[Crispy]

Hey guys,

I'm getting to the point where I need to rebuild one of my websites, it's an e-commerce toy shop online (http://www.wonderlandtoys.co.uk) primarily because it's on BigCommerce at the moment, I'm going to go over 100 products ($25/month) and it doesn't have Affiliate features as such.

The two I've been looking at are Opencart and Magento, slightly swaying toward Opencart as I'm hearing good things about it and seems simpler? I mainly do front end development, but can handle making changes, will hopefully buy a template and edit it to fit.

Was wondering what experience you guys had with these and which you would recommend? I want one with preferably an easy to use back end and as little on going costs as possible.

I also really need to keep my urls the same if possible? Not sure how achievable that is!

I've got my own hosting.

Thanks,
Chris

This post has been edited by Crispy: 06 February 2012 - 02:53 PM

[Renaissance-Design]

Magento's overkill for 100 products. It's also got a steep learning curve as it's a complex product. I redesigned a toy shop last year using Magento, but I've been thinking about moving into Open Cart for smaller projects for pretty much the reasons you've mentioned.

[Crispy]

Sounds good, I think Opencart is the way to go. One major thing Ive been looking at is if it'd be possible to set up the likes of http://codecanyon.ne...z_author=arl1nd (detect their default currency and display it in it in opencart) One of my sites in particular is in desperate need it of this, just not sure if it's do able!

[Renaissance-Design]

And you were doing so well...

[futuresys]

I've only had experience at using 2 pieces of cart software. The first is Jigoshop for Wordpress, a plugin that offers a basic store extension for Wordpress websites. Whilst it's good at what it does I wouldn't suggest using it as a primary system.

The other is Prestashop which at first confused the hell out of me. I had no knowledge of PHP let alone Smarty when I started using it but over time I've become very familiar with it and am fairly confident when it comes to twisting and bending it to get it how I like it. The biggest drawback I can think of is that because it's French, there's a lot of necessary changes you have to make in order to make it work better for UK/US e-commerce environments.

[Crispy]

Renaissance-Design, on 06 February 2012 - 04:00 PM, said:

And you were doing so well...

Lmao, you love that

[futuresys]

To add to my previous post: I've just downloaded the new version of Prestashop and it's even better than before. Much prettier and much easier to use!

[Bomb]

OpenCart ftw!!

[oakleaves]

futuresys, on 06 February 2012 - 04:18 PM, said:

The other is Prestashop which at first confused the hell out of me. I had no knowledge of PHP let alone Smarty when I started using it but over time I've become very familiar with it and am fairly confident when it comes to twisting and bending it to get it how I like it.

The more it grows to appeal to every user case scenrio, the bigger and more complex it becomes.

I preferred the earlier incarnations personally. Plus, the support forum is truely pap, so unless you know what you are doing and/or can use it straight out of the box it may not be the best for everyone.

[futuresys]

That's fair enough. Like I say though, I learned to use it in a matter of months. I was thrown into a Prestashop install for a genuine client on the very first day of my very first web design job and I think that probably helped. I had to find my own way around and teach myself how to use it. Now I can do so very comfortably.

I'm not suggesting it's for everyone, but I find it comprehensive even it if is a little convoluted at times...

[FizixRichard]

I would say OpenCart. I've had customers use Magento, love its feature set and then come to hate it as the niggles the product has started to show through.

[AmityWeb]

I'm quite technical and built hundreds of sites over the years but gave up on Magento due to its over-complicated coding, took me ages just to find how to remove a block from a column. As someone who needs to make a profit yet stay competitive I thought the learning curve and time taken to build sites with it would be too long. I have not used Prestashop or Opencart but like you have read positive things. We use Expression Engine with Cartthrob or Better Commerce to give us complete control over the design and functionality rather than rely on something out of the box.