Not sure where to start.

[~Yuckfou~]

OK,
I am looking to start one or two online shops, shifting boxed items. The hosting/domain names I can get from Zen, so thats not a problem. I need to be able to take credit card payments, which can be a pain if done using the banks, but it looks like I can set this up with PayPal, slow payments to me but I can live with that.
My biggest problem is the webby itself, I can't design it because I don't "speak" html 'n stuff and I'm not arty. So I'm looking for something that has templates that I can work from to get me started and then is easy to update product details/images etc. I need to have a shopping cart that speaks to Paypal and all the automated stuff you would expect.
I "might" be prepared to pay someone for the initial work although I'd prefer to have a crack at this myself.
Am I best buying some development tool, or maybe buy from a provider of ready made webbys?
Any ideas/comments/suggestions of suppliers would be appreciated.

edit/
Being a noob at this it just occured to me that there may be other stuff I need that I don't even know about yet.

 

[wyrd_fish]

the internet's full of open source shop content managment systems... give google a whirl

(or try looking here www.hotscripts.com )

 

[~Yuckfou~]

the internet's full of open source shop content managment systems... give google a whirl

(or try looking here www.hotscripts.com )

That looks like a really useful resource, if you know what you are doing
I'm sure there is something in there that will do what I want, but some clues would help Alternatively I would go with commercial products if they offered what I need.

 

[wyrd_fish]

i'm asuming you got here:
http://www.hotscripts.com/PHP/Scripts_and_Programs/E-Commerce/PayPal/index.html

just download a few and give them a whirl

 

[~Yuckfou~]

I'm getting more confused

So we've got ASP, CGI, Perl, PHP. I've no clue what they are, which is best, or whether it matters
Then it seems that the shopping cart scripts are dropped into an existing web design, which I don't have yet. I'm still browsing, but is there a product that designs the webby (even with templates) and includes the shopping cart/paypal stuff?

Ta.

/edit

This looks OK> http://www.free-paypal-shopping-cart.com/

 

[KevinUK]

I'm teaching myself PHP to do a site I'm working on, I chose that as I rent a server and so for my needs PHP was cheaper. I dont know the technical side of which is better between PHP and ASP

You would be best teaching yourself once you know the language you want to do it in, theres loads of tutorials out there on google. I use dreamweaver, you would be best with that or frontpage if you have them, its easier for us noobs than notepad.

A shopping cart system... I found when I wanted something coding that was a fairly big project I was still best off doing it myself to cater for my needs but you might get lucky with a script.

Ask these techy people which language to use and get learning.

Oh heres some good template sites I like.
http://www.interspire.com/templates/
http://www.elated.com/pagekits/

And I like this tutorial site.
http://www.w3schools.com/

 

[~Yuckfou~]

Thx !

 

[SheepCow]

ASP/ASP.NET
Made by Microsoft, only works on Windows servers.

PHP
Open Source, works on Windows and *nix servers

I can program in both of them and I personally prefer to use PHP.

 

[Bozzy]

Hey Yuck!

If your going to learn anything I suggest Coldfusion.

It owns asp and php for a start and is much easier to learn too.

I have an open source shopping cart I will email you later to have a look at if you want. It links to paypal easily and about 30 other payment providers so you can use more than one.

 

[JBP|]

you could allways take the easy route and pay someone to build a site for you


i know of a company that might be willing to help if your intrested

 

[tRoG]

Jonty was asking for stuffs to do a while ago

 

[~Yuckfou~]

"Otherstuff"tm is taking precendence atm. Although a bit more browsing has given me some more info. There are plenty of templates for complete webbies out there that would probably suffice in the short term. Another problem is that my plans are fluid and things keep changing.
Thanks for the input guys, I will probably resurrect this in the next few weeks

 

[Thugs]

Links to good open source software

You could take a look at my own site. I ain't worked on it for a few months but having just taken another gander at it most of the links are still working unbelievably. I was in the process of linking to lots of javascript/portal/forum sites (bottom of first page) and the ones listed are working. Not many but some very good ones for sure.

Site is on hold cos i seem to have lost interest but i might well start work on it again soon cos i think it might be a shame to let the site die.

http://sites-4u.com

PKJ

 

[~Yuckfou~]

Oh dear I got cocky

OSCommerce seems to be able to do the job. There are some pretty nice freebie templates available too. Problem is I've seen what can be done with skillz0r. So I'll be doing something fairly quick with a template but aiming towards something a bit more tricky, at which point I'm sure something will break

Actually as a complete noob just getting the bugger on to my webspace and working wasn't all that simple, with your techy php's and mysql's 'n stuff I like a challenge !

Before I start in earnest I'm planning exactly what I want, so with work and other commitments I reckon I'm a couple of months from a working site, I'll point to it when it's working. (crosses fingers).

Can anyone recommend a good php editor, or will notepad do?

 

[TdC]

Can anyone recommend a good php editor, or will notepad do?

be aware that if you write something in notepad and upload it to a server that runs some flavour of unix (and face it, all the proper servers do) you're going to have to contend with the ^M syndrome where unix interprets all your [enter]s as ^M. You can use a proper text editor (you'll have to google, I don't know one offhand) or some editor thing that is PHP aware, and can help you out with syntax highlighting and stuff.

 

[Xavier]

editplus

www.editplus.com

can't go wrong

Xav

 

[Gef]

UltraEdit or TextPad are also very viable alternatives. I preffered TextPad tbh for all the handy macro functions but lost the argument at work so we got a site license for UltraEdit in the end

 

[fatbusinessman]

I've always found HTML-Kit to be kinda nice - has syntax highlighting and whatnot, plus an integrated FTP client so you can upload your files or just edit them in situ on the server.

 

[Xavier]

Ah, editplus does it all... heh.

 

[SheepCow]

+1 for EditPlus

 

[Thugs]

Use on designing?

To be honest I always use Frontpage or notepad. My site is jammed full of code that only works on php but all I do is rename the file after I download it to htm or html. Work onnit and then resave it with a php extension. Anything such as counters etc that require php will work again then.

Back working on my site again now. Got an awful lotta work to do though. Gotta link up to about 4-500 companies. Also gotta make the whole site more professional looking. Done some work on the Arts & Books section where 2 different versions of the site can be viewed - either text version (fast loading) or the banner version (requires above 56k and above 800 x 600 really, though am using pre-loading on the images to help). Am using a lotta javascript to control the loading of sites from within my own so that peeps stay on my site whilst viewing others. Infact there is a great deal of different types of code to be found on my site and more will follow no-doubt.

After I work my way through all the sections I gonna have to double check that it works will all browser types. Think it does though but some new javascripts haven't been tested yet.

Dunno wot you think of the way the site is developing but will and should look ok in about a month or 2s time.

http://sites-4u.com