webshop

Hi,

I know this reply comes a little bit late (I just joined these forums) and I don't know if you found your way to a decent free webshop software, but here is my recommendation. First of all, let me just stress that English is not my mother tongue, so maybe some things could have been expressed better with other words.

I have tried several different open source webshops, all based on PHP, MySQL and Apache (and Linux), so called LAMP servers. I can hardly remember all of them but some of them were osCommerce, ZenCart, OpenCart and finally PrestaShop.
There are a lot of modules (addons) and themes for all of them and none of the above are bad in any sense. I however found ZenCart to be not so user friendly on the admin control panel side and I went looking for something else. I found OpenCart. I used to love OpenCart and I set up most of my shops using that software until I went into trouble with things like email sendouts (it didn't support SMTP). So I went looking for something else and by coinsidense I found the one-of-a-kind webcart software - PrestaShop , (I am not allowed to post links yet so I can't show you were to find it, but just Google it and you will find it).

After reviewing PrestaShop on one of my sites I got convinced and I migrated all my shops to that software.

Ok, just to summarize some of the key benefits as I see them:

* no special required settings on the server side (some carts requires settings that many hosting companies does not provide by default, ok you can do it by setting the valued in the .htaccess file, but if you are not technically skilled that's not what you want to do)

* the so called BackOffice (= admin control panel) is state of the art, easy to use and very versatile

* some themes are included, others you can find free on the net or as commercial ones. I have bought one theme myself and that costed about $25 per site.

* translation/localization editor and available languages. Woah! Great! (Two months ago I was about to set up a South African website and I needed the Africaans language , but I didn't find that particular language, but I am sure you will find your language module there)

* all the modules (e.g. payment modules) that comes by default

* the shipment matrix (very versatile way of setting up shipping prices on weight or cart price summary)

* stock handling

* and a lot of other things.


The only downside of Prestashop is that I would really like an export functionality so that I could duplicate my sites faster.

Well, the thing is that with Prestashop you don't need to be too skilled in computer stuff. Of course you need to be able to install it, unless you have a hosting provider that have it included as a one-click-to-install-software, but the number of steps to get it installed is at bare minimum.

Setting up / configuring a webshop would typically take about 6-8 hours depending on how much you want to do. You can make it faster and slower, but for my shops each shop has taken about that time.


(no, I am not related to Prestashop in anyway, I just use the software and I love it and it is FREE!!)


Good luck!


/ Magnus