First Ecommerce attempt

[synyster]

Okay I went into a project to build an ecommerce store selling DVDs, it is my first attempt at such a project having being used to static sites now I have looked at numerous reviews and then re-read other reviews and decided building my own cart from scratch may be harder than adding a cart, so is it possible to add the cart to a site that I have already built, the project is a University Project so just downloading the cart and a template would in essence be having it all done for me.

I figured I would be able to add a cart to an existing site meaning I was still doing a lot of the code work myself.

Thanks

[gjh42]

Building a fully functioning e-commerce site from scratch with proper security and features is a job that requires a professional level of competence, and hardly sounds like a university course project unless it is the culmination of a full course of study.
Zen Cart is meant to be used as a complete website, not a bolt-on shopping cart; however, you can use it as the complete shopping component of a website which includes information pages. You would install Zen Cart in a subfolder of your main site, make links back and forth, and build/modify a template to match the main website.

[schoolboy]

You will learn a LOT from installing and configuring a zencart site.

Firstly... flat HTML is "old school" for websites. If you intend making a career out of site building and coding, then you will need to learn how modern CMS platforms operate - and there is no better way to do this than to use a good OpenSource system.

While there are a few "patchy" solutions to adding eComm to a flat HTML site, none are regarded as safe, reliable or professional.

Again, if your objective is to learn how CMS sites work, then load up zencart and have a go at configuring it.

[synyster]

gjh42 it is a final year project but the course has only involved minimal coding (really minimal ) I wanted to take on a project that was something I would find interesting and a challenge and you are correct the more I looked into it the more I realised it is a major challenge, although when I put the idea forward of moving a shop online I was told that it was just a simple database driven website that had no complexity. If I went and coded a simple cart and back end system in php that sort of worked I would most probably get the marks but I like to think if I am going to learn something I should at least do it correctly, another option would be to install zencart and look at customising the template to match a design of my own liking but if coding the site from scratch was considered not complex this idea would not go down well :)
I appreciate the help though and it is something I am going to look at anyway.

[gjh42]

Zeb Cart is extremely flexible and configurable, but its default template ("Classic") is very old-fashioned looking. If you were to build a modern-looking template with various bells and whistles using the ZC template system, you would learn a lot about PHP websites, CMSs and other useful things. You might also add useful features to the "product type", which would give you database interaction experience.

[synyster]

Yes I may have to install it and have a play around with it, I am still thinking that calling an ecommerce project a simple database driven website is far from the truth after the research I have done, unless one happens to be an expert in php and mysql and webdesign in general.
Thanks again for taking the time to help I will most probably be back with more questions once I get time to play with template.