla and VirtueMart, where you get both a CMS and an ecommerce solution. It works, but is far from perfect and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who is not comfortable with php coding and mysql. I've had to do numerous changes and fixes to the code to get the site working the way we wanted.

Some of the problems include layout. Too much of the code is based on tables and lacks tags you can link your css to.

The shop I set up sold clothing, and the way sizes are handled in VirtueMart is a pain. You can use attributes to define colors and sizes, but this does not track the stock of each size, so in our case was useless. For that you need to set up parent-child products, which is clumsy and a lot of extra work for those running the shop. I also had to do some code tweaking to get products where all sizes were out of stock, to no longer show up.

Discount prices had to be set individually for each size, though I fixed this in code.

Running one language (e.g. German) is no problem. There are language files for both Joomla and VirtueMart available, but running a multiple language site (e.g. English AND German) is more problematic. There is Bablefish, which works fine with Joomla, but is problematic for VirtueMart.

There were lots more fixes here and there that I had to do, but can't remember on the fly. Many of the problems with VirtueMart are not apparent, until you actually try to set up a real shop.

I'm not too familiar with other cart solutions, such as osCommerce and ZenCart, so can't comment on them, but would definately give them a shot if setting up another shop in the future. You can always use Joomla, WordPress or other separate solutions for the rest of your site. Your shop really doesn't need to integrated into the CMS.

[pkeod]

Figure out what features you need, and then go from there.

If you're only going to be selling a few things I would recommend you just use PayPal.

[Celial]

unfortunately i have zero coding skills, i can write a bit html, but thats it. the main problem with the likes of osCommerce is, that i cant do a layout myself, and i already saw a few joomla layouts i like...

im probably going to sell wine, around 30 different ones

[pkeod]

You need very little skills to use PayPal Shopping Cart - PayPal

you can use this along with the content management system Powered by You! : XOOPS Project to build your storefront.

Getting good with these tools is highly recommended. If you're going to sell even only 30 types of objects, a full blown eCommerce solution would be overkill, plus with PayPal they handle all of the processing!

[ragtag]

If you're not creating a big shop, where you could potentially hire someone to help with coding, I would have to agree with pkeod. There are many companies that offer complete hosted shop solutions, including PayPal and I'm sure you can find several German companies too. It might be better to go with a local company, as everything will be set up for German costumers (language, taxes, payment methods etc). Look at what's available, and see what you like. The downside with this, of course, can be that your shop looks too generic and unprofessional.

Note that most of the templates available for Joomla, don't cover VirtueMart as well.

You could still use Joomla for CMS and a hosted shop for selling stuff.

[Davidya]

Checking out reviews of tools available is a great idea. But don't forget to check with your web host. Web site hosts usually include some sort of shopping cart code, even a small selection. They'll set up the scripts and code you need to make it work. Then you just need to populate the database with prices and such.

Paypal is dead simple too, but not the cheapest. It includes plastic now.