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Advice on a retail website

FreejackFreejack Jake the Not-so-Wise
in Zocalo v2.0
Some background: My wife has become a very proficient at fiber arts, specifically knitting and crochet, to the point she is designed patterns and submitting them to nationally circulated magazines for consideration. Her first design to be published comes out in March.

Anyway, we are quickly realizing the need for some sort of web-presence in which she can show off her skills, display a portfolio of published designs and sell those patterns that she will self-publish (mainly those that do not get picked up by a magazine). Given that is an endeavor that is artistic in nature, and there may be instances were she may be judged on the quality of her portfolio presentation, we need something at a minimum appears professionally constructed.

And therein lies our dilemma. I don’t think we can justify paying someone to design a site for us, so we will need to develop our own skills. I have been looking through the options available, and given that purchasing patterns will be a big part of the site, I believe that [URL="http://www.oscommerce.com/"]osCommerce[/URL] may be the most cost effective starting point. It runs on PHP and MySQL so most host services should be able to handle the site. Also, while many of the stores using the software have a standard look, I have also seen some quite nicely done customizations.

Any, I need advice on how to get started, given that I’ve never messed with PHP or MySQL, and only know a tiny bit of HTML programming…

Here are examples of what we’d like her site to look like.

[url]http://www.leighradford.com/shop.html[/url] -> This feel for the shop she’d like (this is [I]not[/I] osCommerce)

[url]http://www.girlsgreen.com/catalog/[/url] -> One of the nicest osCommerce sites I’ve seen

[url]http://www.peakwool.co.uk/[/url] -> Fairly standard looking osCommerce shop, we are trying to avoid this look.

Jake

Comments

  • Random ChaosRandom Chaos Actually Carefully-selected Order in disguise
    Well, if you're using some sort of driving software, it probably uses some sort of templating system minimizing your needed knowledge of PHP and MySQL (in fact, you shouldn't need to know any MySQL if you have good software; might want to tweak PHP to optimize though).

    What you need to do is make sure you know HTML and CSS - that is the main way you make the look and feel of your site through whatever templating system they provide. Since the graphical look of your site is paramount, you might want to hire a good graphics artist if you don't think you can (or want to) do it yourself.

    I know nothing of osCommerce, though. I'd personally code it from scratch, but then I do PHP/MySQL for a living :D

    --RC
  • FreejackFreejack Jake the Not-so-Wise
    Then you may be the best person to ask: How do I go about setting up a PHP environment and MySQL on my PC so I can play with the software without needing a host?

    Jake
  • SanfamSanfam I like clocks.
    my suggestion for the setting up a demonstration system would be to simply download and install one of the many pre-packaged installs of Apache with a number of backends installed, such as XAMPP (google it). It's what I used to run for most of my local design testing and is certainly equipped well enough to handle your content.

    RC is right, though. You do not need to understand either PHP or MySQL to make use of either of those, but the modifiation of the visual templates [B]will[/B] require some knowlege of PHP and CSS to pull off any effective visual change.

    Also, another system to check out is ZenCart, though its initial state is a good deal less refined from a purely visual standpoint.

    Keep in mind that the key to any site is still the presentation. Good photography of a product is more likely to sell it than copy text or even a perfect layout. Drop me a line sometime and we could discuss that a bit more easily (or perhaps carry things on here, depending on your accessibility)
  • FreejackFreejack Jake the Not-so-Wise
    Well, I was able to get osCommerce up and running using Sanfam's suggestion of installing XAMPP. I have an old PII sitting around that has a clean install of Win98 that is perfect for playing around on.

    It looks like osCommerce has almost all the retail backend that any small shop could want, now I just need to get to working on the look.

    Anyone have any good knowledge sources as far as CSS is concerned?

    Jake
  • Random ChaosRandom Chaos Actually Carefully-selected Order in disguise
    W3Schools is a good reference once you know the basics: [url]http://www.w3schools.com/css/default.asp[/url]


    I don't have any good learning sites (never had to learn it...er...well...I learned it before it became something that needed learning :D).

    I will warn you: making a website cross browser supported using CSS is a pain in the ***. You're going to go insane doing it yourself. :)

    --RC
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