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Web CMS/e-commerce systems - Corner-Carvers Forums
I need help. I have been hunting for a while now, tried a bunch of shit, etc.
I am looking for a CMS system for our store website that incorporates e-commerce for, at the very least, inventory display.
There is plenty of stuff out there but nothing I have found yet offers the ability to upload a .csv type inventory file and have it display the products based on the criteria in the files.
Now I know that this is inherently not a big deal for someone who knows how to create MySQL tables and write a front-end to interface with it.
I however am not one of these people.
I have tried Yahoo, Drupal and OSCommerce and looked at several others.
I am currently running on Drupal but it is limited due to my inability to write database queries or create tables.
Ultimately what I am after is this:
http://www.winemerchantraleigh.com/s...GHZqT5&mv_pc=5
If you click on say, one of the countries it will then show appellations and it progressively narrows down from there.
Now each one of those headings (such as country, varietal, appellation, etc) is a field in my inventory file.
The catch is the software running the above website is a proprietary service and it is absurdly expensive for a small business (would equate out to about $10,000/yr for us).
We can't afford it.
I have to believe there is something out there which affords the flexibility of being able to create MySQL tables and then populating it based on an uploaded .csv file.
The rest is just links that run queries against the data which many front ends are capable of doing out of the box as it is.
Now free is good but we are not against paying for software/service if it is reasonable.
We were signed up on the Yahoo platform but there was no easy way to do what we needed.
I even talked to a company who specialized in setting up Yahoo storefronts and they said it was easier to use an advanced search due to the way the Yahoo db's were set up.
So does anyone have any suggestions/experiences that might help me out?
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Drew: To be honest, I think learning how to create basic tables & queries in MySQL is going to be your best bet.
I know it's not what you wanted, but I wanted to do what you did (i.e.
Upload inventories in CSV format) and then be able to search it based on that.
Creating tables by hand in MySQL's console sucks some serious ass, IMNSHO.
Do yourself a favor and install something like PhpMyAdmin;
Just make sure you get a recent version without security holes!
Unless you're testing it on a firewalled server, in which case you can use whatever floats your boat.
To me, and I'm a bit of a hack, the hardest part is trying to write the PHP/Perl/whatever to correctly create your SQL query.
For me, I wanted to be able to search for any part of a string (e.g.
TURBO is a hit for TURBOCHARGER), but also wanted a multi-word search to not care about order (e.g.
Searching for TURBO KIT returns REBUILD KIT TURBO).
I'm getting a little off-track here, but I was a virtual novice to MySQL and I ended up with a pretty complete product.
I will PM you the link to it (it's still around), you can check it out for yourself.
Every morning, I'd do a dump of a proprietary (and crappy) accounting package, massage the data appropriately, and upload it into MySQL.
It worked really well compared to what was in use before it!
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Quote: : Every morning, I'd do a dump of a proprietary (and crappy) accounting package, massage the data appropriately, and upload it into MySQL.
It worked really well compared to what was in use before it!
Hmmmm that wouldn't be say an Intuit product whose output needs to be massaged would it?
I ask because I am forced to do quite a bit of massaging of data.
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Quote: : Manzella Hmmmm that wouldn't be say an Intuit product whose output needs to be massaged would it?
I ask because I am forced to do quite a bit of massaging of data.
No, it was an Australian company called Promethus (I think) that made a bunch of software called PRONTO.
It, uh, sucked pretty bad.
Though the massaging wasn't that intense: drop a few columns, re-order some others, then suck it back in.
But I was really proud of the system I created, it replaced a DOS-based floppy system.
Which is, you know, really helpful when you have guys scattered across the Sahara at least my system worked over a satphone & internet browser.
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Drew,
Not sure if it's exactly what you're after, but we're using a petty good commerce software on our site that I've been happy with so far- www.x-cart.com The software is damn cheap comparatively speaking to others I found.
I would think you could pretty easily have it programmed to do exactly what you want by their designers since they offer custom hacks and upgrades.
I can't remember the rule on posting personal commercial sites on CC so PM me if you want it or let me know if it's cool to post it up here.
Thanks,
Rick
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Drew,
Are you still trying to use Drupal for the front-end, because I've heard decent things about the e-Commerce module for it.
I haven't tried playing around with it myself though, so your mileage may vary.
-Erik
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PM me the link. I wouldn't think this would fall under the rule since it isn't in an attempt to generate business but it is better to keep it all legit.
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Quote: : Drew,
Are you still trying to use Drupal for the front-end, because I've heard decent things about the e-Commerce module for it.
I haven't tried playing around with it myself though, so your mileage may vary.
-Erik It is up on Drupal now with the e-commerce module.
The problem is the e-commerce module has a minimal set of product headings and it uses the existing Drupal db.
The latter is probably easy to correct but the lack of headings is a bit more difficult for me.
I think that if you were selling 10-20 items and THATS IT the e-commerce module would be stellar but the work, at least what is necessary with an out-of-the-.rar install would make it not useful for larger catalogs.
EDIT: The next thing I am going to look at is Joomla as well as play with the one Buckshot posted.
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Creating tables and running queries with mysql is not hard at all - I've even become somewhat proficient at the various T-SQL flavors.
Pick this book up, and set an afternoon aside - http://www.amazon.com/Learning-SQL-A...e=UTF8&s=books
You're not a computer moron, you'll pick it up pretty quick for basic queries, table creations, and updates.
As far as pulling in .csv files...
There's some DB parsing software out there that can do that sort of thing, but you will probably be writing or modifying some html/xml to get that to work with a front end web interface.
Although once its done, updates to the site will be easy.
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In your testing of osCommerce did you try this?
http://www.oscommerce.com/community/...ile+upload+csv
Sounds exactly like what you are looking for...
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I was up until 4AM last night.
I got an instance of Joomla with VirtueMart up and running as well as an instance of oscommerce (Along with 2 other versions of Joomla and 2 versions of Drupal).
The VirtueMart is by far the nicest.
It has a .csv upload built in and after an hour of delimiter changes I got it to work.
I tried getting the .csv upload add-in to work on oscommerce but it has an error in the code somewhere and I am not good enough (read: I know nothing about) with PHP to figure out the problem.
In all of the cases however I am to a point where I cannot get it to do what I want.
I can *see* that what I want is most likely possible with either platform but I don't know enough about MySQL and PHP to make it happen.
In both platforms they give you the field headings and they decide what goes where on the pages.
Ultimately what I need is to be able to name the fields what I want and then have them displayed where I want them.
I did try messing with some of the PHP files in VirtueMart and I know where the changes need to be made for the displays but for some reason it will only display certain fields on certain pages.
I can see a line that displays a database field but if I change the field name to a different database field it just shows the text string for the field name in brackets (the way it is formed in the code).
So that is where I am at.
I tried to set it up so you guys could look at the different installs but I haven't figured out how to get my BellSouth modem/Netgear router to pass a different static IP address to a different internal box.
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Quote: : In your testing of osCommerce did you try this?
http://www.oscommerce.com/community/...ile+upload+csv
Sounds exactly like what you are looking for...
I'm running OSC with the Easy Populate module for our website, and for a previous employer, did a quick test to see if I could upload the item catalog from an excel spreadsheet.
There were about 100 parts, with various colors/logos/finishes, for about 700 total part number combinations possible, and it handled it just fine.
I'm not an IT guy, but can eventually get the various add-ons & code modifications to work as intended.
A code program that lets you compare differences in files was very helpful (I was using WinMerge and am code search to find where in the file changes needed to go).
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Does anyone have the current Joomla!
Package (1.0.12) they can email me?
Either that or see if THE DOWNLOAD LINK works for you.
If it does can somebody download it and email it to me?
For some reason the link appears to be dead to me.
My internet has been odd today so it might very well be me.
I am at work until 7 EST and want to get an instance of it up for another project before I leave tonight.
My email is a manzella AT gmail DOT com (No spaces)
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Downloader doesn't appear to be working.
The page just continuously tries to load.
I tried to get there by browsing out to joomla.org with the same results.
Main page loads, d/l page doesn't.
Jason
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Ok so I know it isn't me then.
I have the files at home but have no way to access them from here.
I'll have to just wait I guess.
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I have it. Drew, I PM'd you my email address.
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My wife and I are trying to build a website with an e-commerce shopping cart for our small business.
She signed up for web services at justhost.com based on survey results she found, and started the basic bones of a web page.
However, the shopping cart has baffled her.
Justhost offers oscommerce, as referenced above, but they seem to charge you to use it.
I went to oscommerce.com and it seems to be free.
Justhost also has Zen Cart for free, which she didn't like at all.
We know absolutely nothing about HTML, SQL, etc.
Will it be possible for us to work up a simple, inexpensive site to display and sell a few dozen products without becoming experts?
If so, what do you recommend?
If we need professional help and you want to offer your services or recommend a professional, I'll be glad to hear from you.
thanks
kevin
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Litecommerce - has worked for us for 3 years now.
And going in I knew zero about php and all that, and I still know almost zero...which is just the way I like it.
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Things have progressed a LONG way in the past two years.
I can no longer in good conscious recommend osCommerce - there are much better alternatives out there.
I believe Zen Cart is actually a fork of osCommerce and falls short as well (but does improve on the original osCommerce base).
And no offense Marcel, but the SilverHorseRacing website is in serious need of an update - both aesthetics and functionality.
For those wanting to run their own website with integrated storefront the thing to do is implement one of the mainstream CMS applications (Drupal, Joomla, WordPress) and add one of the available storefront plug-ins (some free some have a nominal cost).
Most plug-ins are exceptionally easy to install so you can install one to try it out - and if you don't like it, delete and move on to the next option.
You really shouldn't need someone technical to do this for you.
My wife (non-technical artsy type) has been experimenting with an Amazon store plug-in for Wordpress all on her own .
I haven't dug into it too deeply, but on the surface I'm impressed with the clean interface and how it allows you to mix your own items with Amazon items seamlessly (expand inventory to include virtually anything on Amazon of your choice and earn commission on sales of these items).
May not be the functionality you're looking for, but fits her needs perfectly - and the cool thing is *I* don't have to support it.
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Quote: : Things have progressed a LONG way in the past two years.
I can no longer in good conscious recommend osCommerce - there are much better alternatives out there.
I believe Zen Cart is actually a fork of osCommerce and falls short as well (but does improve on the original osCommerce base).
And no offense Marcel, but the SilverHorseRacing website is in serious need of an update - both aesthetics and functionality.
No offense taken - however, were you looking at the static side of the site which I agree is outdated (which is slated to go away very soon and be integrated into the new store) or were you looking at the webstore - which is where all the work has been going on?
I only ask because the overall feedback on the webstore as of late has been very positive, and while there's still some more to be done, I thought it had come a long way from where it was a month or two ago.
If you've got some constructive criticism, I'm all ears - after all it is how I feed the kids and pay the GFCP addiction...
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