OS Commerce
Govt Summary
eCommerce platforms are being commoditized. Enterprise level solutions are coming back down in value and new open supply solutions are being made obtainable to anyone with an internet affiliation for free.
The foremost robust of those open source solutions is OS Commerce (OSC) – a community driven eCommerce solution that is versatile, scalable, and user friendly. As eCommerce becomes even additional a half of mainstream retail, OSC can give businesses of all sizes and shapes with the functionality and capabilities of the big boys. This transient examines a number of the benefits of OS Commerce and provides insights into how it will help your business.
There is no such thing as a free lunch.
Perhaps therefore, but you CAN get an eCommerce platform for nothing. Offered for free at www.oscommerce.com, this eCommerce resolution provides tons of bells and whistles and provides a user friendly interface to manage the administrative parts of the store. The code is predicated within the PHP scripting language and runs on the Apache net server – a user also needs access to a SQL database to initially upload the files that manage the categories and merchandise inside the admin section.
Now that sounds difficult, however very anyone can do it with some focused effort. Much of the documentation on-line concerning OS is terribly thorough and provides little by little plans on how to get your store up and running. Any newbie to the current type of work can doubtless return across some roadblocks, but the OS Commerce community forums are only a click away to start hassle shooting.
The solution is community driven, that means that similar temperament OSCers are prepared to assist out their peers with answers to posted questions. Yes, sometimes this may be extremely frustrating anticipating a solution, but it is very rewarding to overcome a technology bug on your own.
Contribute to the Cause
The simplest half of OSC is the amount of contributions that can be added to your website at any time. Again, there’s no price for these enhancements and upgrades – simply the requirement to wait and see in your installations. In most cases, contributions are located on the OS commerce community section and are downloadable via zip files. After opening the file, read the “browse me” file which can walk you through the file additions, subtractions, and code changes required to make your enhancement work properly. If you explore the OS platform be positive to upgrade with the following contributions.
Ultimate SEO URL’s by Chemo
This cool contribution permits the location owner to create static URL’s out of a database driven site. This will dramatically help in search saturation as a lot of pages are able to be indexed. Its no secret that search spiders like ancient urls higher than ones that are dynamic and this contribution helps achieve that.
Simple Populate
No want to input product data manually, this contribution allows you to import knowledge from a basic excel file into your store. A true timesaver!
Featured Product
If you have an ecommerce store – bound product are a lot of attractive to sell than others. This contribution allows you to tailor the featured product that you want to showcase at intervals both your home and category pages.
Final Thoughts on OSC
Myself, I am a marketer. However after learning OS I really feel like I have some programmer blood in me! This platform is easy to use and good for a little to medium size business in getting online. Yes, there can be headaches along the approach but keep with it and you’ll overcome them and shortly have an ecommerce store to bring you during a new revenue stream.
Craig Smith is the founding father of Trinity Insight LLC – a management consulting firm for the E-Commerce sector.
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