Learning how to create online shops

Zom · 22 Jul 2006 at 14:47

Hi everyone,

First of all a bit of background; I have experience of developing websites using PHP,MySQL, JavaScript, CSS & HTML. I've been doing a few websites for companies and I'd now like to learn how to create online stores with shopping baskets, order tracking etc. Whats the best way to learn how to do this?

blade007 · 22 Jul 2006 at 16:26

that's a lot of work you are giving yourself.

what a lot of people do is install a pre-built one and customise it.

akakjs · 22 Jul 2006 at 17:18

It depends on your requirements, but as blade007 says I'd consider learning how to customise an existing cart software.

Another advantage of starting with an existing cart is you get an idea of all the requirements, considerations and gotchas in cart programming without having to go though the pain of learning them first hand.

Having said that I maintain/write a bispoke cart system at work, so it can be done, but takes a lot of work.

akakjs

Zom · 22 Jul 2006 at 18:38

Sorry, I didn't really explain myself very well in the OP. I'm not looking to create one from scratch - I'm just looking to be able to offer the service when I am creating websites.

theMAD2 · 23 Jul 2006 at 09:07

You could always look at an open source solution, like http://www.oscommerce.com/ I've not used it but one of my mates says it's quite flexible.