[plshelp]

Hello...I wonder if any one could help.
I want to sell paintings from my website. It wont be a simple case of clicking on a payment then a buy button but will require customers to fill in a form stating their choice of colour,size and a couple of other things which will change the value of price. I also want this form to be able to allow customers to fill in fields of text for the Certificate of Authenticity I will make for them. And once that is done be able to pay via paypal...I am a complte novice can any one please help. I have seen that there are free form building websites but they dont seem to change the value of price (maybe im looking at the wrong ones)Also when they fill in the form and make payment does the form info get sent to my websites email?. As you can see I'm a complete novice.
Any help appreciated thankyou

[Phil Comforthost]

Hi plshlp,

What you've described is not unusual and the popular e-commerce software (free) should be able to accommodate your shop needs.

I'd check what (if any) support your host can give you - they may have someone who can specialise in a specific programme or give advice as to how to imbed a shop into your site.

You also mention PayPal. They have some useful information on their site about setting up a Payment Gateway (i think this is about $20 per month) and you will need to connect this to your shop for payment transactions to work.

Regarding email verification of orders, you could choose to set this up, along with email reciepts, etc - these would all be options of how your shopping cart process is setup - and would be specific to the sofware you pick as your shop. If you research a few options you'll be able to get some benefits of each and find the right one for you. A few to consider would be osCommerce, Zencart, Magento, Opencart - there's lots more.

Finally, there are a few 'ready made' options (which may cost a little more but useful for a begginner) such as Shopify and Volution. Plus, these guys would be very able to answer your specific shop needs as this is what they specialise in.

Hope useful!! Good luck!

[rallport]

Phil Comforthost, on 27 October 2011 - 06:07 PM, said:

Finally, there are a few 'ready made' options (which may cost a little more but useful for a begginner) such as Shopify and Volution. Plus, these guys would be very able to answer your specific shop needs as this is what they specialise in.

Had a client who insited I use Volusion.

Volusion is a totally hosted solution and crap if you want to use your own design as you can't work locally. I asked their support staff if it would be possble to work locally on my PC and they yes straight away - it's simply not true. Their sales guys will tell you it;s better than Opencart and Magento too. Don't get drawn in as it's simply not true.

[plshelp]

Thanks very much guys...