Setting up and e-commerce site, need your input

Supercow

Supercow

Supercow

Soldato
Joined
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Dear kind folk of OcUK, I need your input into the set-up of an ecommerce site.
I have been in software development - from a management perspective for quite some time, however I'm quite out of touch about the latest and greatest web tools available.

The site will be a low volume of sale e-commerce site and my requirements are as follows:

* I want full creative control over the look of the website, including my URL (some free CMS tools create you a subdomain etc)
* Customers need to be able to purchase items from the site (and all the functionality that surrounds a purchase such as email notification, order numbers and so forth)
* Be able to integrate with Payment types such as PayPal but I would also like to be able to allow for Visa and Credit Card payments
* Be able to integrate with social media such as twitter/facebook and RSS feeds
* Ideally I want to be able to build mini Silverlight or Flex applications into the front end (no back end communication to a DB or webservice calls, just a front end app) For example an application that will help you choose the right product for you - you select which image relates more to you out of a choice of them, which will take you onto a next prompt - then finally return the most suitable product. This is a nice-to-have.
* Another nice to have would be the possibility to write a webservice lookup into a third party stock management system. (I will hold no stock, stock will be held at the distributor's warehouse)


Does it sound like I could achieve all/most of this with Wordpress/Joomla and the like?

I have been sent the following link by a web dev friend (who said he doesn't have time to help me out :( )
http://freewebstore.org , anyone have experience with this?

Any feedback would be much appreciated.
 
We use OpenCart on numerous E-Commerce sites which have allowed us a lot of leeway design-wise, although admittedly we haven't tried Silverlight or Flex development as we're mainly systems development and only just getting into the web related area.
 
I've had success using Magento, it not only gives you all the basics for an ecommerce site but it is easily modified to what you need. I not only use it for a few simple retail stores but I also use if for a complicated wholesale store.
 
Can you actually use your own domain name using magento?

Ive now tried the off the shelf ecommerce sites, however I feel it's not really let me have as much creative control as I want and will need in the future. I'll dig into magento a bit more thna I have, maybe I just didn't quite grasp it!

Wordpress seems to pop up every time as it will allow me to have static pages and then the web 2.0 malarky (RSS/Youtube embed, Linkedin, Facebook, Blog, youname it) dynamic sections
 
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Now that I've given Magento a proper look, I am very impressed!
Looks like it will do exactly what I need! Can anyone recommend a good - cheap Magento host?

Thanks for the input guys
 
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