Last week we worked on setting up a streaming radio station. This week we will focus on the steps to setting up a shopping cart. With many software’s out there finding the right one might be difficult. I have had good success with osCommerce which has a strong community support system. If you get stuck there is a large forum to search for an answer or you can post and get help from other members. There is also many community built addons which enhance osCommerce which are also free.

To get started you will need to get your site online and then you can get started by doing the following…

• Install osCommerce through cPanel. This is a quick install through your Fantastico.
• Login to your admin area and modify your configurations of your Shopping Cart.
• Add your payment processor information.
• Insert your various products into the Shopping Cart.

This is the basic setup of a shopping cart. To customize your osCommerce setup you would edit…

• header.php – This page will allow you to change the top of the page where the menu and title is.
• left.php – This page will allow you to change the widgets on the left side of the cart.
• right.php – This page will allow you to change the widgets on the right side of the cart.
• footer.php - This page allows you to change what is displayed at the bottom of the page.

The above files are in the includes folder where you installed osCommerce. I suggest making a copy of them before making changes to them so you can restore back to them if needed. You can edit these files by removing what you do not want and add html to the pages that you do want.

If you are not comfortable with designing your osCommerce look there are pre done themes that you can buy that will add to your professional appearance. These themes contain the above php files that you can just replace.

If you get stuck let me know in the comments.