Hi, ALL!

It's been a long time since I've asked for advice here, but now I really need some. I am about to make an e-commerce site and I've been wonderring if I should create the entire shopping cart thing my self or if I should search for it on the Internet.

The thing is I am working on a tight budget and I don't seem to find a free customisable shopping carts on the net.

The site is suppose to be up and running by the end of November and I have never done such an extensive PHP project before. My question is, are there any reliable open licence PHP5 shopping carts that can be seemlesly implemented and used with PayPal? Or do I have to make it myself? Is it even possible in 2 weeks?

The only one I've used before is zen cart (http://www.zen-cart.com/). I've heard good things about os commerce as well (http://www.oscommerce.com/).

Thanks. I've looked at them already. osCommerce start doing PHP 5 from version 3 of their cart. I'm not sure about Zen Cart, bu from what I've seen, it is only being used by total webdesign amateurs. I mean Kudos to them for trying, but it makes me feel suspicious of those shoping carts. Why aren't they being used by proper e-merchants?

Can anybody suggest a paid Shopping cart that uses PHP5?

Originally Posted by frofi

Thanks. I've looked at them already. osCommerce start doing PHP 5 from version 3 of their cart. I'm not sure about Zen Cart, bu from what I've seen, it is only being used by total webdesign amateurs. I mean Kudos to them for trying, but it makes me feel suspicious of those shoping carts. Why aren't they being used by proper e-merchants?

Can anybody suggest a paid Shopping cart that uses PHP5?

Not really, only those who use a customized Zen-Cart don't make it known its Zen-Cart. Take a look at a Zen-Cart based site I have customized: http://www.rugsale.com/index.html

In fact, osCommerce and ZenCart are the same products, almost...
ZenCart is a repackaging of osCommerce, so it's always a bit behind, but I've found it more "clean" in it's code base when you need to alter something.

osC is really a mess when you need to dig in...

another reason one would write a their own shopping cart would be to incorporate the web store to an existing business process, so you back office administration site would need to be custom not something out of the box like oscommerce and zen provide.

Originally Posted by tripy

In fact, osCommerce and ZenCart are the same products, almost...
ZenCart is a repackaging of osCommerce, so it's always a bit behind, but I've found it more "clean" in it's code base when you need to alter something.

osC is really a mess when you need to dig in...

I'm starting to understand what you mean. Almost everything is nested so deeply into the code, that some things are impossible to change. My PHP skills are still quite limited, but even I can tell it is a mess. A mess in the sense of customisation possibilities. Respect to the guys who wrote the PHP code, but they really could do with W3C For Dummies. It is a mirracle browsers can render it correctly.

I am going to try ZenCart now. The trouble is I need to make it work with PayPal pro and ZenCart is listed by PayPal as supported only in US. Here in the UK the only free supported cart is osCommerce.