One of the most common questions submitted to us by readers and visitors to this blog is in regard to shopping cart solutions, e-commerce web hosting solutions and general questions about running an online store. We have decided to publish a number of posts about an online stores. We will write about software you can use and web hosting you might need.
Today we would like to start with a list of readily available free web applications for you to help you create robust online stores. Some of these applications may be already available in your hosting account, especially if your web host offers Fantastico or SimpleScripts.
OpenCart
We decided to begin with OpenCart, even though you may have to download and install this application on your server by yourself. We do hope that OpenCart will eventually become popular enough for most of the web hosts to include it in their Fantastico or SimpleScript scripts for easy installation. While not without a “learning curve”, OpenCart is n extremely robust shopping cart solution, with dozen of powerful features. Here are some of the OpenCart features:
- Unlimited Categories
- Unlimited Products
- Unlimited Manufacturers
- Multi Currency
- Multi Language
- Product Reviews
- Product Ratings
- SEO Friendly URLs
- Google Base Feed
- Google Sitemap
- SSL Support
Magento
Magento is another very popular shopping cart solution. It is likely that Mgento can be installed with your hosting provider through Fantastico or SimpleScripts. The free version of Magento also known as Magento Community Edition. We find that Megento Communit Edition is does not have nearly as many features as OpenCart.
osCommerce
Another popular free shopping cart solution is osCommerce, and is available for installation with most web hosting providers via Fantastico or SimpleScript installation bundles. Here are some of the features available in osCommerce shopping cart:
- Supports unlimited products and categories
- Support for physical (shippable) and virtual (downloadable) products
- Multilingual support
- Multicurrency support (with automatic of currency exchange rates)
- Secure transactions with SSL
- Accept numerous offline payment processing (cheque, money orders, offline credit care processing, ..)
- Accept numerous online payment processing (PayPal, 2CheckOut, Authorize.net, iPayment, ..)
Zen Cart
Zen Cart claims to be the art of e-commerce; free, user-friendly, open source shopping cart software. Zen Cart installation is also available with web hosting providers who that offer Fantastico and SimpleScripts bundles. Here are some of the features available in this shopping cart:
- multiple customer modes
- unlimited category depth
- multiple sales and discounts
- multiple display modes
- multiple shipping options
- multiple payment options
AgoraCart
AgoraCart is a powerful “Free” Open Source ecommerce shopping cart software – offers you a very wide range of features that allow you to setup an online storefront or shop ranging from a simple template based store for novices to the integration of complex web design concepts created by your web designer. In addition to the free version, there is also a premium version of this software. We believe that free version of AgoraCart does not offer enough functionality as compared to either OpenCart or osCommerce. However the lifetime license of the AgoraCart Gold is just one-time fee off $55.
CubeCart
CubeCart is an “out of the box” ecommerce shopping cart software solution which has been written to run on servers that have PHP & MySQL support. With CubeCart you can quickly setup a powerful online store which can be used to sell digital or tangible products to new and existing customers all over the world. CubeCart currently offers two versions (v3 and v4) on the v3 is free however it includes a “copyright” footer which can be removed for additional fee.
We hope that the above list will offer you good start in your research on solutions to power your online store. If you currently use any of the shopping carts on your website, please share your experience in the comments. Feel free to leave links to your live shops.
By James Lucas Scott
Designing, hosting, and managing a website can be a challenging process for those who need such a site, but have never before hosted one on the Internet. To aid in this process, making it smoother, more intuitive, and more accessible for the potential website owner, a control panel program named cPanel (based on Unix) is now offered by some web hosts as part of the hosting package. The program is written and marketed by a company of the same name.
cPanel has several different sets of controls, all of which are usable through any standard web browser. The controls included are those for resellers (who are buying the website space from a data center and re-renting it to end users), administrators, and actual website owners. The controls make modifying and administering the website far easier by automating some processes, and providing a graphical control interface that is intuitive and easy to remember, rather than command or scripting prompts.
The cPanel program supports many of the applications used in building and maintaining websites, such as MySQL, PHP, Apache, Perl, and Bind. It also incorporates e-mail functionalities like POP3, SMTP, and IMAP. There are also many add-ons which can be used to allow support of other applications for website construction and administration – although these add-ons must be purchased from the cPanel company, and are not available as free downloads as so many add-ons are.
Web hosting with cPanel gives those who are not highly skilled in website management a clear, easy, intuitive interface that makes their efforts much smoother and more successful. Speed of hosting and maintaining the website are both increased greatly by cPanel, especially since it will lessen the number of calls that need to be made to technical support. The interface includes tutorial videos for the more complex operations, as well as an on-screen help function, giving you greater independence from tech support people and saving one of your most valuable resources – time.
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