Last night was the first night in four days that I’ve gotten what could be considered a good night’s sleep. I still feel dead.
Started playing with Soholaunch a couple of days ago. If it weren’t for its lack of a decent shipping calculator I’d have gone with that, as I’m trying to avoid the cookie cutter appearance that comes from traditional shopping carts in the hands of an amateur. The past two days have been spent installing, uninstalling, and reinstalling Cube Cart, OScommerce, and Zen Cart.
Cube Cart, by far, has the best skins, IMHO. Unfortunately it is lacking in the ability to offer vouchers. The fact that it is compatible with Mal’s is completely irrelevant. I might as well send customers checking out straight to PayPal as it only intereacts with Mal’s for one page (and it’s not the one with the vouchers).
Zen Cart went way over my head when I first installed it, so it got the ax for OScommerce. I didn’t like the look of the latter. It also doesn’t have a voucher module, despite what everyone on the forums say. Since its admin panel appears to be a simpified version of Zen Cart’s I was able to figure out some things that I previously didn’t have a clue about. So OScommerce was removed and Zen Cart reinstalled. Somewhere in the middle of this I uploaded a module to the incorrect directory so I have to figure out where and what I have to remove.
I was up until three AM playing with Zen Cart. I think I’ve got most of the stuff figured out. Multiple pictures in a product description still alludes me, as is expanding the middle section of the page. I know the columns on either side are fixed width, but it doesn’t appear that the middle section is, yet I can’t figure out what I need to tweak to make it automatically adjust to different screen resolutions. It does have voucher capability. One that is set up in a way that will allow me to continue to use the vouchers I created for Mal’s, so I don’t have to worry about customers not being able to get their discounts. Once I figure those issues, then I’ll tackle the job of make the site look pretty. Then it’s on to figuring out the external link thing so I can create a guestbook and (finally) a business blog, and link the shopping cart to both.
Yay! *snore*