So I have been sitting here all day playing around with a few shopping cart script solutions for this company. One of my co-workers already had 3 installations of OS Commerce installed, and while I tinkered with its source files a bit I later realized that the whole front-end was comprised entirely of HTML tables! I wish I had noticed that sooner—I would have dropped it like a bad habit hours ago. I haven’t spent the past 2 years learning how to code properly only to revert back to the old days, people. Designing and coding this thing up in tables would be a travesty.
I installed OpenCart after that, which seems pretty simple and is also pretty, which helps. I like pretty things. Unfortunately after I got it all set up, I couldn’t really do much of anything because once I was into the admin area if I idled for more than a minute I would get logged out. After trying multiple ‘fixes’ found on the OC forums, nothing worked. And their host, Network Solutions, won’t let you touch the php.ini in the event that this was (probably) a sessions issue. I did try adding php.ini’s into the directory and the admin directory with the fixes as directed but, again, no luck. So, OpenCart was deleted.
I noticed Network Solutions’ hosting comes with the ability to add Magento, so I installed that through their administrator panel. Easy to setup, but once I got in there I was completely lost what to do, and the documentation is abysmal. The front-end AND back-end were also incredibly slow loading, and this is on NetSol. Shared NetSol, but still… NetSol. The very first domain registrar. It sucks, because I kind of want to learn Magento, but oh well. Magento was nixed. I’m trying OpenCart once again, and hoping that maybe the problems I had the first time were just a bug. Maybe it’ll work this time. If not… I guess I’ll have to figure out Magento, because I refuse to use tables-heavy OS Commerce.
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reading this article was like reading a page straight out of my “diary”. i can’t beleive how identical our experiences have been. I have spent so long trying to get these carts installed locally as well, then to find the same issues as you. I too am about to go back to opencart in the hope it can be custmised well to be fitting with my website (http://www.greencleansolution.co.uk/) but i have ultimately low expectations. what did you do in the end? this was posted on 15th december so hope you’ve made some good progress and can stop me from following the mistakes you too have made.
Hey Adam, thanks for the comment.
Ultimately I ended up not going with any of the solutions I mentioned. Instead, I tried out and went with PrestaShop. I found it to be a lot more user-friendly, at least from my own perspective. It relies heavily on modular items that can be installed and uninstalled easily depending on if you want them, and after a little tinkering (and browsing their forums) it’s pretty easy to skin as well. Much like WordPress, you don’t have to really touch the backend or functional core of it, instead only messing with the tpl template files to get the ‘look’ you want. Plus it was the only one I could get to work on Network Solutions that I could figure how to use. Try that one out and see if it’s a good pick for your site.
Nice looking site by the way!