thinking of using OSCMax, would like to have feedback, happy with it? things to look out for?

[mac007]

Hello, all: I am thinking of using OSCMax for our business, so would like to have any feedback, or any thing I shoudl watch out for when using it. Or are you happy with it? or why not? basic usage-experience...

I tested it, ran it for a few days adn liked it a lot, the templating is beautiful, easily customizable. A couple of questions, will this run just fine under php 5.0? or if not, will there be a release for it?

So far, I only encountered one error (when doing "forgot-password" for Affiliate, gives an error: "Parse error: syntax error, unexpected $end in... "

Else everything looks pretty good...

Thanks,
appreciate any feedback!

[ridexbuilder]

How long is a piece of string?
Any e-commerce package has pros and cons depending on its' intended use.
An idea of your expectations, current skill set, past experiences etc. would be helpful.
This way you may get a more targeted response.
Just a thought.

[mac007]

thank you Ridex...

I was just looking for general usage experience... just basic feedback on what users have encountered that I may not have been aware thru my limited testing of the software...

[pgmarshall]

There are a number of osCommerce derivatives but I selected osCMax because of its close links with osCommerce and the fact that most contributions are easy to install.

With a bit of work you end up with a pretty fully featured e-commerce store.

One thing that is missing (at the moment) is Option Type Features - which allows you to have multiple attribute selection methods per product - eg. drop down, text box, etc.

Overall, I find osCMax fit the bill for me!

What sort of site are you building? No. of products? Wholesale? Retail? Expected turnover? etc.

Regards,

[mac007]

thank you PG...

Hmmm... that;s a good point, actually you just reminded me now that my version of OSCmax didnt seem to have complete "type" settings (like no checkboxes or text-field I think). Which is a bit disconcerning...

One thing that still concerns me is that we currently use lots of custom-built product landing pages, that are supposed to go straight into the "checkout" page, which I think can be easily done by borrowing the checkout-button code from oscmax and hard-coding whatever product we are selling into the button. BUT, one issue we are having, is that in those landing pages we like to embed special "source" codes in the url (like mysite.com/landing_page.php?source=mediaworld, to be able to track how people arrived to page), and we usually just add it to the item-description in our current hosted-cart so it also appears in order details, but dont know how exactly how to go about it. I was able to rig-it with Zen as one can add custom fields and simply add it to the "product" form when sending over to cart.. then it will be picked-up. Cudl that be something that can easily be modified into OSCMax???

Thanks for your feedback, I had forgotten about that...

Our site (www.naturecity.com) only has a few products, so it's more like we sell "sets" of these proucts... And here you can see my attempt at mocking-up my osc-max test version: http://www.advancedbodycare.com/shopping-carts/oscmax/

thanks!

[pgmarshall]

The custom landing page stuff is not somthing I have done in practice but I do know that it is possible. I have create a simple landing page in testing.

Have a read through the Wiki How to Section

Basically you need to create a template page that people land on ... can be styled as you like and the link back into your shopping cart.

Regards,

[mac007]

thanks PG... appreciate your help!

[met00]

First off, I track all google shopping with ?shop=goglshp&product... Then I use the standard http log files to see what came from where (and run it against the products table to get the hit and track list from google shopping). So adding a totally useless value and tracking it is no problem. With some small changes I'm sure I could even capture that data and keep a click track if I felt it was useful through the code in the template. Heck I could even use the information to change the header of the store...

As to your original question - is OSCMax "the solution" Ridex and others have been very clear that it IS the solution for some people, but not all. I can say that I spent a great deal of time with a client who is on our version of OSCMax and wanted to see what else was available We looked at over 15 shopping cart / store solutions. In the end the client will be staying with our solution (the OSCMax based one) and just has 20-30 enhancements that they want.

And the is the great part of OSCMax, they went "enhancement shopping" at the OSC Contributions and looked at what was made available in the last 2 years and what they want that isn't there yet, and about half the stuff is stuff we can add on by simply adding in contributions. And that's what I LOVE about OSCMax. Saves me time, and effort.