Cybez Official Blog

cybezsolutions — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 06:23:27 +0000

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cybezsolutions — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 06:00:29 +0000

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Which Shopping Cart Should I use?

cybezsolutions — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 15:01:02 +0000

That is a common question that we get when clients call. There are so many shopping carts out there it is hard to know which one to use for your web site. That is why we have written this article to help you know the advantages and disadvantages of each cart. We will be reviewing:

Magento Shopping Cart Review (Our Pick if you have a big web hosting budget – please see our review below)
Oscommerce Shopping Cart Review
CRE Loaded Shopping Cart Review (Our Pick)
Zen Cart Shopping Cart Review
X-Cart Shopping Cart Review
OSC Max Shopping Cart Review
Joomla & Virtuemart Shopping Cart Review (For CMS & Shopping Cart Combined)
E-commerce Shopping Cart Feature Comparison Chart

It is important to know when selecting your shopping cart what features you need. All the shopping carts below feature the following:

· Customer management

· Product management

· Variety of payment and shipping modules

· Order receipt emails

· Ability to use SSL secure layers for ordering process

However the shopping carts vary when it comes to:

· Time it takes to modify the cart to look like a current web design

· WYSIWYG ability to modify product descriptions using different fonts, colors, etc.

· Ability to import/export from Excel spreadsheet

· Wholesale/Reseller Pricing

In this review we will be going over PHP/MySQL shopping carts that run both Linux and Windows servers. We will not be reviewing pay-per-month shopping carts. We feel these offer less value because they have expensive monthly fees. Also – they usually do not allow access to the source code of the system or much customization of the shopping cart. The following shopping carts below are open-source meaning that you can modify the source code and customize the shopping cart to your needs.

Magento

Website: http://www.magentocommerce.com
Magento has just come out of beta to become the best new open source shopping cart system. The coding is based on the latest PHP 5 object oriented coding standards, making it clean and easy to work with. Out of the box it supports all of the features and goodies you would ever need from a shopping cart.

Advantages +
+ Out of the box it has the most features such as Google Checkout, Order editing, Product import/export, and way to many more to list here
+ Has the cleanest coding of all of the shopping carts reviewed
+ Has an excellent templating system making it easy to upgrade

Disadvantages -
- It is the newest shopping cart so it has not been tested as much as the others for bugs. But they have designed it so that patches are easy to install.
- Modifying the cart can sometimes take longer since their coding style has a steeper learning curve than other shopping carts.
- BIGGIE - Right now the technical documentation is very limited, making it difficult to customize and modify the programming of Magento beyond doing graphical changes. In a few months time we expect that this will change.
- BIGGIE - Significant cost to host the platform and get decent performance. Magento is unusable in the shared hosting environment ($10/month type packages). It requires about $25+/month to host because you need a semi-dedicated VPS server. The only company we have found to have decent loading speeds while not costing $100/month is Crucial Web Hosting (A Magento partner). There hosting plan is $25/month.

Oscommerce MS 2.2 – The Cart That Started Them All

website: http://www.oscommerce.com
Oscommerce is the basis for both Zen Cart and CRE Loaded. As such is it is simpler and does not have all of the contributions already added that Zen Cart and CRE Loaded do. It runs well though and is a good back to basics shopping cart.

Advantages +
+ Has the most available number of contributions and modifications
+ Recent security update brings it up to date with MySQL 5 and PHP 5

Disadvantages -
- It can take a lot of time and money to install all the contributions you want (add-ons)
- No graphic template system meaning it is harder to modify the design

CRE Loaded Chain Reaction Edition of Oscommerce

website: http://www.creloaded.com
CRE Loaded is like Oscommerce but with many more contributions installed. Some of the nice contributions it has are Easy Populate which lets you populate your database from an Excel file, coupon codes, administrator access levels, template system, and an affiliate manager. CRE Loaded also has one of the Oscommerce templating systems installed which allows you to more easily integrate a design into the system and control which information boxes show on the left and right columns.

Advantages +
+ Well supported
+ Stable
+ Many contributions from Oscommerce already installed

Disadvantages -
- Contributions from Oscommerce.com can be more difficult to install, but CRE Loaded has many of its own already converted
- Admin interface is a little messy in certain areas because there are so many contributions installed

Additional Information
CRE Loaded comes in 3 verisons. The regular version is free. The Pro version adds better product attribute support and credit card encryption, and the B2B version adds seperate pricing level support.

Zen Cart – The Art of E-commerce

website: http://www.zen-cart.com
Zen Cart has a very nice wide array of features based on Oscommerce but has gone its own path. You can not install contributions directly from the Oscommerce web site onto Zen Cart. Some of the nice features include product attributes managers, template system, html editor for regular web page contents, built in coupon code system, ability to select what credit cards you accept, and more. An issue with Zen Cart right now is the Easy Populate contribution which would let you import products from an Excel sheet does not work yet. So if you need this feature we recommend the other shopping carts.

Advantages +
+ No licensing fees
+ Stable
+ Many contributions from Oscommerce already installed
+ Nicer looking default designs pre-installed

Disadvantages -
- not possible to use Oscommerce contributions, they must be converted to Zen Cart
- Admin interface is a little messy in certain areas because there are so many contributions installed

X-Cart

website: http://www.x-cart.com
X-Cart is a commercial package, but one of the most competitively priced and easy to modify.

Advantages +
+ Commercially supported and has very few if any bugs
+ Uses Smarty Templates system which many programmers like to work with for laying out the web site

Disadvantages -
- Licensing fees (figure $800 + in just licensing fees not including any web development)

OSC Max

website: http://www.oscdox.com
OSC Max is an excellent version of Oscommerce that has many useful contributions installed. It is just as easy to use in the admin as the default Oscommerce installation.

Advantages +
+ No licensing fees
+ The contributions installed are very useful
+ Has wholesale/Reseller pricing module already installed
+ Well-documented

Disadvantages -
- Has some buggy code in certain areas

Joomla & Virtuemart

website: http://virtuemart.net
Installing and configuring Joomla & Virtuemart together was a snap. On the Virtuemart website they have a combined installer that installs Virtuemart with Joomla. This is the solution you would want if you have to have your CMS (Content Management System) combined with your shopping cart. Joomla we feel is the best CMS out there, but Virtuemart on the other hand is not the best shopping cart system. It is not a bad one though, it is just not as fully featured as the other solutions.

Overall we would say that Virtuemart is about equal with default Oscommerce, but not the loaded versions of Oscommerce: Zen Cart & CRE Loaded.

Advantages +
+ Easy to install
+ Combines well with the best CMS Joomla
+ Has the basic shopping cart features

Disadvantages -
- Lacks a lot of high-end shopping cart features
- Not as many add-on modules available

Shopping Cart Feature Comparison Chart

This feature comparison chart compares the out of the box features of each cart. Sometimes a cart will have an available add-on module to install the feature listed.

	Magento	Oscommerce	CRE Loaded	Zen Cart	X-Cart	OSCMax	VirtueMart
Free	Yes	Yes	Yes, but has pay versions	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
Unlimited Products	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Supports SSL	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Edit Products	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Edit Customers	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Admin Can Edit Products In Order	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Spreadsheet Database Upload	Yes	No	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	No
Product Attributes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Multiple Product Images	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Coupons	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Costs Extra	Yes	No
Different Pricing Per Customer Groups	Yes	No	Costs Extra	Yes	Costs Extra	Yes	Yes
Graphic Template System	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Live Shipping Quotes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Google Checkout Pre-installed	Yes	No	No	No	No	Yes	No
Paypal	Yes	Yes, but not IPN	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Paypal Pro	Yes	No	No	No	Yes	No	No
Content Management System for Informational Pages	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
SEO Tools for meta tags and URLs	Yes	No	Yes, URLs cost extra	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
One Page Checkout	Yes	No	No	No	No	No	No
Multi-Lingual Support	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Multi-Currency Support	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Multi-Store Support	Yes	No	No	No	Cost Extra	No	No
Web Hosting Requirements	Semi Dedicated $25/m – $100/m	Shared Hosting	Shared Hosting	Shared Hosting	Shared Hosting	Shared Hosting	Shared Hosting
Our Overall Opinion from 1 – 10	7.5	7	8.5	8	7	7	7

For recommendation on which cart to use for your kind of business, please visit www.cybez.co.in

What is Web Hosting ?

cybezsolutions — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 15:02:16 +0000

A shared Web Hosting service or virtual hosting service is a form of web hosting service where more than one instance of the same web server is hosted on a single physical server. This is generally the most economical option for hosting as many people share the overall cost of server maintenance.

A company that provides web hosting services is called a web host, and their detailed offers of storage, connectivity, and services are called web hosting plans.

There are literally thousands of web hosting services, ranging from individuals to worldwide corporations, and many web hosts offer multiple web hosting plans.

Below are basic checklists with some factors to consider when searching for a web host and a web hosting plan. Your requirements may vary.

Checklist For Web Hosts:

Company – dependability, stability, profitability.
People – honesty, integrity, professionalism.
Location – local, regional, national, worldwide.
Reliability – uptime measured as a percentage.
Redundancy – multiple connections to the Net.
Availability – can handle peak traffic volumes.
Scalability – prepared to accomodate growth.
Hardware – fast servers with quality components.
Monitoring – automatic checking of the network.
Backups – good frequency and easy recovery.
Technical Support – experienced and helpful.
Support Hours – real 24/7 vs. promised 24/7.
Response Time – average in minutes or hours.
Support Methods – free/toll phone, email, IM.
Policies – accepts or rejects offensive sites.
Fine Print – does it contradict the big print?

Checklist For Web Hosting Plans:

Operating System – Unix, Linux, Windows, etc.
Disk Space – “storage” – often measured in MB.
Additional Space – cost for exceeding the limit.
Data Transfer – “traffic” – often measured in GB.
Additional Transfer – cost for exceeding the limit.
Email – POP3, autoresponders, forwarding.
Databases – storage space and database type.
Scripting Languages – PHP, ASP, JSP, etc.
CGI-Bin – custom scripting or prepared scripts.
FrontPage – special extensions needed for FP.
IP Address – unique number just for your website.
Log Files – the “raw” line-by-line detail of activity.
Statistics – summaries, sometimes with graphics.
Secure Server (SSL) – needed for e-commerce.
Shopping Cart – some hosts offer a default cart.
Control Panel – web-based account management.
Setup Time – automatic, hours, days, or unknown.
Payment Terms – monthly, quarterly, yearly, other.
Price – satisfy your needs, then worry about price.

Ecommerce

cybezsolutions — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 10:19:00 +0000

E-commerce in India is still in its nacent stages but many thanks to a few IT companies who are spreading the awareness and benefits for online shopping. A consumer is still not very confident for sharing their credit card details online, thus it becomes very important for him to have sites which are trusted, and have a recognized Pament Gateway.. something like PayPal or CC Avenue.

In India, there are actually very few IT companies who can provide world class shopping site which is not only secure, but also provides multiple features to enhance the user’s shopping experience, and has a 3 step buying process.

More than that, it has now become very important to have multiple payment options online as you do not know what kind of user is visiting your site and what will be his preferred mode of payment.

If we talk about the US market, the concept of ecommerce is a big success and many online sellers are turning to Indian companies to have their site developed becuase of the cost of development and faster turn around times.