eCommerce

During the weekend, I played around with the opensource e-commerce software. I wish to start the eCommerce online eShop. So i just went to Soureforge.net as it's the most common OpenSource downloable resources. So I downloaded the following programs.

1. osCommerce It's one of the most welknown e-commerce software.
2. ZenCart It's also another welknown e-commerce software.
3. AppServ The comprehensive all-in-one PHP, MySQL, and Apache Web Server.
4. SurgeMail The free BSD e-mail server.

I have little knowlegde about PHP coding and it's my first time to play with Apache and mySQL. So every thing is new to me. So I did spent my weekend on evaluating the two software.

Both osCommerce and Zencart happend to run on the same environment so I can just easily swith between the two software. ZenCart is easier to install, comparing to osCommerce and it has more complete of the e-commerce server functions. However, I like the look and feel of osCommerce better. Anyhow, I'm now ordering the ZenCart book to start the rest of the online store setup.

I use the SurgeMail for my mail delivery mechanism. You may wonder why I need the whole mail package to handle for a simple SMTP mail delivery task. It's because I can diag the problem if things are to occur with mail delivery. The mail server has the mailqueue stack. So I can see and trace of what is happening. When the system golive, simple SMTP script would be used instead.

So I was able to get them up and running. It's kinda fun for one weekend of not having touch with the real barebone technical level tasks for almost 10 years.

Next step is to test the link with PayPal. It would be easier for me to bypass the most critical function of e-commerce, that is the risk of the e-payment. Let the expert do the work and handle all the risk