How to choose between the open source shopping carts

[pernest]

Hello, I know that this is not strictly a php question, but as most (if not all), of the open source carts are written in php, I thought I would ask for advise here.

 

I'm open to suggestions, but I don't want to pick a cart, invest the time learning it and the money buying books only to find that its limited and I have to use a different one. My criteria for the cart are:

• Secure: Obviously I don't want people to be able to steal my customers credit card details. Is the cart's security simple to configure or is it a labyrinth of settings that you learn over time.
  
• Styleable: Can I have complete control over how the shop will look. I have a friend who is an excellent webdesigner, but he has no experience in ecommerce, will the cart allow me to use his designs compleatly?
  
• Extensible: Does it have a frame work and decent documentation, so that I can write my own extensions if needs be. Is there an active community where I can get help and ideas?
  

 

After a fair amount of research I am tempted by both Zen cart and Virtuemart.

 

Zen cart seems popular and feature rich, however I have yet to see a good looking Zen cart shop. Nearly every example I've seen on the Zen Cart site of a live shop is ugly, the designs are awful. Is this because Zen cart limits design?

 

The Virtuemart shops I've seen look a lot better. However I don't really see the need to have a shop as part of a cms site when I don't need cms, it just seems unnecessary.

 

Any advice would be great.

 

Paul

 

 

 

 

[JonnoTheDev]

steal my customers credit card details

You should NEVER, EVER, EVER store credit card numbers in your database! If you are taking credit card payments on your website then the data is sent through an API call to a payment provider. It is their responsibilty to deal with credit card data. You would use an SSL certificate on your site to make it secure.

 

I haven't used all of the open source carts available but from your requirements I would suggest osCommerce. It has a large community.

[pernest]

You should NEVER, EVER, EVER store credit card numbers in your database!

 

I know! In a trade off between site security and site usability I will always choose security. Some customers will expect a site to 'remember' their credit card details, if I was certain that I could provide this feature without compromising card safety then I would. However every instinct I have tells me to avoid storing customer card details.