{"id":418,"date":"2009-04-08T11:01:48","date_gmt":"2009-04-08T16:01:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cssnewbie.com\/?p=418"},"modified":"2009-04-08T11:01:48","modified_gmt":"2009-04-08T16:01:48","slug":"a-simple-streamlined-e-commerce-solution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cssdeck.com\/blog\/a-simple-streamlined-e-commerce-solution\/","title":{"rendered":"Reader Response: A Simple, Streamlined E-Commerce Solution"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today, dear readers, I come to you with my arms wide open &mdash; and my shoulders caught somewhere between a slump and a shrug. I&#8217;ve been tearing my hair out over the last couple of months looking for the perfect ecommerce solution for my specific needs and wants. I&#8217;ve come up short.<\/p>\n<p>But it occurs to me that I have a lot of smart, savvy readers here on CSS Newbie &mdash; and maybe, just maybe, you&#8217;ll be able to help me find the perfect shopping cart. Below, I&#8217;ll explain specifically what I&#8217;m looking for (and a bit about what I&#8217;m <em>not<\/em> looking for, too). If you know of a cart that meets my needs &mdash; or even just some of them &mdash; <strong>please<\/strong> do not hesitate to let me know! I&#8217;m hoping that the comments on this article will prove as plentiful as Starbucks on the open prairie. And twice as useful.<!--more--><\/p>\n<h3>I Want a Simple, User-Friendly Cart that Stays Out of My Way.<\/h3>\n<p>That about sums it up, really. But for more detail, here&#8217;s what I want\/need in a cart:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>A self-hosted solution.<\/strong> If it weren&#8217;t for this requirement, I think<a href=\"http:\/\/www.foxycart.com\/\"> Foxycart would be my #1 contender.<\/a> Consider that a hint &mdash; if you know of something Foxycart-eque, but is self-hosted instead, <em>please<\/em> let me know!<\/li>\n<li><strong>Supports everything <a href=\"https:\/\/www.paypal.com\/\">PayPal<\/a> has to offer.<\/strong> Specifically, I want something that can support <a href=\"https:\/\/www.paypal.com\/cgi-bin\/webscr?cmd=_wp-pro-overview-outside&#038;nav=2.0.1\">Website Payments Pro<\/a> and the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.paypal.com\/cgi-bin\/webscr?cmd=_payflow-pro-overview-outside\">Payflow Pro<\/a> gateway. This way I can handle payments on my site, but still take advantage of PayPal&#8217;s expertise, PCI compliance, and competitive pricing.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Flexible, <em>straightforward<\/em> templating.<\/strong> I am a front-end developer. Any cart solution that tries to stand between me and my code or that makes templating a holy hell isn&#8217;t a good solution. I want simple, straightforward flexibility. For example, I&#8217;ve been working with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.magentocommerce.com\/\">Magento<\/a> a lot recently, and while it has a lot of great features, it&#8217;s a <strong>huge<\/strong> pain to deviate too far from the standard build. Every small change requires updates in multiple disparate files and hours of time for a five-minute job. My ideal solution would let me build my pages however I wanted, and just drop in the &#8220;cart&#8221; functionality wherever I cared to do so.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Good support of downloadable products.<\/strong> The stores I&#8217;m building will have both hard and soft goods, so I need the cart to work equally smoothly with both.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Built for <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/LAMP_(software_bundle)\">LAMP<\/a> servers.<\/strong> The ideal solution would run on PHP\/MySQL, but I would consider other LAMP-friendly options. Sorry, but ASP\/.NET solutions aren&#8217;t a possibility for me.<\/li>\n<li><strong>A single product database.<\/strong> This solution will be running multiple stores, but several of the stores will share some products. In the interest of avoiding redundant data, I&#8217;d like to have a single product database that all my stores can draw from.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Access to the source.<\/strong> I don&#8217;t want to have to wait for a team halfway around the world or a community of volunteer developers to get around to building the functionality I need if I think I could tackle the project myself. If I can&#8217;t have access to the source itself, an exceptional plugin system would be a good alternative.<\/li>\n<li><strong>A flexible discounting system.<\/strong> I want to be able to offer (as a fake example) 20% off orders of $50 or more on certain products. I want to discount items if people buy two or more of the same product. I want sales that run for three weeks, and expire automatically. Or at least some of those things.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>That&#8217;s the basics of what I need, folks. That isn&#8217;t too much to ask, is it?<\/p>\n<p>To summarize, <strong>I&#8217;m looking for a simple, straightforward shopping cart that makes templating a breeze, runs on PHP\/MySQL, supports PayPal gateways, allows virtual goods and discounts, and is something I can install locally and modify.<\/strong> I do not need a solution that tries to be everything at once &mdash; it doesn&#8217;t have to contain a CMS, a catalog, or an inventory system. It doesn&#8217;t have to provide a newsletter, it needn&#8217;t compare items, and it shouldn&#8217;t try to walk my dog on Thursdays. I don&#8217;t want a jack-of-all-trades: I want a master of one (or two).<\/p>\n<p>I also want to clarify: <strong>this does not have to be a free solution.<\/strong> If you know of a commercial option that does all this, I would be <em>very<\/em> excited to hear about it.<\/p>\n<p>So! Let me know what you know in the comments below. Even if you know of a cart that fulfills <em>some<\/em> of these needs, I would be excited to hear about it &mdash; there&#8217;s always the chance I can customize it to do what I need from there.<\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-socializer wpsr-share-icons \" data-lg-action=\"show\" data-sm-action=\"show\" data-sm-width=\"768\" ><h3>Share and Enjoy !<\/h3><div class=\"wpsr-si-inner\"><div class=\"wpsr-counter wpsrc-sz-32px\" style=\"color:#000\"><span class=\"scount\"><span data-wpsrs=\"\" data-wpsrs-svcs=\"facebook,twitter,linkedin,pinterest,print,pdf\">0<\/span><\/span><small class=\"stext\">Shares<\/small><\/div><div class=\"socializer sr-popup sr-32px sr-circle sr-opacity sr-pad sr-count-1 sr-count-1\"><span class=\"sr-facebook\"><a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/share.php?u=\" target=\"_blank\"  title=\"Share this on Facebook\"  style=\"color: #ffffff\" ><i class=\"fab fa-facebook-f\"><\/i><span class=\"ctext\"><span data-wpsrs=\"\" data-wpsrs-svcs=\"facebook\">0<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/span>\n<span class=\"sr-twitter\"><a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=%20-%20%20\" target=\"_blank\"  title=\"Tweet this !\"  style=\"color: #ffffff\" ><i class=\"fab fa-twitter\"><\/i><\/a><\/span>\n<span class=\"sr-linkedin\"><a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/sharing\/share-offsite\/?url=\" target=\"_blank\"  title=\"Add this to LinkedIn\"  style=\"color: #ffffff\" ><i class=\"fab fa-linkedin-in\"><\/i><\/a><\/span>\n<span class=\"sr-pinterest\"><a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.pinterest.com\/pin\/create\/button\/?url=&amp;media=&amp;description=\" target=\"_blank\"  title=\"Submit this to Pinterest\"  style=\"color: #ffffff\" data-pin-custom=\"true\"><i class=\"fab fa-pinterest\"><\/i><span class=\"ctext\"><span data-wpsrs=\"\" data-wpsrs-svcs=\"pinterest\">0<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/span>\n<span class=\"sr-print\"><a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.printfriendly.com\/print?url=\" target=\"_blank\"  title=\"Print this article \"  style=\"color: #ffffff\" ><i class=\"fa fa-print\"><\/i><\/a><\/span>\n<span class=\"sr-pdf\"><a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.printfriendly.com\/print?url=\" target=\"_blank\"  title=\"Convert to PDF\"  style=\"color: #ffffff\" ><i class=\"fa fa-file-pdf\"><\/i><\/a><\/span><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today I come to you with my arms wide open &mdash; and my shoulders caught somewhere between a slump and a shrug. I&#8217;ve been tearing my hair out over the last couple of months looking for the perfect ecommerce solution. I&#8217;ve come up short. [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"more-link article\" href=\"https:\/\/cssdeck.com\/blog\/a-simple-streamlined-e-commerce-solution\/\" title=\"Click to read 'Reader Response: A Simple, Streamlined E-Commerce Solution'\">Read Article<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[177,190,193],"tags":[253,271,315,316,320,347,363],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cssdeck.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cssdeck.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cssdeck.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cssdeck.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cssdeck.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cssdeck.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cssdeck.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cssdeck.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cssdeck.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}