Newbie, what do i need to go for Ecommerce?

External Since: Oct 08, 2003 Posts: 2

Hi,

I am familiar with HTML and ASP, and have designed a few sites, but
none of them is ecommerce based.

I am currently hosting my site on my own computer running windows
2000, and am thinking of taking a step further and go with ecommerce
as well.

Considering that I have never done ecommerce, and completely new to
this, is there any site you can give me a reference to, or explain in
short what i need to be able to take my site to ecommerce, hosted on
my own computer (server).

Thank you,

Ashton

External Since: Sep 18, 2003 Posts: 19

ashton wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I am familiar with HTML and ASP, and have designed a few sites, but
> none of them is ecommerce based.
>
> I am currently hosting my site on my own computer running windows
> 2000, and am thinking of taking a step further and go with ecommerce
> as well.
>
> Considering that I have never done ecommerce, and completely new to
> this, is there any site you can give me a reference to, or explain in
> short what i need to be able to take my site to ecommerce, hosted on
> my own computer (server).
>
> Thank you,
>
> Ashton

You have much to learn my young Padawan.

In today's ecommerce environment, it is hard to break in with a new
product. There are tons of carts out there ready for use and modification
so there is no need to reinvent the wheel. (But it would be a great
learning experience.)

Your first choice will be to determine what language you will use. ASP is
a popular choice. It has a lot of support in the community
(http://www.aspin.com/) and there are many sites that are built with it. I
believe there are also plug-ins for Apache that can use ASP as well.
However, ASP will be old hat in 10 years or so if ASP.NET takes over. (I
believe it will.) My recommendation is to learn ASP.NET using C# or VB.
(There seems to be more jobs out there for VB.NET. I've never really
figured that one out but then I've never liked VB.) Another language
option would be PHP and / or PERL. Both are great open source solutions
and run on every platform you can think of. PHP also has a great ready to
use shopping cart called OSCommerce. It's all open source so you can dig
in and start seeing how the pros do it.

Do you have a degree? If yes, great! If not, go back to school. Trust
me, it will take much more effort to prove yourself in this economy if you
don't have a degree. You can balance that by getting a butt-load of
certifications (BLOC)tm. Of course a BLOC with a degree is even better.

That's my $0.02 worth.

HTH.

-=} Randall {=- Musically speaking, C-Sharp is really D-Flat.