The Wholesale Forums

[jazzman]

Pete, I checked out you links to CubeCart, I am in the middle of building exactly this type of thing. I can see the appeal to this kind of thing, to many people starting out, and from what you have described, its also a very affordable solution. But to me it to use it, it would be no different from a qualified electrician hiring another electrician to come and do his electrics for a cost, when he could have it for free.

Now my dad is not a programmer and this would be perfect for him as he is looking for a no hastle way of getting up and running. So I'll pass it on and see what he says.

My only concern is what happens when/if cube cart dissappears of the face of the earth and my business that I have now built up and is now my primary source of income is no longer in existence. I have read countless horror stories like this, when you get tied into these all in one hosing packages you really are at the mercy of them. In addition, you are at the mercy of unexpected increases in charges from the hosting company.

I can give you links to some real life ecommerce success stories, who eventually made it but not without the pitfalls I have just described.

Pete, check out some of these case studies http://www.free-ecommerce-informatio...logy/index.htm

let me know what you think.

[Pete]

You just don't get it.

These are not hosted sites. They are not site builders. They are yours. You can host them on a computer in your closet if you want. If they go out of business tomorrow there is a vast community of developers who are familiar with the code.

And if the store is working for you and they never code another line, who cares. You have a working store, you have your own copy of the script, you can host it anywhere you want. You can even have 2 hosting accounts on two compeletly different, remote from each other, servers. Then do a CRON job complete copy from one to the other nightly.

You are way too paranoid. It's only a shopping cart. It's not the batlle plan for Armageddon.

You need to get out of those comic books and get into the real world. It's called Open Source. You have your own copy. You can run t anywhere you want. You have no obligation to the developer (except with CubeCart you need to pay to remove their "powered by" logo.

Forget all that stuff. It's free. You can have a copy. You can modify it however you wish. You are under no obligation and they have ZERO control over it. If they all die tomorrow, you still have a working website - forever. Unless you break it messing around.

With OSC and Zen and others there are tons of free script modes available. FREE, written by true believers who will keep the application going forever. It's right there, waiting for you to partake. No cost, no oblication. Get a hosting account anywhere, install and go.

Do a google on Open Source. Find out what you have been missing.

Virtaully all scripts have contributions from others. Someone has an existing answer, they just paste that in and go. I was editing a file in CubeCart yesterday and found this in the middle "// Flexible Taxes, by Name Removed by Pete" which indicates the CubeCart people took an existing app and pasted it in. Happens all the time.

Again, don't reinvent the wheel.

I'm not selling books, I'm just telling you like it is.
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[jazzman]

My apologies, I did not know CubeCart was a free open source product, and like I said I can see the appeal to using this.

Pete, its almost as if its a crime to have an opinion that you do not concur with? Remember this, web engineering v's ecommerce is not an exact science, because its recipients are people. It's impossible to have the one mould fit all.You can argue on this forum for the rest of your life if you want but your idea of the "right way", although great for many will never satisfy all. And, while I respect your opinions and acknowledge your ecommerce expertise, YOU DONT KNOW EVERYTHING!!!! There are things I know that you don't, PERIOD! There are things you know that I dont, PERIOD! Respect that!

Let me just say this, it dosen't take very long to build a customised shopping cart that fits into your design perfectly and has exaclty the functionality you desire. Have you never heard of RAD and OOP, an experienced developer strives to not write the same code twice, and can assemble something like a shopping cart in a day or two. So I don't see what the big issue is in an expert doing it himself. Its not a complicated Job, they are quick and easy to build when you know what you are doing and this is the bit that you clearly dont understand.

So are you saying ASP.NET is a waste of time? Because you are cancelling out the entire afforts of Microsoft for .NET, Sun Microsystems for Java and many other huge development platforms. I would love to see you drive this argument on a technical forum like experts-exchange. I think you would very quickly get blown out of the water.

Its not about reinventing the wheel, its about giving the wheel your own look and feel that is not achievable off the shelf. Its about creating something that you cannot buy, and giving it the wow factor. There are thousands of cars in garages ready built, waiting to be driven, but a minority of people want to build their own and give it a uniqueness that is right for them and carries their individual trade mark. And so is there anything wrong with a little extra work to create something that customers can note as unique and see that great care has been taken in the design of the application that is just about to take their bank details.

He who thinks he knows everything learns nothing.

"Always cultivate an open mind"

[Pete]

You misinterpert what I am saying. I am all for thinking outside the box and have lived on the edge of technology for decades. I do know that no one is going to build a fully functioning shopping cart in a matter of a couple of days. The latest Open Source cart, Magento, has been under development for over a year and is still not ready for prime time.

Where I see the fallicy in your thinking is the idea that hosts are failing every day, that sites just disappear into the ether and that you can tie your own cart directly into a card processor. It's not the question of building the cart itself as much as it is the apparent paranoia. Not the coding itself, but the reasons to do it.

I'll say no more, I'll simply wait with great anticipation for you to post a link to this cart you are going to build over the next few days. I may even make a purchase, just to say I did so without going through a gateway.

Please let us all know when your site is ready.
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[Popcorn]

Pete message me i might need your help with 5 websites i want to host...

[sigma]

Hi all,
I'm new here and this is my first post. I've been following this thread because I am also planning in starting my own ecommerce business.


It was interesting to see where this discussion has been heading. It started out as a simple request into building an ecommerce website to end up as the pros and cons of templates.

I carried out some research myself to find out how to start my own shopping site and ended up faced with the same dilemma: custom design vs template. My experience was quite limited, nothing like what others have displayed here and I was not aware of open source shopping cart, although I did wonder briefly why there isn't one.

I have been playing around with a free trial of ekmpowershop. Have any of you used it? Any feedback? They provide many templates and full support for £20 per month and customer service is good. However, I didn't like the very limited amount of customisation one could do with the look of the site. Either I was too stupid to figure out how to design a "great-looking" website or too lazy to learn or maybe it was simply not possible. I like to think of the latter.

So because of that rather unenjoyable experience and of my very demanding criteria, I looked into the world of website designers and obtained several quotations from them. I didn't go any further. Boy, they charge you an arm and a leg for reinventing the wheel, to use this favourite expression.

Granted, you can custom-design your wheel and this is what I wanted but is it worth the price? I wanted to include a product review feature and a forum into my site as these were not available on ekmpowershop. Just to add these, they added an extra £100-200. And now I find that the product review is available on cubecart (not in the free version).

I think nowadays because ecommerce is taking off so much, free or low-price templates must add more and more functionalities to be able to stay in the game so they are becoming nearly as good as a custom-designed site.

Another argument is that you get what you pay for. If you compare the free version of cartcube and the commercial one, the free version is pretty rubbish if you're trying to design a professional fully-functional ecommerce website. Many important features are simply not available. Then again, for a very affordable sum of money, you get its commercial version brimming with features that could put out of work a website designer (OK, I'm exaggerating).

The bottom line is that for an ecommerce site that is not trying to win awards for its look, its most important criteria as mentioned earlier in this thread is ease of use, download speed and professional look. Professional look does not mean fancy stuff. I am not a techie, just trying to think as a buyer and that I have a lot of experience in
You want to reassure the buyer that you take the site seriously and that there are some certificates or trusted logos easily seen. For the UK, it also means displaying the company address, reg no, VAT no, contact details , privacy policy, terms & conditions, returns policy, etc, etc to comply with the various ecommerce laws. Strangely and frustratingly enough, Amazon.co.uk does not state its contact details and that is illegal for B2C. They might get away with it because they are not a registered UK company. I think they are registered in Luxembourg. Anyone cares to correct me on that?


OK, I've been going on long enough here.

[hardwareheroes]

Originally Posted by sigma

OK, I've been going on long enough here.

Very interesting first post!

More of the same please - why not introduce yourself in the appropriate forum and let us know what line of business you are thinking about?

[Pete]

sigma, you make a lot of sense.

The features you are looking for - rating and tie into a forum are available with CubeCart, even the free version.

I know there is a mod and also there are mods to tie into phpBB. I don't know the price offhand, but most are in the $ 25 or less range. Speaking of $$, my hosting is abotu $ 5 per month, with a cart. Far cry from £20. I have free support on the server, suggest the free forums for most CC support, but have a couple of clients who pay for support, mostly with the V4.

You can get virtually any look you want for the free carts for I would think no more than $ 300 or so. And you don't need that. You really hit the nail on the head there at the end - fairly normal look that customers are used to seeing, just made to look as your own.

I would be willing to bet there are more Free and Open Source carts on the web than all others put together. Just put a signature template on it and it's yours.

One of my favorites is here - www.mediacroc.co.uk

Nothing fancy, but effective. As with many who host with me, I held the owner's hand a bit to get him going. I installed the cart and got him loading inventory, and then he hooked up with Lewis Sellers for the design. I don't know the cost, but I'd think it would be pretty reasonable.

I've got easily 50 or so folks from the UK and OZ hosting carts with me. I don't do design, but I do help them get over the "first time" hump.

I got this today from a newbie I just this morning convinced to do his first FTP - "wow look what you started now haha". It's not that I can't do it, but I try to encourage them to do it on their own. They're going to be selling on the net a long time, may as well know the basics.

When you are ready, I'll be glad to go through the 20 or so back and forth emails to help you make the right choices.
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[MathewLisett]

well ive been trying to do my first business with a website, and its been the most irratating thing onearth, with companies literally laughing at you, companies that state they are the best yet it has still taken me past 4 months of communicaing to them asking why i have still not gained a quote, one fot he companies was from a friend who she works for, and the 2nd is ajsquare (of which this specifically goes towards), and then its only been untill now where i foudn that i was adviced that paying for 10 years hosting would be a great start for my site, to then find that it was completely not what i needed due to the amount of traffic i was likely going to get and what im aimign for, to the point of being told that i would need a dedicated server not a shared server.

so its irritating, and i still dont think i have gained all the details that i need.

and all this to where i have got to from the point of not havign really the first clue, but having an idea has all taken roughly 2-3 years so far... sadly the first year was completely screwed becuase of a person called chuck keenan who claimed a lot of things from hosting me, doign a gret deal on a deciated server etc etc and never comign up with anything

[ericfarrow12]

Hi pete,

Ive heard a lot about you on this fourm. Im looking to set up my own website selling branded and un branded clothes. Wondering if you could help me out with a site also domin name. My email address is: discountclothing100@yahoo.co.uk or send me a private message on here. Thanks

Eric