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Category: osCommerce

MIVA vs. OSCommerce

I'm not sure if this is the place to ask this but maybe I should. I am fairly familiar with computers but am far from being a computer technie or programmer. I'm studying web page design now on Dreamweaver. I have found it hard but am slowly moving on and it's getting easier with time but things like PHP scare me a lot.
I originally planned on using MIVA which my Westhost account will handle. Two things that later swayed me to OS Commerce are first, it's easier to set up a second store on one westhost account. I heard for a second store either there is a way you link to one store from both account domains or you pay a $199 one time fee for the second miva store on that account. Second is it's $395 for the module to interface with Quickbooks which is very important to me.
What it comes down to though is if MIVA is better i'm fine with paying more unless it's far more in cost. I want something that looks nice online but my main concern is ease of use. I want something that's easy to set up and most of all, easy to administer from then on. I want something that I can modify instead of having one generic look but it doesn't have to be something that can be heavily modified. Any suggestion on which I should go with?

markw10,

Which one did you chose? I'm just starting to build a store and could go either way.

elfreem

I actually think I'm going to end up going with VirtueMart since I'm using the Joomla content manager. The two are interfaced very well.

I built an Oscommerce cart from scratch in 2002 lost it due to acheap host decision on my part, I really liked it and once I got the PHP part down it was a little easier and the boards were very helpful and modules were easily found ready to go, the one thing that turned me off about miva.

Once i lost the hole cart (yes I had it backed up but I was recovering from being very ill and needed my cart back in biz quickly) I turned to miva and have been very happy with it as I also moved to Westhost at the same time.

So if you want a turn key solution that modules are available, although costly will pay for themselves, I use shipworks and will jump into sync soon to integrate my quick books, I am currently growing out of doing all by hand.

Sorry to bump an old topic but I'd like to say something about Miva vs. OsCommerce.

Skinning: With just a little knowledge of php & html you can customize the OsCommerce skin to look anyway you like. Miva is simply not as flexible for skinning because you don't have access to all the source code and most of what you can access is proprietary Miva code. Doing something as simple as replacing the default Miva image links with text links is a major chore. Miva does however have an Admin interface that allows customizing many aspects of the skin, Osc skins must be edited manually..

Plugins: The OsCommerce community has produced a large collection of free "contributions". Almost any functionality you need is available as a free addon. I have not found many free Miva resources but there are commercial offerings for most anything you need. This can add up fast.

Security: I would choose Miva over OsCommerce if I planned to process credit cards manually. In this case Miva offers the option to encrypt the credit card numbers stored in the database. This is not a default feature in OsCommerce which stores credit card numbers in plain text. I think there may be an addon that adds encryption to Osc but I have never installed it. If you are using a payment gateway then this is probably not an issue for you.

-=DKC=-

I have a general question about shopping carts. I am seeing a lot of free or "open source" cart programs out there, but what's the catch? Are they offering these programs in exchange for advertising on your site, or what? Is osCommerce completely free? (meaning, no advertising?)

These programs are what is called open source as a rule and yes they are free. As a rule there is no catch. They are created by people who feel that things like this should be free and they donate their time to the development of them.