Re: [cobalt-users] Shopping carts for Raq 4

[Greg Hewitt-Long <cobaltusers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>On Monday 13 October 2003 05:24 pm, Richard Owen wrote:
>> Hi
>>
>> I have a raq 4 server with about 70 sites, one of my clients wants
>> to set up a shopping cart  I have no experience of this could someone point
>> me in the direction of some  Software proven to work with Raq4's and easy
>> integration to a website. Also any recommendations of consultants who may
>> help in setting up the Raq


We setup RAQs, as can plenty of others here - I'd suggest searching the archives for information on the many consultants here.

>
>If you have not set up a shopping cart before, you might want to consider an
>external shopping cart. 

Consider and then discard the concept - imo.  A hosting provider is NOT in the business of handing cash to other providers when it can be retained in-house - at least no sensible business man/woman would.

>They are much easier to set up and they handle the
>little things like security that can be a pain.

How is security a pain?  FreeSSL.com certificates can be purchased and installed in about 15 minutes flat.  You will need to have site that require SSL on their own IP address to accomplish this, but this is a piece of cake - contact your upstream about more IP addresses if required.  We use IP addresses fairly fast - each of our "business" package customers gets their own IP - this is recommended for anyone using ecommerce, or thinking of adding ecommerce in the near future.


>  I use www.coolcart.com but
>there are many other good choices out there too. 


Hosted carts are not a good solution in ANY way, shape or form unless you enjoy sending cash out the door.  The "cost" of adding a cart system to your server is the time invested in installing something like osCommerce (install MySQL and PHP upgrade - 1 hour max) and then writing a small script to install osCommerce into the virtual site, add the user to the MySQL database (I recommend adding phpmyadmin)  If you (as a hosting provider) need to provide a cart - then provide a cart!

OsCommerce is a piece of cake to install - there are companies who frequent here that will add it to the RAQ GUI as a point and click for a relatively small amount of money - if you can't install MySQL and upgrade PHP, then go this route - get a pro to add it.

We generally charge clients a small setup for SSL - we throw in osCommerce installation, as it generally only takes me about 5 minutes per site - once installed, we email the client login/password and they customize to their hearts content.

I'm sure you can find other carts that will install in minutes - agoracart springs to mind.  There are plenty - and I'm not referring to hosted solutions.

regards

Greg Hewitt-Long



>
>Paul Wilson
>webguroo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

lol
-- 
E-Commerce Software & Web Design Services. http://webyourbusiness.com
Reliable Web Hosting from $4.99/month - http://www.aaabusinesshosting.com/
Domain Registration from $13/year - http://aaabusinesshosting.com/domains/
     TF: 1-877-416-8655   PH: (970) 266-0195   FAX: (970) 266-0158