Hello,
This is my first post so I thought I would go over what this blog (soon to be podcast) is about.
So I'm Patrick McMahon, a system admin at a local school here in Melbourne, Australia. I have been doing minor php coding for years now nothing major. I am starting an e-Commerce store called The Vitality Store which I will explain more in future blogs (soon to be podcasts)
What I wanted to do was make a blog and podcast about e-Commerce. As I learn and grow from my experiences, which are only just getting started. What I'm hoping is to let people follow me while I opening a new online store, and hopefully they can learn from my mistakes and maybe I can even get some help from them from time to time. This Blog/Podcast will be focusing mainly on the osCommerce Web Store or software (maybe an idea for an episode, what do you call web software)
Here is the link to there website: http://www.oscommerce.com/
osCommerce has been around since March 2000. The latest Release Candidate is v2.2 RC2a. which was updated 30th January 2008. The latest Alpha release is 3.0 Alpha 5 which was updated on the 15th March 2009. Features Include: Supports unlimited products and categories, Products-to-categories structure, Add/Edit/Remove categories, products, manufacturers, customers, and reviews, Multilingual support, Easily backup and restore the database, All orders stored in the database for fast and efficient retrieval, Accept numerous online payment processing! full Feature list here: http://www.oscommerce.com/solutions/oscommerce
osCommerce is a free Open Source e-commerce web store. This Means for me that It would probably be very customizable. I was very right. there are over 14,000 add-ons for the store and a great community of people willing to help with every aspect of your store. From Payment systems for your area to one page checkouts, this community is very far reaching. This is sounding like and ad but it isn't. This is why I use osCommerce. I'm a big believer in open source and all my work I usually put online for others to benefit from. When I'm not to lazy that is! Open source does create one problem in my mind. Development is slow. If your looking for a store that is updated with every couple of months this store is not for you. Major updates have only happened once since I started designing my store about a year ago. This doesn't include the add-ons though which are updated daily. It did seem that OsCommerce was dead for a few months. but then there was another update. One of the reason for this Blog / Podcast is to maybe bring some more donations into the store to help releases come faster.
The Project Leader for osCommerce is Harald Ponce de Leon and it would be awesome to one day have him on the show. So if anyone knows him please send him my way and I will get in contact. I think an interview with him would be awesome for the community.
Well that's a bit about OSC.
Current OSC Stats: Live Stores: 14,123 | Add-Ons: 5,598 | Community Members: 217,259
Good luck with your new start up or opening your store online.
And Remember Tough Times Never Last But Tough People DO!
