hi dale,

there are a fair number of places you could go to get answers to many of the questions you have but maybe some of the more "true-to-life" answers could come from members of this forum as we're all in the same kinda boat here and we also have different views and experiences on such things, thats partly why places like this exist, its like a gigantic evolving think-tank i guess [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

i have just finished (pretty-much) producing an ecommerce site for my employer (www.zingsmusic.net) and we are currently finishing off the "populate with products" stage but that is as much on going as anything else. I have produced the site with a software package called Actinic Catalog (www.actinic.co.uk). I shall not fob you off and say that we haven't customised the site heavily but thats the great thing about it, if you want to built a site to your own (or your customers) style then thats always possible. I have a good couple of years experience with this software and its one of the best i've been exposed to. It can be ran on Unix or Win boxes and all it needs is decent webserver and Perl really which is kinda common.. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

I am always on the lookout for new stuff to work with and I've recently discovered an open source ecommerce package called OScommerce (www.oscommerce.com) which is about 2yrs old and has had some decent sites produced with it. I am currently evaluating this for our next project, and its looking good so far. OScommerce uses a mixture of PHP & MySQL for the backend/engine and has quite a flexible framework allowing you to do a great deal depending on your requirements.

Please give this forum a go, you're bound to get a pleasant surprise and we don't bite! I've just come back after a six month stint working silly hours and this place is a good escape from work so i shall be around with a good many others to help when and where I can.

Hope that helps, and sorry for the small novel!!

d-sine.

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