Shopping Cart Tutorials

osCommerce Review- osCommerce is one of the free shopping carts that is typically offered by ecommerce web hosting providers. Read this article to find out about osCommerce’s distinguishing features and why the osCommerce shopping cart is popular.

osCommerce Overview

osCommerce is one of the most popular shopping cart softwares. It is offered by prominent web hosts, such as GoDaddy, BlueHost, JustHost, and is often a choice along with Zen cart at many web hosts. Some web hosts offer specifically designed osCommerce hosting. You can count on osCommerce-specific hosting to have the software versions necessary to run osCommerce properly.

Here are the osCommerce software requirements. As of December, 2010, osCommerce Online Merchant is at version 2.3.1, with version 3 available in testing with an alpha version. The current server requirements include the PHP programming language version 4 or greater, with version 5 recommended, while MySQL version 3 or greater is required with version 5 or greater recommended. For version 3, PHP version 5.2.0 or greater is required with the mySQLi extension and MySQL version 4.1.13 or greater or version 5.0.7 or greater.

General features include templates to make it easy to create layout changes and integrate osCommerce into an existing site. Breadcrumb navigation offers ease of site use. Support for German and Spanish, as well as English, is offered. Installation and upgrading are both automated, and the backend is object-oriented. For ease of use, features are on by default.

Key ecommerce features include support for unlimited categories as well as products, and also multi-currency support. The software supports downloads as well as shipping products and statistics on customer activity and products. Email and newsletter customer contact are both supported. The database is created for both backup and restore functions. Bestseller lists can be generated for the entire product offering or for specified product categories, and customers can be shown the products that other customers purchased along with the product they are viewing.

Control extends to a lot of areas. For example, you can control whether or not customers can see and purchase items that are out of stock. Shipping controls include offering free shipping based on criteria such as amount and/or destination, real-time quotes for major shippers, like UPS, USPS, FedEx, and limiting specific services to certain shipping zones. Tax application is also flexible.

Features for customers:

• Account information viewable, including order status and order history.

• Customer accounts can include multiple addresses for both billing and shipping.

• Both quick and advance search features are available.

• Secure transactions using SSL certificates.

• Payments are accepted through a useful variety of means, including checks, credit cards, money orders, and both through payment gateways and checkout services, such as PayPal Checkout.

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