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Shopping carts and content management systems

26 May 2009
Posted in Resources - Resources for DIY E-Commerce

Zen Cart

Zen Cart is a free to use shopping cart system. It has lots of features. Everything from special offers and stock management to article publishing and order management. And of course customers can buy things! The shopping cart is easy for a customer to use and integrates easily with ALL the major payment handlers used in DIY E-commerce.
download Zen Cart

osCommerce

OsCommerce is probably the simplest shopping cart to setup. I have trialled so called 'ready made' e-commerce stores with a large monthly price tag that are more complicated than this to get started. However, there are less features for articles, advertising and structuring your web site compared to Zen Cart and Joomla. Refer to the chapter on choosing your store software for a full explanation. If osCommerce is for you, click below to download. Then unzip the file.
download osCommerce

Joomla

Joomla offers the most features. Just about anything you can do on the web you can do with Joomla. Joomla, in my opinion also offers by far the widest range of options and greatest value for money when addons and customisation are considered. For example, there is a wide range of cheap (some free), high quality extensions and templates available for Joomla, much more so than the other options. Having said that these extras do add an extra element of complexity. Read the chapter about choosing your store software to decide what is best for you.
download Joomla

VirtueMart

VirtueMart is a Joomla component that adds a fully functioning and extremely swish shopping cart to Joomla. This download includes the main component as well as a number of extra add-ons and modules. Unzip the file after download and follow the instructions in the book to set it up.
download VirtueMart

mod_jxanalytics_J.1.5.x_1.0.0.tar.gz

This is a great Joomla module for easily setting up Google Analytics tracking on your website.
download mod_jxanalytics_J.1.5.x_1.0.0.tar.gz

plg_addkeywords_v.3.zip

This is a really cool Joomla module for auto-generating meta keywords for your articles.
download plg_addkeywords_v.3.zip