How difficult is it to create an e-commerce site?

[spoffle]

OSCmax is what you'll want to use. I have absolutely no idea when it comes to php, css, javascript or HTML and I managed to put a fully working ecommerce site together that I've had quite a few complements about.

 

[Swifty55]

http://demo.softaculous.com/enduser/#!act=listsoftwares&cat=ecommerce

 

[visibleman]

magento all the way..

Certainly 'powerful' but it's far from the easiest of things to get to grips with and it requires a fair old amount of grunt, performance was the last thing on the developers mind when they created it, to get it serving pages in a respectable time frame.

Personally i'd opt for OpenCart or Wordpress + commerce plugin (plenty out there like Woo Commerce etc).

 

[englishpremier]

If you go with wordpress i'd avoid WP e-commerce like the plague it's truly shocking.

Woo commerce or foxyshop are the best wordpress e-commerce plug-ins i've come across

 

[craptakular]

I sort of did similar, I had knocked up a few of my clans phpnuke then e107 and joomla sites, installed a few plugins, found a freeware theme and bosh!!!

I then thought I was a web developing zen master and committed to building a bespoke html, css, database driven wordpress site and well it took me 10 months to learn how to do it and get it launched, it still isn't completely finished.

I had to learn html and css via a college course at night. Then bought books to read to learn the php and mysql I needed and googled a lot and posted a lot on developer forums to learn some ajax I needed.

You sound way more advanced than I was, but be warned hehe...