Ok folks,
Here's the story,
I was using MS BCentrals eCommerece system on my website.. It was oh so simple to use, It was like writing a listing for _bay to add products to the catalogs...
Microsoft has decided they are going to eliminate this complete system and web hosting.. I have 30 days to find a new system.

The new Hosts are going to only provide oscommerece..
I signed up with a company that had free oscommerece for 1 year, to try it out,,, I HATE IT!!!! I am not a twenty something that was born with a pc in my lap.. I have been playing with it for a week , some days as many as 13 hours a day and have yet been able to get my logo on the front page..
It comes with no instructions or play by play book.. Everything must be hunted down on a forum at one location or another, this can entail searching thru thousands of posts and replies to TRY to find a solution...
For instance,
I spent 13 hours the other day trying to set up a front catalog page, only to later find out I had to download another program that is just as baffling as the oscommerece program it's self..

It is just to far over my head and to involved.. I just don't understand any of it!



All I am looking for is an easy to use, basic, no frills catalog and shopping cart system that accepts Google Checkout that I can link to from my web site pages.. I don't mind paying a monthly fee, I just need it simple and big enough for several thousand items..
Any Ideas?
Thanks in advance

Give these guys a shot, you have a free trial period, nothing to download, and it just doesn't get any easier to put together a nice looking website pretty quickly. They just upgraded the site builder, the code is clean as a whistle, always a good thing for optimization purposes. The thing I like the most is there are a ton of freebie/discounts to shopping.com, etc., and you can change the meta tags for each page individually without being a professional web designer. Give it a shot...and good luck!



Build a High Power Site - Everything Included





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EleganzaJewels,
I sure will check them out.
I am glad I had a trial run on that oscomm. (If that would have been the only option, this boy would be back in the job market!!!!)
Thanks,
B

No problem, give me a PM or email me at info@eleganzajewels.com if you need any help!

Linda

Wanted to add that Mal's Ecommerce has Checkout integration, I have not used it in a long time, but hear it isn't too complicated, and it's free:

Mal's Ecommerce

Also consider these options:

PSU store with VirtueCart and Joomla (Good inexpensive choice !)
X-Cart ($199, drawback: based in Russia)
LiteCommerce ($95, drawback: based in Russia)
ShopSite (Reasonable montly fee)
ZenCart (based on OS Commerce but much simpler)

The OSCommerce documentation is available for download on the OSCommerce website:

OSCommerce Documentation in PDF

OSCommerce Documentation in online HTML

The information you'll need to change the logo:

Changing the logo

Read the manual, Luke!

Mal's is great. That's what I have on my site. Problem is if you want to use GC, Mal's has dropped GC as Google was being a PITA.

That's a big problem for several of the carts -- if you want to use GC. When I looked at the OSC forum in Jan, no one had been able to get the GC mod to work. And it was supplied by Google.

Google is being a real PITA right now. They want the business, but they don't seem to know how to play well with others.

Carol

I use Prestostore.com. It is the easiest shopping cart format I have seen yet, and they offer a 10 day trial before you activate it.

It is a little more expensive ($30/month) but includes listing in Presto Mart, an online shopping engine, which I have already had a great deal of traffic from. There is still one problem they are working on... When getting visits from Froogle, it goes directly to the PrestoMart listing instead of your site. If the shopper adds your item to the cart from the Froogle listing, GC doesn't show as a payment method, and the Froogle/Prestomart cart is not transferrable to the site. But, GC works great on the site as long as they add it to their cart directly from your site. They just have to get it setup correctly to do this from Froogle.

There is also a link on every PrestoMart listing "Visit seller's store" that takes the buyer straight to your website. I have received over 200 direct visits just from PrestoMart in my first week, and only have about 20% of my products listed. I expect to be getting over 1000 visits a week from the full inventory, so I'll just have to see how many convert.