free website

bronzedg

hiya

i am looking at starting a basic website in which you can buy products linked with my paypal account im looking at starting somthing easy to understand at the moment mainly to advertise at shows does anyone have experience of setting up small shops online

thanks

Ms_Speculatrix

A good way of setting up a shop online with minimum expense is wordpress. You can use free templates, upoad free ecommerce plug ins which will provide a card for both physical and downloadable products with a direct link to your paypal account so people can check out with paypal. If you do not have enough products as yet to justify a cart you can create a button in your paypal account (you will need paypal payments standard but this is a free upgrade from a normal paypal account) to do this, then you just post the code into the page where your product details are and hey presto! instant paypal checkout.

If you don't like the free tempates on wordpress you can buy premium ones pretty cheaply too.

Hope this helps.

pitkin2020

Open cart is by far the best open source ecommerce platform. WP is good but for a dedicated shop I would look at open cart. Buy some hosting and a domain and your ready to install open cart.

Open carts support forum is also better than the WP forum.

steve1980

If it's for a business then don't go down the free route.

skater_kat

any suggestions for a paid route?

pitkin2020

steve1980 wrote: »

If it's for a business then don't go down the free route.

Why do you say that Steve?? Open source ecommerce is by far more flexible than most of the paid services. Its no different to using WP for a business site.

If your prepared to put the time in and learn the application you will get good results.

steve1980

Plenty, what do you want/need? Static website? Content Managed website? Ecommerce?

steve1980

pitkin2020 wrote: »

Why do you say that Steve?? Open source ecommerce is by far more flexible than most of the paid services. Its no different to using WP for a business site.

If your prepared to put the time in and learn the application you will get good results.

I meant on the hosting side of things rather than a template.

pitkin2020

steve1980 wrote: »

I meant on the hosting side of things rather than a template.

Soz thought you meant the software side of things. Deffo agree on the hosting free for personal is great but if reliability is what you want free just won't cut it.

steve1980

pitkin2020 wrote: »

Soz thought you meant the software side of things. Deffo agree on the hosting free for personal is great but if reliability is what you want free just won't cut it.

Been a long day!

skater_kat

so pretty much pay for decent hosting but if willing to learn, opencart can produce something good?? i'm interested in starting an online shop. i have been trying to find some examples of ecommerce stores run on opencart for a flavour of what i could aim towards. (have had a look around opencart website itself). any pointers on this?

oh i am not sure about having 'powered by opencart' written on a website. maybe it looks cheap.