maffs

Guys

I need to build an ecommerce site for a bed/mattress retailer. Anything with a friendly approach to seo is preferable, i.e. descriptive URLs, ability to edit meta tags etc.

Should also be capable of accepting different types of (manufacturers) datafeeds if at all possible. I can recompile/reformat these if necessary. I should know by the end of the week the formats that these will be provided.

Are there any off the shelf solutions that you recommend? Please, please don't say Wordpress. Yes I know it's good but...

I'm not necessarily looking for cheap but I don't want anything too pricey as this is a "test the water" venture. A few hundred dollars should cover it.

If not, is bespoke the way to go? If this is the case then I may well offer the business to someone on this forum. Please ping me some examples of your work.

Thanks

silentbob

Have you looked into OSCommerce? It's free. Haven't used it myself but I have a friend who runs his shop with it and he likes it.

Donace

magneto is a good ecom CMS that works well for me; and its free! and you can hire the developers for any custom stuff ...but it decent out the box

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drew.clarke

I've just built my magento store. The latest version is a lot faster than the previous releases. Give it a go.

New modules are coming out all of the time and i expect Magento to be up there as the number one in the next 18 months.

maffs

Thanks for the advice folks.

drew you sya the new release is faster, but I'm reading that Magneto needs dedicated hosting to perform. Is this still the case with the new release.

Thanks

JohnCrenshaw

maffs,

I STRONGLY recommend Magento. It does everything you mentioned in your post. It will run just fine on an average $6/mo. hosting account. HOWEVER, the average $6/mo. hosting account isn't robust enough for a serious e-commerce site. If you don't go with a dedicated server or something like Mosso (what I use) you can count on about 5 min./day of downtime, and 2-3 full day outages per year. This has nothing to do with the software on your site, and everything to do with the business model required to sell hosting at those prices.

Whatever you do, don't use osCommerce. It's ancient code, and there hasn't been an update for it in years. Most of the other open source carts are actually derivatives of even older versions of osCommerce. Magento stands alone because it is truely a new open source cart, built from the ground up. My company abandoned osCommerce for Magento last year and it was one of the best decisions we ever made.

Also, If you're looking at running an affiliate program with your store I created a [URL="http://www.priacta.com/code/magento-affiliate/magento-post-affiliate-pro.php"]Magento/Post Affiliate Pro[/URL] connector to automatically make [URL="http://www.priacta.com/code/magento-affiliate/pap.php"]PAP[/URL] work with Magento. My advice would be to go with Magento, spend the money on PAP instead, and try to build your business using a strong affiliate program. PAP has a couple of tricks that you can use to get maximum SEO benefit out of your links. Getting good search engine quality links to a site is really rough, so this is a big deal.

maffs

John

Thanks for the input

pickledegg

Yes to be honest I'd probably use something such as Magento or Cubecart, as OSCommerce is getting a bit long in the tooth, and some of the newer ones have better templating systems, meaning its easier to change the look and feel of it.

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Grindstone

Cubecart is based on OScommerce, which is bloated pile of schmegma. I know you said not to mention WP but the market theme is pretty sick and comes integrated with a built in shopping cart.