Thinking of starting a small online shop selling niche items, so i've started to look at opensource ecommerce software (AGAIN). I'm pretty open minded about my requirements the main features i want are:

• SEF URLS
• Simple printing of orders, ie address label and packing list etc

Obviously with my miniscule requirements i'd probably rather opt for a simple script but might consider something like Magneto or Prestashop. Does anyone have any experience with setting up / managing a online shop?

I'm probably looking at an initial product range of 50 - 100 products.

VirtueMart is a nice PHP based open source platform, but it is designed to run through Joomla.

I went for Prestashop in the end.

You can see the very much work in progress site here: http://www.veedubgifts.co.uk

Just starting to sort out which items i want to stock and which suppliers to buy from etc. Hoping to have the site fully launched by mid september.

Cheers Dan. Yes working on getting as many products listed (albeit out of stock) before i go away so i can leave the search engines to crawl it whilst i'm sunning myself, also seeding a few links for terms such as Camper Van Gifts, the competition should'nt be too hard to beat although some sites are pretty established / aged.

Long term i will be looking at introducing an affiliate scheme (would probably look at using WG or POR if i go down that route), but short term i'd be able to offer exclusive codes and banners to anyone interested. I'll drop you a line when its ready to launch.