Hi,
What I would like to do is visit with someone who has actually used such a system.
My life keeps changing in unforseen ways.
A longtime friend who has a physical business wherein he purchases items from two wholesalers to use in value added work for walk-in customers has decided to create an online presence and sell the items, which can be used by "do it yourselfers" who know what they are doing.
The wholesalers are quite on board with this because they do not do any retail.
What has been offered to me is to work part time for the business, I will get paid bi-weekly, to set up a website, hook it into e-commerce in some way, take orders which will be paid up front into pay pal, then place the order with the wholesaler, pay the wholesaler and the wholesaler who will then dropship the item. I would, of course communicate with the person who placed the order that the order has been accepted, when it would ship, etc.
This can be done with a "turnkey" through somebody like Go-Daddy or whatever, but, since the fellow knows that I do Linux he said that he was more than glad to let me do it with Linux and also to pay for "online help" etc.
In other words, he realizes that money has to be spent, but he is willing to trust me to do it with Linux or Windows.
Again, this is not some kind of hot air thing that is moving vapourware around or a pyramid scheme or whatever, it is a physical business that is going to add an online component.
The requirements are actually pretty simple:
a) It has to be set up in a manner that if I am killed in a car wreck, that another employee, who has been trained of course, can step in and take over with a minimum of mess.
b) It has to be able to handle the above transactions and produce records which can be taken to an accountant.
c) It has to be able to have the web presence sufficiently easy to modify that a "new person" could "spruce it up" once in a while, like changing pictures of the building, employees, all that stuff.
d) It has to be able to handle a relatively simple work flow. Since there will not be things like "markdowns" or Christmas specials", etc. then a lot of the "addons" that a lot of the apps provide are not needed, but it will need to be relatively easy to update in terms of product descriptions and photos. There will not be many products and they are relatively stable.
e) The big idea of this site is that there are other people who sell about the same thing online, or approximately, but they are "full service" sites and the prices are therefore proportionately higher. This will not be "cut rate". Since the product offerings will be smaller the charges can be less, basically enough to pay me to work part time and also, if the number of sales are sufficiently high then I get a commision.
f) It will therefore have to be able to work in some kind of "integral manner" with web spiders which will be indexing the site for people to find. (This used to just be a "meta-tag" thing) but since Google et. al. have seen that this can be charged for then the site will have to be able to work with the various web search spiders, and of course, we will have to pay Google et.al, but that is just part of the cost of doing business.
g) So, to return to the item A, above, it will have to be sufficiently intuitive that I can train a person to take over but then the person will probably not touch it unless something untoward happens to moi, but then will have to relatively easily to step in.
Here is a list of some that I found in a cursory search.
http://www.linuxlinks.com/article/20...eCommerce.html
So, if there is anyone who has actually used a Linux e-commerce site I would like to visit.
woodsmoke
What I would like to do is visit with someone who has actually used such a system.
My life keeps changing in unforseen ways.
A longtime friend who has a physical business wherein he purchases items from two wholesalers to use in value added work for walk-in customers has decided to create an online presence and sell the items, which can be used by "do it yourselfers" who know what they are doing.
The wholesalers are quite on board with this because they do not do any retail.
What has been offered to me is to work part time for the business, I will get paid bi-weekly, to set up a website, hook it into e-commerce in some way, take orders which will be paid up front into pay pal, then place the order with the wholesaler, pay the wholesaler and the wholesaler who will then dropship the item. I would, of course communicate with the person who placed the order that the order has been accepted, when it would ship, etc.
This can be done with a "turnkey" through somebody like Go-Daddy or whatever, but, since the fellow knows that I do Linux he said that he was more than glad to let me do it with Linux and also to pay for "online help" etc.
In other words, he realizes that money has to be spent, but he is willing to trust me to do it with Linux or Windows.
Again, this is not some kind of hot air thing that is moving vapourware around or a pyramid scheme or whatever, it is a physical business that is going to add an online component.
The requirements are actually pretty simple:
a) It has to be set up in a manner that if I am killed in a car wreck, that another employee, who has been trained of course, can step in and take over with a minimum of mess.
b) It has to be able to handle the above transactions and produce records which can be taken to an accountant.
c) It has to be able to have the web presence sufficiently easy to modify that a "new person" could "spruce it up" once in a while, like changing pictures of the building, employees, all that stuff.
d) It has to be able to handle a relatively simple work flow. Since there will not be things like "markdowns" or Christmas specials", etc. then a lot of the "addons" that a lot of the apps provide are not needed, but it will need to be relatively easy to update in terms of product descriptions and photos. There will not be many products and they are relatively stable.
e) The big idea of this site is that there are other people who sell about the same thing online, or approximately, but they are "full service" sites and the prices are therefore proportionately higher. This will not be "cut rate". Since the product offerings will be smaller the charges can be less, basically enough to pay me to work part time and also, if the number of sales are sufficiently high then I get a commision.
f) It will therefore have to be able to work in some kind of "integral manner" with web spiders which will be indexing the site for people to find. (This used to just be a "meta-tag" thing) but since Google et. al. have seen that this can be charged for then the site will have to be able to work with the various web search spiders, and of course, we will have to pay Google et.al, but that is just part of the cost of doing business.
g) So, to return to the item A, above, it will have to be sufficiently intuitive that I can train a person to take over but then the person will probably not touch it unless something untoward happens to moi, but then will have to relatively easily to step in.
Here is a list of some that I found in a cursory search.
http://www.linuxlinks.com/article/20...eCommerce.html
So, if there is anyone who has actually used a Linux e-commerce site I would like to visit.
woodsmoke
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