can i ask... whats the difference?? :)

[Misery_Kitty]

hi guys, i just was wondering what are the different versions of oscommerce i.e: creLoaded, oscmax, oscommerce...??

and what are the differences between them??

Thank you in advance,

[michael_s]

The difference is the feature set and the community around them. osCommerce is the core of all 'loaded' versions. osCMax is the only one of the loaded versions that pays close attention to maintaining the core of osCommerce intact as much as possible so that all the contribs (or most of them) will still work with it.

CRE has a free version that is used as an intro to their cart to encourage the purchase of the commercial version they offer (my opinion). osCMax has one version and will never have a feature that you must pay to get. Always free for 100% of included features. Standard osCommerce is just a bare-bones version without any extras.

They are all good, so you just need to decide which one works for what you are doing, and which you like the best.

[Misery_Kitty]

i'll be honest i really like the looks of oscmax, i'v just installed a test sore and the includes are fantastic its pretty much EVERYTHING i wanted to add to oscommerce. but i'm finding it slim pickings for templates selections. and still hung up on the oscommerce template i have... i'm quick to learn with this kinda of stuff in general so i hope i can work out how to get them to work together as that would be a perfect package for me.

i agree to me cre is a money spinner they want you to pay for 99% of things and the free version will only temp ppl to send them money (although you can download it for free i see when i search for community forums for it alot of rapidshare rips listed up) but thats not really how i like to do things...

what other version of oscommerce are there? i only know of oscmax, cre, oscommerce original and thats all i'v seen so far ( i stumbled on new ones when looking for mods for the original lol)

this is my first business venture and i'm going through the everything has to be perfect stage lol... thanks again for your replies they are muchly appreciated Michael!

[met00]

I was using cre
I stopped.
Buggy code.

I spent more time debugging than I did adding feature sets.

I moved to max.
no more bugs.
now I have added a ton of feature sets and have a version which kicks ass.

The choice to me? Obvious. Max.

[idreamoftiki]

I'm still confused!

Is this site/forum where I download and look for support for both osCommerce and osCMax?

The software I choose will be my first attempt at eCommerce. Do I want to install osCommerce? Or osCMax?

There appears to be more templates for osCommerce. Do the osCommerce templates also work with osCMax?

Can anyone tell me how osCommerce and osCMax compare to some of the expensive solutions out there like Miva Merchant, Volusion, Yahoo! Stores, eBay ProStores, etc.? I can't say I'm thrilled with the prospect of paying monthly fees and/or handing over a percentage of my revenue. But, if one of those solutions is truly superior, it may be worth it to me.

Thanks in advance from another 'noob!'

[met00]

osc is the base, think of it as a yugo. It is very basic. You could use it for a store, but then you would want to add some things to it, like comfortable seats, heat and air, maybe an engine that will actually make it move, a better transmission, etc.

Now, you can do all this yourself, or you can go out and find out if someone else has already put all of this together in a working package.

In the old days that meant using Loaded V. And I still have a store running that. But today that really means looking at the two primary competitors of the base, CRE and MAX.

Both of these are versions of the OSC base with a great deal of work already done for you.

I started a store for a client with CRE. It's still running. I spent most of my time doing debugging and patching the version, until I reached a point of frustration and decided to look at MAX.

Now, when you are building any type of project where you are integrating code from many different sources into a completed product you can expect to see bumps. But, with MAX I have seen far fewer (I mean the version of CRE that was up for almost a year had a broken contact_us.php!).

As I stated in another thread, I have had very few problems even enhancing the MAX base since the comments are well done and I can see exactly what was done and why. Overall I am a very happy camper.

So, get a Yugo and make all the mods yourself. Or get a nicer car that has over 80% of the mods you will want already in it. It's your call.

Now on to templates. The sad reality is that 95% of what you want to do to the store is look and feel, and if that's all it's real easy to modify the stock templates to give you a different look and a different feel. But people know what to expect when they come to a on-line store, and the reality is that you don't want to re-educate the consumer, so you really do want to give them a great deal of what they are used to. That way they feel comfortable and will shop with you.

Final note. A store is just shopping cart software. It's really simple. Present the customer products. Let them check out. OSC does that just as well as the other expensive guys. But what if you want to really understand what is happening in your store? Well the other guys give you canned reports. With OSC you make 'em yourself and they are a heck of a lot more meaningful.

It was when I was studying the database that I noticed that there were a hell of a lot more "carts" completed than there were sales completed. I then noticed that I had the customers contact information on those carts that weren't sales. So, putting 1 and 1 together I got 11 and decided to create a report that would list out all the "unsold carts". This was the first version of what was to become "Recover Cart Sales" (a popular contribution). At the time I created UC/RCS there was no commercial product out in the market that did what I was doing. It was just something I figured out from studying the database and asking questions about how I could chop the data up better for my use.

So, I believe that OSC is a better product than the commercial stuff. I believe that because I get to play around in the guts of the code and make it a better product. If you, on the other hand, are willing to wait until someone else has a bright idea and the management of the company decides to incorporate it into the product release schedule, then go commercial. But if you are willing to get your hands dirty with code and ant to really understand what makes a store work, or not, then I can recommend MAX enough.