Open Cart: These blokes were one of the few options that could explain themselves clearly. I was very hopeful. However, they use the Goog. Every single person that comes to your site is going to ping Google for something. Unacceptable!
The odd thing is that the site seems to work fine even if I turn off the Gogg stuff using uMatrix. I'm going to find the gogg stuff in the source code and edit it out.
Open Cart has an unreasonable amount of multi-screen configurations, everything on a separate line taking up way too much space, no organizational skill, no idea of UI design, no hints. AND, it's a better operation than the other options. So, I'm going to roll with it. However, (spoiler) none of these commerce packages know how to do commerce. They only know how to create a fake spreadsheet for configuration options.
I'm seeing a familiar pattern I saw with WordPress: Broken base configuration + *hey* we'll sell you some complicated upgrades to fix the stuff so it works. I think that's what's going on here. It's "Come On"-ware.
Zen Cart: After three attempts to install via cpanel, it finally installed AND let me log in, which it wasn't doing before. Very flaky behavior from this one. This one's build on jquery. So, a slightly less offensive site is now monitoring all transactions. yay:(
These people are obviously trying to do a bad job. A different screen for everything. No explanation. No add/delete, that sort of thing. I'm sure they think they're sophisticated, but NO, they're just bad at designing software. I'm sure it handles all cases equally badly. It's not a selling point, but they think it is.
Let's think about this for a moment... If you look at Ebay, they do it right. There's not a million configuration options. You add your item, drop in a picture, tag it with some categories, maybe add manufacturer, model #, etc. and boom, you're off. Ebay calculates taxes & shipping. That's it. And that's all these merchant software pieces should be, plus signing you up for payment processors.
Zen Cart is great for a hardware store or plumbing supply. I'm sure the Pentagon enjoys this sort of software. That's the stultifyingly stupid mindset that designed this monstrosity. The sad fact is that Amazon & Ebay easily outdo the Pentagon every day of the week, and their stuff is easier to use. It does a basic job. Nothing special.
Magento: Another winner. Won't install.
X-cart: The latest version wants an up to date mySQL (which a2hosting doesn't have on my particular server), so I'm out of luck. Cpanel doesn't give the option to install an older version.
Summary: We should only use purchased software. This free stuff is crap. Also, it's not really free.
"Commerce" software on shared hosting
"Commerce" software on shared hosting
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