e-commerce support

We really do need an ecommerce solution. I’ve been looking around, and testing a number of them. Has anybody else seen cpCommerce?

http://cpcommerce.org/

His site is actually built with cpcommerce!

I agree... I still leaning towards using our CMS to build the "catalogs" and trying to figure out how to use osCommerce’s payment and shipping modules.

Then a thorough understanding of NewsPublisher would be useful, since the catalog entry forms would follow the same pattern.

You’re absolutely right Susan... I’ve always thought they were mislabelled because they’re much more flexible than being used for "just news". You can post/list pretty much anything from news to press releases to blog entries to reviews to products for sale on your site... just use a different chunk/template for each item type!

And come to think of it, Mark has already hacked out a paging version as well... how convenient!

Between other things, I’ve been puzzling over how to deal with variations on a single product. For example, if I’m selling a sweater, and it comes in five colours and four sizes, will I need 20 pages? There will also need to be some method of keeping track of inventory.

Therin lies the distinction between need a "true" ecommerce app that’s already addressed this and a widget (or information selling) site.

Danger! danger! True eCommerce solutions have a host of features that we should not even try to replicate:
Best sellers lists
"People who bought this also..." lists
Variable pricing based on sizes and models
Multi-currency
Shipping rates
Suggested value-adds at checkout
plus lots of gateway integration modules.

I think we’d be better to pick the best of the best (please not osCommerce) and allow some cross-pollination between the databases, eg registered users. I like X-Cart for simplicity but then again its a commercial product.

my 2c...

Richard

As much as hpdl and the project in general being perpetually stuck at MS2, I really do like osC. I had done an XHTML/CSS version of it about 3 years ago that was about 2x as fast and less than that in code size. Hpdl just didn’t get it though... another example of a control freak dev organization that seems to plague so many os projects. Zen cart really is no better. I bet the guys working on http://oscommerce-chemo.blogspot.com come out with some good stuff!

I would really like to see native ecommerce modules developed for MODx. I’d much rather it be tightly integrated with the manager and the content myself. If we get enough developer attention with our API’s and such moving forward, this will not be a big deal. Heck, I may just take all the osC code and refactor it for MODx as a great example of building a web application with our framework.

There is a lot of good stuff in osC... like probably close to 4 billion payment/shipping modules supporting virtually every credit card, bank drafting and freight carrier world-wide.