If you have done any amount of freelance web development, you have probably been asked at some point to put together an e-commerce store front for someone. Most likely, the request also contained some caveats--like, the customer was just getting started, and wanted a store front for cheap, and they wanted it to be up pretty quickly (i.e. no long development cycle, with a minimum to the requirements gathering process), and they wanted some kind of admin tools so they did not have to contact you any time they wanted something simple like a price change.
As a custom build, this would be nothing short of impossible. Hopefully your next thought is to use an existing framework and customize it, to accomplish the goals and get something up quickly and cheaply. Next, you are also thinking about hosting, which can be expensive too, depending the requirements of the tool you buy.
I was presented with a similar request lately, so I started looking at some existing frameworks. My research took to through such disparate tools as DotNetNuke (of course the Microsoft guy would look at DNN) and MamboCharge, but I landed on CRE Loaded. CRE Loaded is a PHP script that has been developed on the popular OSCommerce framework. And the results are amazing.
Some of the best parts of CRE Loaded are the multitude of plug-ins available (including secure credit card processing), the availability of resources (both people and web content that can assist), and the easy and speed of getting a store up and running. CRE Loaded brags about how quickly you can get a Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliant store up and running, which promises secure processing in an industry standard framework. And it is every bit as easy as they say.
I recently got a store up in just a few days. I spent additional time tweaking the product, and learned a lot of the ins and outs. Let me tell you that if you plan to do any serious customization, or even maintain an inventory of even 100 items, you owe it to yourself to learn how to make changes in the SQL tables directly. I am sure CRE Loaded would rather you would either use their front end, or their custom load process--but if you know what you are doing, you can turn a difficult update across your entire inventory into a few minutes work.
Case in point, I was setting up shipping for the store, and discovered that shipping requires product weights. The inventory list that I had gotten from the customer's POS system was missing a lot of things, not the least of which was shipping weights. So I had 3 options--go through the admin screens and add a weight to every item (probably close to an hour's work); extract the database to a spreadsheet, update the spreadsheet, and then reload the spreadsheet, praying that the only thing that would be changed would be the product weight (probably 15 minutes work, plus an undetermined amount of time to fix anything that might have been broken due to a typo, etc); or, write a SQL query to set every product weight to 1 pound (1 minute's work).
If you are PHP person, you can also dig into the entire source, and tweak the application. This is not for those lacking caution, though, because it is a somewhat complex script, so I would not advise hacking into to it to make changes--spend some time first and figure out what it is doing. Another example, I had to make some changes to the shipping module to allow various flat rate shipping types, selectable by the customer. Currently, CRE Loaded expects that you will either use one flat rate, or chose from a number of different available shipping options. The moral of the story, though, is that will a little analysis, even this was a fairly easy change, and I could customize the app to meet the business' requirements.
CRE Loaded offers a free version that is a bit limited, but the pro version does a lot and only costs the equivalent of a few hours' work. In am impressed with the speed, ease, and flexibility. If you need to get a storefront up, make sure you include it in the list of products you research. It is worth every penny!
Showing posts with label storefront. Show all posts
Showing posts with label storefront. Show all posts
CRE Loaded Automated Load
I am working on a project right now that is quite a challenge--making CRE Loaded work with an automated load from a separate POS system. CRE Loaded is a tremendous tool, but I don't think it was intended to provide automated capabilities to tie into an existing POS system.
For those of you unfamiliar with it, CRE Loaded is a free, PHP-based storefront. You can find out more here. CRE Loaded is based on the popular OSCommerce platform, and is a great way to get an appealing and flexible storefront up on the web quickly. In addition to the free version, there is a paid Pro version that provides additional capabilities and features.
Generally, I have been very happy with CRE Loaded, but the loading process, called Easy Populate, is lacking. A few of the things you would expect to be there (automated loads, additional fields for the loads, and complete refresh of your entire store inventory) require stepping up to the Pro version, or are not available at all outside custom development. I believe the automated load of the store inventory is going to require hand coding of a CRON job to script out backing up the database, clearing it, and loading from a new import file.
This is a bit of surprise because CRE Loaded seems to handle the vast majority of the desired functionality simply and easily, right out of the box. Personally, it seems like a pretty common feature to require handling a load from a POS system or other external system. Because of that, I am surprised at what seems like anemic capabilities to support load imports.
That said, CRE Loaded is generally a great product, and the ability to write custom code as needed will even mitigate this issue. If you need to set up a storefront, I would put this at the top of your list to review. Just be sure you either don't need to handle external inventory, or can invest in custom code to fulfill this requirement.
Good luck out there!
For those of you unfamiliar with it, CRE Loaded is a free, PHP-based storefront. You can find out more here. CRE Loaded is based on the popular OSCommerce platform, and is a great way to get an appealing and flexible storefront up on the web quickly. In addition to the free version, there is a paid Pro version that provides additional capabilities and features.
Generally, I have been very happy with CRE Loaded, but the loading process, called Easy Populate, is lacking. A few of the things you would expect to be there (automated loads, additional fields for the loads, and complete refresh of your entire store inventory) require stepping up to the Pro version, or are not available at all outside custom development. I believe the automated load of the store inventory is going to require hand coding of a CRON job to script out backing up the database, clearing it, and loading from a new import file.
This is a bit of surprise because CRE Loaded seems to handle the vast majority of the desired functionality simply and easily, right out of the box. Personally, it seems like a pretty common feature to require handling a load from a POS system or other external system. Because of that, I am surprised at what seems like anemic capabilities to support load imports.
That said, CRE Loaded is generally a great product, and the ability to write custom code as needed will even mitigate this issue. If you need to set up a storefront, I would put this at the top of your list to review. Just be sure you either don't need to handle external inventory, or can invest in custom code to fulfill this requirement.
Good luck out there!
