Surprise! An osCommerce Online Merchant Release Candidate

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Submitted by Bryan on
Good news for osCommerce fans, osCommerce Online Merchant v2.2 Release Candidate 1 was released early this month.  If you're not an osCommerce user you're probably wondering what all the fuss is about a release candidate for the open source shopping cart.  Consider this, osCommerce 2.2 first went public with Milestone 1 in early 2003 which means that the version 2.2 will be around for almost five years before it is considered "completed".  In other words, an update of any kind to osCommerce is significant to it's developers and users alike.

This osCommerce release candidate also introduces a new name for the software titled "osCommerce Online Merchant".  According to osCommerce, the new name helps strengthen their presence and marketing efforts for upcoming releases.

Baseline: Best Buy Officials Concede Dual-Site System

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Submitted by Bryan on
This kind of stuff is just plain wrong.
The confusion stems from two visually identical sites that Best Buy employees can show customers. The sites have only a handful of minor functionality differences, with the key difference being that the prices are sometimes different, said Chap Achen, director of order management for Best Buy. (Complete Story)
Late last year, I had an experience as a customer that leads me to believe that there are some problems with the value system and culture over at Best Buy.  Put it this way, I'm still so upset about my own experience that I can't even blog about it.  I'm still waiting for my temper to simmer down  before I say something that I'll regret later.  After all, I would like this site to remain PG rated.
 

Fishing with osCommerce

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Submitted by Bryan on

I'm finally down to just the finishing touches on that osCommerce project I mentioned about last month. The site is Dakota Angler, a fishing bait and tackle store, that finally is ready to sell their goods online.

Dakota Angler

What made the project challenging was that it already had a presence on the Web providing fishing reports, images of big catches by the customers, and an active forum. Having to integrate a new shopping cart around the old site in a way the client was comfortable took some effort. He wanted the online store, but he didn't want to change the existing site so much that he lost his current users or made it difficult for his employees to learn "everything new". There are some practical business decisions as to why you don't want to fancy up a "bait store" too much for the customers.

Just as challenging to work with was the choice of software for the online store, osCommerce. As I've mentioned before, I'm just a little surprised with how much work was required in hacking the core. In osCommerce, I found that the "boxes" and much of the other non-product content are stored in "flat files" and not the database.