ecommerce website from scratch

Hello, I am based in the UK.
I need to set up a website selling upto 300 items.
I am hoping to design the website from a template and intergrate zen cart into it.
Naturally the site should be set up for optimal SEO and SMO and have a secure payment gateway.
The CMS should be easy to use.
My only special requirement is the need to print mailing labels with the customer's details, item code and postage code.

My questions are:
Which website platform would you recommend (such as Joomla, Wordpress etc.) to get a template from?

What requirements of the hosting provider? - ie: which type of server, which platform etc.

Any recommendations for choice payment providers?
I want Paypal also.

I do intend to ask a developer to put it all together for me but I want to have some idea of what the options are and whichhave worked well for others using Zencart.

Sorry if some/ all of above is a bit vague but any help/ leads greatly appreciated.

mehram:

Hello, I am based in the UK.
I need to set up a website selling upto 300 items.
I am hoping to design the website from a template and intergrate zen cart into it.
Naturally the site should be set up for optimal SEO and SMO and have a secure payment gateway.
The CMS should be easy to use.
My only special requirement is the need to print mailing labels with the customer's details, item code and postage code.

My questions are:
Which website platform would you recommend (such as Joomla, Wordpress etc.) to get a template from?

What requirements of the hosting provider? - ie: which type of server, which platform etc.

Any recommendations for choice payment providers?
I want Paypal also.

I do intend to ask a developer to put it all together for me but I want to have some idea of what the options are and whichhave worked well for others using Zencart.

Sorry if some/ all of above is a bit vague but any help/ leads greatly appreciated.

Have you taken a look here http://(sorry, site offline)/index.php
there are 132 free templates and all designed to work with zencart and nearly all have active forums should you need any help.
take a look at the add ons available too

as for hosts just search around to find one that matches zencarts requirements that are listed in the zencart read me files. I use a host owned by a friend £20 a year but it's very basic and I'll probably have to move as things progress.

and as for payment providers personally i,d stick with paypal till you really get started.

I am hoping to design the website from a template and intergrate zen cart into it. It doesn't work this way. Make Zen Cart your main site and create or install a custom template for it as mentioned above. Zen Cart contains a basic CMS, so you can make various kinds of content pages without using anything else. There are also ways of using forum, blog and gallery software with ZC, discussed in threads here.

Dear All, many thanks for the leads. The one question I still have is how will I be able to print out labels for my goods for each order?
Can this information be extracted from the Zencart CMS and used by bespoke software to produce the labels?
Does anyone have labels being printed for their own zencart webstores?
Many thanks.

Search in Free Addons for "print label" - there are a number of mods available, though most are for older versions and would need to be updated. It shouldn't be hard to hire someone experienced to update one that fits your needs.

http://www.zen-cart.com/index.php?main_page=product_contrib_info&cPath=40_41&products_id=947