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Ree
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« on: September 09, 2008, 02:22:34 AM »

I'm new to web design and what led me to get into it was a product I developed.  About 9 months ago, I signed on with a site builder and developed my site.  I didn't like their shopping cart, so I hacked away at ZenCart (per someone's recommendation) and I moved my existing pages over to GoDaddy with links to my ZenCart.  I didn't use ez-pages.  It works ok, but definitely overkill for 1 product.

Now, I've started learning CSS & HTML and I've developed a couple sites (MunKy has helped me a ton with www.egeamedical.com).  I'd like to clean up my AWFUL, YUCKY, error infected code, and need advice.   Do I stay with ZenCart or move to another shopping cart?   Someone recommended Mals eCommerce, but they only have the option for 5 discount codes from what I can tell.

I'm also using PayPal Pro, if that plays into this at all.  I'm willing to look into other merchant accounts..

Any advice?   I want to be prepared for a client I have coming along soon and they'll need the same setup as me.

Ok, I'm embarrassed to even share my site (from the code side), but I guess I have to - www.flippee.com.

Thanks so much!
Ree
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« on: September 09, 2008, 02:22:34 AM »

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MuNKy
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« Reply #1 on: September 09, 2008, 11:30:17 AM »

If you are just promoting 1 product then it should be reasonably easy for you to set up a page using drupal which is a free open source content management system. To turn it into an ecommerce system you can use the also free module - ubercart for drupal. Download the complete package including drupal from the ubercart site here.

I've been using it recently to build a customers website and it is so much easier to customise than any other package i've come across. It uses a templating system which is very well documented on the drupal and ubercart websites. I would show you the URL for the customers site but it's still in development and I dont want those sneaky search bots to find it!
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Ree
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« Reply #2 on: September 09, 2008, 11:54:49 AM »

Thanks!   I just looked quickly at the LiveTest and I REALLY like the layout.  Very clean.   I'll dig alittle deeper today!

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MuNKy
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« Reply #3 on: September 09, 2008, 12:08:01 PM »

Yep and there are a few different themes that it comes with and you can download more or create your own.
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Ree
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« Reply #4 on: September 09, 2008, 02:34:49 PM »

OMG- I think I need to pull an all-nighter tonight!   Grin I LOVE what I see so far.  Not enough hours in the day..
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Ree
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« Reply #5 on: September 12, 2008, 02:30:01 AM »

I was going to ask this on the ubercart forum, but thought I'd ask you if that ok..

Do I need to set up a new hosting account?  If I'm going to build parallel sites and hopefully end up redirecting my domain to this one, should I have have the new account with my existing host, Go Daddy?   I see the requirements, which I think are the same as ZenCart.   The documentation is very easy to follow.
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MuNKy
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« Reply #6 on: September 12, 2008, 10:04:39 AM »

You should be fine to just install it on the same hosting if they accept multiple domains on one account. If however you are still going to use flippee.com then just build the site in a folder on flippee.com/newsite/ with its own database and keep all the pages with the same names, and then swap the site over to flippee.com/ when its ready. Any pages that have changed name you should 301 redirect the zencart urls to the ubercart urls in your .htaccess file. That way you'll keep any page rank that you've accumulated so far.
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Ree
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« Reply #7 on: September 12, 2008, 12:09:12 PM »

Thanks!   I was planning on having the whole site in ubercart and not have any extra pages.   This was my plan with ZenCart, but didn't get around to it.

So if my index, product, reviews, etc pages aren't there anymore, and I don't have a specific page to redirect to, can I still redirect to the main folder for ubercart to retain my SEO status?
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Ree
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« Reply #8 on: September 13, 2008, 09:56:25 PM »

So do I create a template for Drupal and allow my clients to change the content?  Sorry, probably a dumb question, but I want to make sure I got this right.

Is it really difficult to create a template?

I installed Drupal b/c GoDaddy had a installation on their site, but it was for Drupal 6.4.  Ubercart only works with 5.x.  Sad

I feel like you put me on another planet with this one!  So much to learn.. I enjoy it, but it's definitely a steep learning curve.   You're sure it's worth it??
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MuNKy
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« Reply #9 on: September 16, 2008, 02:07:47 PM »

Jumping straight into content managed/shopping carts will be a very steep learning curve, one that i'm still steadily climbing also!

Drupal is a content management system which you can use to set up pages and the owner can log into to the admin panel and then edit/create new pages to go on the site. You can then add-on some more functions like the blogging tool to allow you to use drupal's blogging features, and then adding ubercart will add on the e-commerce features.

There is no definite way of how you work with your client, some may be more internet savvy than others and may be fine with setting up pages, products etc. Others may need you to do it. Now you can accomodate for this possible extra work in your original quote or you give a monthly fee for updates/modifications.

The ubercart deluxe package has the correct version of drupal with it.
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BabyChicken4u2
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« Reply #10 on: October 02, 2008, 01:27:52 AM »

WordPress makes for a very nice cart... especially small product lines. Check it out.

~Melanie
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jonedwards
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« Reply #11 on: October 07, 2008, 09:54:35 AM »

WordPress makes for a very nice cart... especially small product lines. Check it out.

~Melanie

Hi Melanie

Which shopping cart plugins/functionality do you use with Wordpress? I've been looking at a few plugins, but haven't found one that looks stable and well-supported

Cheers, Jon
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wgirl700
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« Reply #12 on: March 05, 2010, 04:40:24 PM »

Hi Ree,

I found the perfect solution to your "1 product shop"
problem:

A new possiblity for you is using online web forms
with a self-totaling component instead of a shopping cart.
Here are a couple of examples:

https://www.fospace.com/FOSformexample103.htm
https://www.elbowspace.com/FRHformexample8.htm

The difference between this and a standard shopping cart is that
all  of your product are displayed in drop down selection boxes, on
one web form page.

It seems they calculate totals, tax & shipping with
each click of the mouse. While a shopping cart bounces
back and forth to the server evertime a product is selected,
the web form page is sent only once. All product selections
are made on the same web page and submitted when the
shopping is complete. Since you only have one product,
this sound perfect.
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ash
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« Reply #13 on: March 05, 2010, 07:55:52 PM »

Simple solutions but i don't think thats the best solution, for a single product shop i'd get someone to code me a site, it'll be fairly straightforward and once you have a cms in place you can roll it out across other shops if needed.
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