Good or Bad Idea? - Replace existing website with OScommerce

[Jdude217]

I wanted to replace our existing website www.usflag.com with the PHP based "OScommerce CRE Loaded" (www.creloaded.com) styled website, simply because there shopping cart is totally customizable, east to update products, has many other great cart features.

Our website USFLAG.COM currently uses coolcart.com which in my opinion is not a very good system and the site really needs a re-design in my opinion. Don't get me wrong, the website itself is already doing great. We are ranked around 200,000 in the World and get orders all the time.

My Main Question - If I redesign the website in OScommerce, will it effect my SE listing? I read earlier in a post that PHP tags are bad for the search engines or somthing... I'm just trying to see if this will be a good move for our company or not.

[roban]

OScommerce has a search engine friendly component whch you can implement yourself by editing the .htaccess file. I am not a fan of OScommerce at all mainly because of their support forum which is lacking in grace. I use Cube Cart for my sites. There is a SEF mod available as an add on and the support is the best. This is not an objective point of view because I am a moderator there but we get OSC and Zencart converts all the time. I suggest you at least consider it. The software is free as long as you keep the footer text intact other wise it costs $69.00 for a license.

[jestep]

My Main Question - If I redesign the website in OScommerce, will it effect my SE listing? I read earlier in a post that PHP tags are bad for the search engines or somthing... I'm just trying to see if this will be a good move for our company or not.

PHP does not negatively effect ranking in itself, but it can have a negative effect if setup incorrectly. A server can also be setup so that html and php pages are treated exactly the same. PHP pages can be static, so really there is nothing different except the .html/.php extension. People normally run into problems with php when they incorporate a session id into the url's of the site.

Oscommerce is free, and has a huge support base, but takes quite a bit to get rid of the cookie cutter look that most oscommerce sites carry.

One thing you can be sure of, is that you will see a significant drop in traffic when you switch. If everything is setup correctly, you may fully recover, but switching from an html design to a php design on a completely different site structure and navigational structure is a huge change. On top of that you are going to need to do a lot of 301 redirects from specific pages on the original site to specific pages on the new setup.

It will take a while to recover from a change like this.

If you are looking for a more automated site setup, then oscommerce may be good, but it may also be at the cost of having a unique site.

I think that you site is unique, and has a good clean layout. It could use a little brushing up maybe, but unless there is something that is un-fixable with the function or upgrade-ability of the site itself, I cant see changing to oscommerce being a smart change.

Just My Opinion....

Jamie

[Z Power Australia]

I have been using Oscommerce for the last 2 years and it has been quite good. It is so much better then the previous custom made site. Editing etc is much easier although now I am finding some limitations. We are getting around 17,000 visitors (1.5 million hits) per month and are ranked very high but we have done some serious optimisation etc. I would still prefer a web site where I could completely change the front page theme to go with a promotion etc such as Christmas. I have no idea about PHP I pay a company to add mods etc but i do all the editing. I just come up with the ideas and ask "Ïs this possible" Whilst the template might be free the cost are involved when a professional adds all the mods to get the look and feel you require. Regards Alan www.zpower.com.au

[Corey Bryant]

If it has all the features you need / desire, change. I would make sure that all your data can easily be exported into the new database first.

Just be prepared for probably a few hiccups while you and your existing customers get used to the new site.

[Jdude217]

thats a really nice website. I do the exact same thing that you do. I created a website layout for a shoe company www.sneakerbase.com but it is no longer up... I do everything in photoshop and then tell the programmer what i want done.

I did learn alot about php programming when i did this and it is really not as hard as you think it might be.

The cool thing about php is that it is built in 5 sections:

section1 - header (where the zpower logo is)
section2 - left column
section3 - right column
section4 - body
section5 - footer

lets say you wanted to add some christmasy stuff to your logo. All you would have to do is right click on your logo and get the source of where its located and the file name, in this case it is:

http://www.zpower.com.au/images/zpower-left.jpg

now you know that the logo picture is located in the folder "images" and the file name is called "zpower-left.jpg" in your server.

now all you have to do is edit that picture to add some christas effect. Make sure that the file demensions stay the same though(416x116).

Whenever your done just save the file name exactly as it was "zpower-left.jpg" to the folder "images" in your server. It will ask you if your sure you want to replace this image with an image that has the same name. Click "yes" and now you have some christmas effect to your site!

Hope this helps you out.

[Z Power Australia]

I think it is very important to be able to look into the future needs you think you may require. Many web sites will have limitaions when your business etc grows and your web site is not able to expand. Have a look at as many web sites as you can and make notes of the features you like. Go to the Oscommerce web site and check out the existing shops. A lot of people comment about that they like the colours of my web site. Like anything 1st impressions are very important. I have noticed there is a fine line between the front page being just busy enough and not too busy or too dull.

[Z Power Australia]

Thanks Justin. My local web people would charge me around AUD$400 (USD$320.00) to cut up the panel and customise it. I guess I should be learning that stuff instead of sitting here at 3.50am reading forums??? I have alove hater relationship with computers. One day I'm reading mags etc and then the next I feel like taking an axe. Do you know if there is a manual or similar on PHP programming?

[Jdude217]

not exactly a php manual but better. this is where i learned everything i kno now about osCommerce- http://www.forums.oscommerce.com/

just post up what you want to get done or any questions you have and they have people that literally will do the work for you if your willing to learn. Start talking on there and getting to know people, get the programmers screen names and start messaging them.

also, i would recommend you going to the website www.scriptlance.com which is a network of programmers that you can hire for very very cheap to do small jobs. I got my site done and it was totally custom for about $350.

[Z Power Australia]

OK great I'll check it out. Regards Alan

[megrisoft]

I will say that you should replace it with oscommerce. I have made near 20 websites with oscommerce.

I have experience that oscommerce can be fully customized as per client template

For one or two clients i have also done customization and as well as SEO URL's which means that the URL's can be written like this (if you have SONY as catgroy and Sony Camera as product)
http://www.yourdomain.com/sony/sony-camera.html

Apart from this there can be meta titles like
Yoursitename - Sony - Sony Camera

So all pages will be inedexed by google and well rank in search engines. there are many other features which can be added.

[mansoft]

Definetly re-desiging your website will have effect on your SE Listing, however PHP tags are not bad for SE. Just ensure that you take those urls which are already indexed previously. for eg. u sud take this url http://www.usflag.com/poles/econo.html while re-desiging. i hope u got it...

Mansoft Creations
Web Development India