The elections are over, my HCI 440 class is coming to an end. My next class is in January so I plan on talking about "being less self centered".
Why?
In the end we need to take care of each other, the trickle just wont get us to where we want to go. So my next few posts will focus on the things I do on a regular basis and how over a period of time I have learned to do it smarter.
The Do It Yourself online store: We all have something to sell. So why not own a store, that you call your own and sell. It could be ideas, products or even advice. The point is you need a store and here is how you can set it up and maintain it for $10 a month.
1) Pick an ISP to host your website, this should cost you around $8 a month. Register your domain name for $2 a month, I think you can get it cheaper. Total for ISP and domain = $10. That is the extent of your hard costs.
2) Point your domain name to your ISP's name servers. Or follow their instructions to park your domain there.
3) Install OsCommerce (2.2 rc2 is the one that I installed the other day) using "Simple scripts", Bluehost my ISP has this available for free. I am not affiliated with Bluehost, It just happens I picked them instead of many comparable ISP's out there.
4) For ease of getting OsCommerce developer plugins to work, install OsCommerce in the /Catalog folder. For example, I installed mine as a test here
5) Once installed, login as admin, and change the machine generated password to your choosing
6) Change settings in the configuration submodules, go through each one of them and customize, if is fairly self explanatory. You can always come back here and tweak it further so dont go overboard in this step
7) Install the Easy populate module. You will need this to upload inventory, Later on you will find this really useful for mass updates. Trust me you need this feature, unless you like doing boring stuff manually. I installed "Easypopulate v2.76f-MS2 (with attributes) r1". Modules are easy to install, follow the readme and install documentation and test.
8) Install the Page Editor module, You need this to add pages or modify existing pages, again trust me on this. I installed PageEditorv1.6. Please note that this module requires you make changes to the DB, but the sql script is provided. I followed the install instructions which requires you to copy a few files and update a few. This is a little tedious, but if you want to know what is being modified, follow the manual editing process. If you trust this module, go ahead and copy the files provided. Test the module once installed.
9) Install the PayPal express check out module, you will need to get a paypal API access with the UID/PWD and signature, follow instructions on paypal for this, fairly easy to get it working. The payPay express module for OsCommerce I used for this is: paypal_express_checkout_IPN_v0_4_1. There is a module already installed in the default install, you will need to disable that, install this one and then enable the configuration
10) Install the USPS plugin. Again this requires you to get a UID/PWD from USPS. I installed version USPS Methods 4_1_4. Follow the readme file to get your account created, it takes about a day to get that going.
There you have it. Easy 10 Steps to setup your own online store. Why is this attractive? Simply becuase Amazon will charge you $99 a month to do the same thing and give you attitude to boot. So you dont need Amazon's charity trickling down to you any more!!
Showing posts with label oscommerce. Show all posts
Showing posts with label oscommerce. Show all posts
Saturday, November 08, 2008
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Setup an Online Store for $10 a month, while Amazon will charge you $99.99 for the same
As promised, Here is how I setup an online store for $10 a month, I felt compelled to write this after I realized that Amazon charges $99.99 for the same. I learned this the hard way by porting my store to Amazon and then shut it down, when I realized I was being treated as a dumb customer.
1) Pick an ISP to host your website, this should cost you around $8 a month. Register your domain name for $2 a month, I think you can get it cheaper, Total for ISP and domain = $10. That is the extent of your costs.
2) Point your domain name to your ISP's name servers. Or follow their instructions to park your domain there.
3) Install OsCommerce (2.2 rc2 is the one that I installed the other day) using "Simple scripts", Bluehost my ISP has this available for free. I am not affiliated with Bluehost, It just happens I picked them instead of many comparable ISP's out there.
4) For ease of getting OsCommerce developer plugins to work, install OsCommerce in the /Catalog folder. For example, I installed mine at http://fernandi.com/catalog
5) Once installed, login as admin, and change the machine generated password to your choosing
6) Change settings in the configuration submodules, go through each one of them and customize, if is fairly self explanatory. You can always come back here and tweak it further so dont go overboard in this step
7) Install the Easy populate module. You will need this to upload inventory, Later on you will find this really useful for mass updates. Trust me you need this feature, unless you like doing boring stuff manually. I installed "Easypopulate v2.76f-MS2 (with attributes) r1". Modules are easy to install, follow the readme and install documentation and test.
8) Install the Page Editor module, You need this to add pages or modify existing pages, again trust me on this. I installed PageEditorv1.6. Please note that this module requires you make changes to the DB, but the sql script is provided. I followed the install instructions which requires you to copy a few files and update a few. This is a little tedious, but if you want to know what is being modified, follow the manual editing process. If you trust this module, go ahead and copy the files provided. Test the module once installed.
9) Install the PayPal express check out module, you will need to get a paypal API access with the UID/PWD and signature, follow instructions on paypal for this, fairly easy to get it working. The payPay express module for OsCommerce I used for this is: paypal_express_checkout_IPN_v0_4_1. There is a module already installed in the defaul install, you will need to disable that, install this one and then enable the configuration
10) Install the USPS plugin. Again this requires you to get a UID/PWD from USPS. I installed version USPS Methods 4_1_4. Follow the readme file to get your account created, it takes about a day to get that going.
Once you have all this going, you now have to upload your inventory. Download the inventory from the default install as a template. Clean up the data there and add your own inventory. Make sure you save it as tab delimited format before uploading. Test by uploading a few records first. It is fairly straightforward if you follow instructions in the Easy Populate module.
That is it Folks, your have your online store running. Some very important things to note:
1) when installing OsCommerce using simple scripts make sure you install it in the /catalog directory. Most plugins are written with this structure in mind, so make it easier on your self and do it this way.
2) keep the mods and plugin's to a bare minimum, The first time around I installed numerous plugins, in the end, I lost track of all the changes that went in and was afraid to touch it lest I break something. Notice I have not even installed SSL. Since PayPal is taking care of payments, I dont want to deal with encryption. Also the minute you get into SSL your ISP will have you purchasing a separate IP and the SSL module.
3) The only modules I have added to the stock install of OsCommerce are: a) Easy Populate and b) Page editor. The other two the paypal express checkout and USPS shipping are updates to what is already there, but you need to update to get proper functionality.
4) Test your uploads and mass updates, this will come in real handy later on as your inventory grows.
Thats all there is to it. If you have a lot of money to spare go for the Amazon Seller Central deal for $99.99. But why do that when you can get pretty much the same results for $10.
1) Pick an ISP to host your website, this should cost you around $8 a month. Register your domain name for $2 a month, I think you can get it cheaper, Total for ISP and domain = $10. That is the extent of your costs.
2) Point your domain name to your ISP's name servers. Or follow their instructions to park your domain there.
3) Install OsCommerce (2.2 rc2 is the one that I installed the other day) using "Simple scripts", Bluehost my ISP has this available for free. I am not affiliated with Bluehost, It just happens I picked them instead of many comparable ISP's out there.
4) For ease of getting OsCommerce developer plugins to work, install OsCommerce in the /Catalog folder. For example, I installed mine at http://fernandi.com/catalog
5) Once installed, login as admin, and change the machine generated password to your choosing
6) Change settings in the configuration submodules, go through each one of them and customize, if is fairly self explanatory. You can always come back here and tweak it further so dont go overboard in this step
7) Install the Easy populate module. You will need this to upload inventory, Later on you will find this really useful for mass updates. Trust me you need this feature, unless you like doing boring stuff manually. I installed "Easypopulate v2.76f-MS2 (with attributes) r1". Modules are easy to install, follow the readme and install documentation and test.
8) Install the Page Editor module, You need this to add pages or modify existing pages, again trust me on this. I installed PageEditorv1.6. Please note that this module requires you make changes to the DB, but the sql script is provided. I followed the install instructions which requires you to copy a few files and update a few. This is a little tedious, but if you want to know what is being modified, follow the manual editing process. If you trust this module, go ahead and copy the files provided. Test the module once installed.
9) Install the PayPal express check out module, you will need to get a paypal API access with the UID/PWD and signature, follow instructions on paypal for this, fairly easy to get it working. The payPay express module for OsCommerce I used for this is: paypal_express_checkout_IPN_v0_4_1. There is a module already installed in the defaul install, you will need to disable that, install this one and then enable the configuration
10) Install the USPS plugin. Again this requires you to get a UID/PWD from USPS. I installed version USPS Methods 4_1_4. Follow the readme file to get your account created, it takes about a day to get that going.
Once you have all this going, you now have to upload your inventory. Download the inventory from the default install as a template. Clean up the data there and add your own inventory. Make sure you save it as tab delimited format before uploading. Test by uploading a few records first. It is fairly straightforward if you follow instructions in the Easy Populate module.
That is it Folks, your have your online store running. Some very important things to note:
1) when installing OsCommerce using simple scripts make sure you install it in the /catalog directory. Most plugins are written with this structure in mind, so make it easier on your self and do it this way.
2) keep the mods and plugin's to a bare minimum, The first time around I installed numerous plugins, in the end, I lost track of all the changes that went in and was afraid to touch it lest I break something. Notice I have not even installed SSL. Since PayPal is taking care of payments, I dont want to deal with encryption. Also the minute you get into SSL your ISP will have you purchasing a separate IP and the SSL module.
3) The only modules I have added to the stock install of OsCommerce are: a) Easy Populate and b) Page editor. The other two the paypal express checkout and USPS shipping are updates to what is already there, but you need to update to get proper functionality.
4) Test your uploads and mass updates, this will come in real handy later on as your inventory grows.
Thats all there is to it. If you have a lot of money to spare go for the Amazon Seller Central deal for $99.99. But why do that when you can get pretty much the same results for $10.
My journey - August 2008
Past three weeks have been hectic, for most folks summer is a time to kick back and relax, enjoy beach time with the family. It has been all that and much more, so my Saturday morning rant for this week covers a lot of ground.
The August Journey:
1) Got really busy at work because I had to fill in for my boss who had not taken a 2 week vacation in 10 years, on top of that we had an important FIOS release and a looming strike which added to the normal work load.
2) Family renunion, the annual Casey reunion at Southhaven, I will post pictures when the Jaicks send me some.
3) Amazon SellerCentral snafu, after a week of working with Amazon's seller central to build up the entire Joy of Fabrics online store, I pulled out disillusioned with the games Amazon plays. More on this below
4) OsCommerce tweaking. I had built Joy of Fabrics online store using OsCommerce in 2005. After the disaster with Amazon, I picked it up again and tweaked it down to a science. That was the silver lining of the Summer of 2008.
Work Scene:
Filling in for my boss, was a lot of work but not all that hard. The toughest part was the extra effort in having to understand what his boss wanted to see. One thing I learnt from Knowledge Management classes (Thank you Al Burns) is to figure out what someone wants, and provide that. This falls in the realm of eliciting tacit knowledge and can be hard, particularly if you dont interact with the person frequently. The looming strike and the preparation that went into gearing up for that did add quite a bit of load into the normal routine, but some of us had it much easier than the others. I have friends who were assigned other Jobs and had to train for it for 3 months. It all turned out okay in the end. A new contract for 3 years was finally signed.
Family reunion:
Every year our families meet in Southhaven. It used to be Siesta Key in Florida and then it got too much of a distance for the Grand Parents, so now for the past 4 years, the destination has been Southhaven Michigan a sleepy beach town. The The whole family was there including Linda who came from Nairobi for a few days. Always a pleasure to see the Jaicks, the Fialkos since they dont live around here like Dan, Barb and we do. So it was a week of eating drinking and being merry for the family and birthday celebrations for Ellen, Beth, Sean and Mike. Ofcouse, the Strike situation at work, put me on standby, which meant that I could only join the clan a couple days. But all in all it was a good time.
This was the year that Sydney decided to get a mohawk, and Barb gave him her blessing by saying "You have a good nut Syd". Mike exclaimed "Aw right!!". The rest of us just went with the flow.
This was also the summer that Maya figured out she could do something that most folks in the world cannot do, you guessed it, she can lick her own elbow. The mohawk and the elbow licking, Need I add that it is a proud summer in the Fernandi household!!
Its all about lack of Transparency:
It appears that this theme is a broken record in my mind. I keep coming back to the lack of transparency. These past two weeks, I got a sizable dose of that, from no other than Amazon Seller Central. Short story, I moved the Joy of Fabrics online store to Amazon's Seller Central. It tooks some doing and was fun, took about 2 days of figuring out the upload schema and dns zone files. Then realized that Amazon did some false advertising to get me to move and now that I did, they felt they had me where they could milk it for all they could. I feel sorry for many who do not have the same choices as I did. My choice was to pull out, shut down my store and go back to OsCommerce based online store. I did not like the fact that Amazon's parting gift was an announcement that Joy of Fabrics was shutting down instead of saying that Joy of Fabrics is going elsewhere because they were unhappy with the bad service!!. I am very disapointed with Amazon right now, I some how felt that a web 2.0 company should be above "used car sales techniques". Live and learn I guess.
Amazon and Jeff Bezos if you are listening:
What got you where you are is the "VALUE" you bring to the customer, dont throw it all away with "I got you by your balls, and I will do anything I choose and there is nothing the customer can do" attitude. This customer walked out on you, and this customer will tell other customers and who knows the word might spread.
OsCommerce and Joy Of Fabrics:
Back in 2004, when my wife wanted to sell her fabric creations such as fabric vases, fabric bowls, fabric quilts, she teamed up with a buddy who charged her 40% for selling her products. So I stepped in, built a linux box, got an ssl cert, got OsCommerce working as her storefront. Joy of Fabrics had an online presence with very little startup costs. She did have some sales, but really lacked the PR and Marketting and the SEO push to take it to the next level.
On the technology side, while she could manage inventory and product uploads through the admin gui, I soon realized that this store might be better of in a hosted envrironment. I had really tweaked OsCommerce to get it where I wanted, but the tweaks were so numerous, that managing it, let alone porting it else where, would take some serious doing. Well, our move to Kalamazoo last summer, clinched it. Since then the Store has been in maintenance mode, until I got this note from Amazon Central saying they could host my site for $39.95 a month. So I jumped at the opportunity and you know the rest of the story. The silve lining was, I was now in a mode of getting things to work, so I picked up OsCommerce once again and should add that I am glad I did.
This time the key was to keep the mods down to the barest minimum: Install OsCommerce through simple scripts, Install the easy populate contribution, install the page editor contribution, install the PayPal express check out contribution/modification and finally the USPS shipping contribution/modification. I made sure to do all this in a test bed, so I can document and tune it down to a science. The Amazon Seller Central experience pushed me to tweaking OsCommerce to a "Not Magic Anymore" state. I will document the step by step shortly, hopefully others can take advantage of the experience. Yes folks, you can run an online store for just the cost of your hosting service. In my case, Bluehost costs $8 a month. Compare that to $99.99 a month for the Amazon Seller central attitude driven bad service.
Now if any one asks, why has Terry been so quiet these past few weeks, you know the answer.
Parting note:
Last night we went to watch Kalamazoo Kings baseball. Barb, Jen, Syd, Maya and Myself. We had good seats courtsey of Barb's financial planner. '
Well it was'nt wriggly field, but there is something magical about going to a sports stadium and being part of it.
Hope you are all having a great summer. If you came away with a silver lining, like I did, then it is all Okay in my book.
See you next week.
The August Journey:
1) Got really busy at work because I had to fill in for my boss who had not taken a 2 week vacation in 10 years, on top of that we had an important FIOS release and a looming strike which added to the normal work load.
2) Family renunion, the annual Casey reunion at Southhaven, I will post pictures when the Jaicks send me some.
3) Amazon SellerCentral snafu, after a week of working with Amazon's seller central to build up the entire Joy of Fabrics online store, I pulled out disillusioned with the games Amazon plays. More on this below
4) OsCommerce tweaking. I had built Joy of Fabrics online store using OsCommerce in 2005. After the disaster with Amazon, I picked it up again and tweaked it down to a science. That was the silver lining of the Summer of 2008.
Work Scene:
Filling in for my boss, was a lot of work but not all that hard. The toughest part was the extra effort in having to understand what his boss wanted to see. One thing I learnt from Knowledge Management classes (Thank you Al Burns) is to figure out what someone wants, and provide that. This falls in the realm of eliciting tacit knowledge and can be hard, particularly if you dont interact with the person frequently. The looming strike and the preparation that went into gearing up for that did add quite a bit of load into the normal routine, but some of us had it much easier than the others. I have friends who were assigned other Jobs and had to train for it for 3 months. It all turned out okay in the end. A new contract for 3 years was finally signed.
Family reunion:
Every year our families meet in Southhaven. It used to be Siesta Key in Florida and then it got too much of a distance for the Grand Parents, so now for the past 4 years, the destination has been Southhaven Michigan a sleepy beach town. The The whole family was there including Linda who came from Nairobi for a few days. Always a pleasure to see the Jaicks, the Fialkos since they dont live around here like Dan, Barb and we do. So it was a week of eating drinking and being merry for the family and birthday celebrations for Ellen, Beth, Sean and Mike. Ofcouse, the Strike situation at work, put me on standby, which meant that I could only join the clan a couple days. But all in all it was a good time.
This was the year that Sydney decided to get a mohawk, and Barb gave him her blessing by saying "You have a good nut Syd". Mike exclaimed "Aw right!!". The rest of us just went with the flow.
This was also the summer that Maya figured out she could do something that most folks in the world cannot do, you guessed it, she can lick her own elbow. The mohawk and the elbow licking, Need I add that it is a proud summer in the Fernandi household!!Its all about lack of Transparency:
It appears that this theme is a broken record in my mind. I keep coming back to the lack of transparency. These past two weeks, I got a sizable dose of that, from no other than Amazon Seller Central. Short story, I moved the Joy of Fabrics online store to Amazon's Seller Central. It tooks some doing and was fun, took about 2 days of figuring out the upload schema and dns zone files. Then realized that Amazon did some false advertising to get me to move and now that I did, they felt they had me where they could milk it for all they could. I feel sorry for many who do not have the same choices as I did. My choice was to pull out, shut down my store and go back to OsCommerce based online store. I did not like the fact that Amazon's parting gift was an announcement that Joy of Fabrics was shutting down instead of saying that Joy of Fabrics is going elsewhere because they were unhappy with the bad service!!. I am very disapointed with Amazon right now, I some how felt that a web 2.0 company should be above "used car sales techniques". Live and learn I guess.
Amazon and Jeff Bezos if you are listening:
What got you where you are is the "VALUE" you bring to the customer, dont throw it all away with "I got you by your balls, and I will do anything I choose and there is nothing the customer can do" attitude. This customer walked out on you, and this customer will tell other customers and who knows the word might spread.
OsCommerce and Joy Of Fabrics:
Back in 2004, when my wife wanted to sell her fabric creations such as fabric vases, fabric bowls, fabric quilts, she teamed up with a buddy who charged her 40% for selling her products. So I stepped in, built a linux box, got an ssl cert, got OsCommerce working as her storefront. Joy of Fabrics had an online presence with very little startup costs. She did have some sales, but really lacked the PR and Marketting and the SEO push to take it to the next level.
On the technology side, while she could manage inventory and product uploads through the admin gui, I soon realized that this store might be better of in a hosted envrironment. I had really tweaked OsCommerce to get it where I wanted, but the tweaks were so numerous, that managing it, let alone porting it else where, would take some serious doing. Well, our move to Kalamazoo last summer, clinched it. Since then the Store has been in maintenance mode, until I got this note from Amazon Central saying they could host my site for $39.95 a month. So I jumped at the opportunity and you know the rest of the story. The silve lining was, I was now in a mode of getting things to work, so I picked up OsCommerce once again and should add that I am glad I did.
This time the key was to keep the mods down to the barest minimum: Install OsCommerce through simple scripts, Install the easy populate contribution, install the page editor contribution, install the PayPal express check out contribution/modification and finally the USPS shipping contribution/modification. I made sure to do all this in a test bed, so I can document and tune it down to a science. The Amazon Seller Central experience pushed me to tweaking OsCommerce to a "Not Magic Anymore" state. I will document the step by step shortly, hopefully others can take advantage of the experience. Yes folks, you can run an online store for just the cost of your hosting service. In my case, Bluehost costs $8 a month. Compare that to $99.99 a month for the Amazon Seller central attitude driven bad service.
Now if any one asks, why has Terry been so quiet these past few weeks, you know the answer.
Parting note:
Last night we went to watch Kalamazoo Kings baseball. Barb, Jen, Syd, Maya and Myself. We had good seats courtsey of Barb's financial planner. '
Well it was'nt wriggly field, but there is something magical about going to a sports stadium and being part of it.Hope you are all having a great summer. If you came away with a silver lining, like I did, then it is all Okay in my book.
See you next week.
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