Can I do this? a store that can handle 1000's of different items?

Hi All,

Im new here and was hoping to get some advice on a problem I have.

Up to now, I have been using a pay monthly e-commerce site to sell my products, however they were recently accquired by another company who have 'migrated' my site over to their platform and made a right mess of it on the way. They dont seem that interested in answering my concerns, only really interested in my credit card details for direct debits, but hey thats me ranting now.

This has obviously left me with a bitter taste and a desire to be completely independent from these types of company. My question is, will i be able to create a secure e-commerce a web site with a back-end control panel that can handle 1000's of different items with zen-cart?

I am reasonably computer literate and built many static websites in the past as well as creating a custom wordpress theme, however my PHP skills aren't that great if im honest but im prepared to put the hours in.

You advice/comments/links to working examples would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

D

There are many, many examples of sites built with Zen Cart to market many thousands of products. Here's a few that all run into the 1000s: http://populargreetings.com, http://www.mobility.co.uk, http://3gstore.com, http://rcracinguk.com.

I've also heard of examples with hundreds of thousands products, though that requires some careful tuning of the server and sidestepping some features such as category counts.

Another consideration is FUNCTIONALITY... If your products/services require special (or bespoke) features, you may need to build the FUNCTIONALITY for these. Zencart has a huge number of "ADD-ONS" that cover many bases, and in most cases, people are able to invoke a desired "unique" function using one of these "Add-Ons", or in some cases, they "tweak" an add-on to suit their needs.

Is there anything "unconventional" about your products that may need such customised functionality?

schoolboy:

Another consideration is FUNCTIONALITY... If your products/services require special (or bespoke) features, you may need to build the FUNCTIONALITY for these. Zencart has a huge number of "ADD-ONS" that cover many bases, and in most cases, people are able to invoke a desired "unique" function using one of these "Add-Ons", or in some cases, they "tweak" an add-on to suit their needs.

Is there anything "unconventional" about your products that may need such customised functionality?

Hi Schoolboy,

I dont think there is anything too unconventional about what I want to do, the possibility of adding variants to each product is something I could be interested in. For example a click down box to select a size or colour, instead of having separate product pages for each item.

Do you think this is possible?

kuroi:

There are many, many examples of sites built with Zen Cart to market many thousands of products. Here's a few that all run into the 1000s: http://populargreetings.com, http://www.mobility.co.uk, http://3gstore.com, http://rcracinguk.com.

I've also heard of examples with hundreds of thousands products, though that requires some careful tuning of the server and sidestepping some features such as category counts.

Hi Kuroi,

Thanks for getting back to me with examples, its given me the confidence that this could be the right solution for me.

I was planning on installing zen cart locally on my mac and going from there. After flicking through a few tutorials this is not a five minute job so you may see a few posts begging for help over the next evening or two.

Thanks again!

deecee:

Hi Schoolboy,

I dont think there is anything too unconventional about what I want to do, the possibility of adding variants to each product is something I could be interested in. For example a click down box to select a size or colour, instead of having separate product pages for each item.

Do you think this is possible?

Oh yes... Zencart has a complete ATTRIBUTES function.
**
GO HERE** to see an example (you will need to click the PRODUCT OPTIONS TAB to see how attributes are applied).

See **ANOTHER EXAMPLE**

schoolboy:

Oh yes... Zencart has a complete ATTRIBUTES function.
**
GO HERE** to see an example (you will need to click the PRODUCT OPTIONS TAB to see how attributes are applied).

See **ANOTHER EXAMPLE**

Thanks for the examples schoolboy, looks like it will be more than possible to do the functions i want especially after looking at the office frog website - looks great!

Do you host on your own server or use a provider?