Hi all,
like to add some further basic thoughts to ecommerce cause it is a wild and various discussed topic here in FWT:
Whatever is recommend to use, all have a few common and basic problems:
- Safety and Legalities
I know not one (free, opensource) solution yet, that covers the strict selling rules especially in Center Europe. I’m talking especially of Germany, but I know that Dutch, Belgium and many others follow the (nearly) same stringent rules like cancellation policy, email notifications and many other things.
- The usage within Freeway
OpenCart is definitely not a recommend for to “integrate” into your FW project. The basics are of course to be done within the CSS, but if you have a more complicated basic webpage including footer you need to operate directly the “open heart” of OC, the so called .tpl. It is possible to do, but you’ll be taken to a place called “FarFar Away”. For all that OC is really fascinating from its structure and stuff. We’re actually on a way to include all requirements but probably my lifetime and the fact I’m not a lawyer could make this an OpenEnd project (a brief look in if it might be of interest: http://poseidon-duschen.de/eshop/index.php
- The other most popular recommends:
Mals http://www.mals-e.com/ :
Supported with actions (even WebYep able) and probably the nearest in the FW world. However not usable in Germany due some restricted email notifications and for me personally a bit shopworn.
ECWID http://www.ecwid.com/
My biggest favorite if it comes to integrate within your current project. The caveat? The development is international, basically for the US market so as mentioned above: Some things are restricted (Tax, Tax Shipping) that ECWID is not useable within Germany and so I wait and wait and wait (not sure if they willing to fix) (Example: http://www.kimmich-dm.de/ecom/ecwid-shop.html ) and a small cast on how to integrate: http://www.kimmich-dm.de/screencasts.php
Another important point to ask is, where are all my informations are going to. ECWID for example stores all the datas on some amazon secure servers, not to bad but out of control. Or you’d like to host it on your servers? Sure - but what can we do to make this as hack safe as possible using opensource stuff?
Actually we run as the only “make me sleep” version one of our big three hosting services (1&1 or similar) that might be available in nearly all regions (I guess).
Written just to wrap a few of my thoughts in the hope that this make sense (partially?)
Cheers
Thomas
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