General Help Needed - noob

[picto]

Hello

I'm helping someone set up their website for them, and frankly my experience working with sites is somewhat limited (they, however, insist, as I still know more than they do). They're using netfirms.ca for hosting, and got the Commerce Pro option which lead to this (osCMax 2.0.2). According to the Netfirms, the store function "allows you to sell your products online using an Amazon-style shopping cart. You can use this feature as a standalone e-store, or integrate it into your existing website."

The latter part is what I'm interested in - working the store functions into the existing site design. However, I have absolutely no clue where to start - everything I've found here either gives me a run-around or seems to assume you already know what you're doing. Could someone please, please give me a starting point? The only help I've found so far has... well, not been very helpful.

Thanks.

[jpf]

Well - this is not a support forum for Netfirms Commerce Pro™

Looks like they are using a ecommerce that looks similar to osCMax or oscommerce or the dozens of other commerce s/w. They have Zero install and get going in minutes.......

Beyond that requires at lease intermediate HTML & CSS knowledge to integrate that into an existing site...if you want to have a smooth look and feel between the two areas.....

If you want to use just a very basic ecommerce then oscommerce is a great start. However if you want to have any extra ability then it meant alot coding or manual addition of mods/contribution. IF you look at the features of osCMax it had WAY more features -- using just the coupons and bulit in HTML editor out of the box is SOO GOOD compare th the lack of it in the base system. The template system blows oscommerce out of the water.

Back to the topic.....to integrate into a existing site - could be as easly a putting a link to the store. www.mysite.com\index.html (or .php) links to www.mysite.com\catalog\index.php ......then modify the buttons and CSS to have it look more like your own site.

A limited range of products - you could put hard links in your existing site to products in your store.....

More advance would be changing the template (only in osCMax) so the formatting is like your current site. Add Flash etc....

At an advance level to the point of replacing your whole site....



Many people eather use the cart as main page (primary a selling site) and have the default site page being the shopting cart (installed in root or auto redirected to the cart subdirectory/site)

or put a "Store" link on there main site to the shopping card subdirectory or site....

Install is VERY easy - works on all standard servers with php/mysql.
Getting started - a few configuration changes (name, address, shipping and payment method selections/configuration, add products etcs ) and your good to at least to start.


Feel free to check the oscmax ADMIN demo below...