How to set up a store?

[SportsFan]

I operate www.calendar-updates.com. Visitors can download sport team schedules for import into their Microsoft Outlook calendar. All of my schedules are currently provided free of charge. Visitors simply identify the schedule that they want, click on it, and download the file.

I am considering a premium edition schedule to offer as a choice to the free schedules that I currently provide. If visitors wanted the premium edition schedule, I would want to charge a modest fee for the schedule. To do this I would need to set up a store of some sort, something I have never done.

I envision a system where visitors can browse through my site, adding schedules that they want to a shopping cart. If they choose a free schedule, there would be no charge for that schedule. But if they choose the premium schedules, each of those would have a charge associated with it. At check-out, they could have a combination of both free and premium schedules in their shopping cart.

Can somebody direct me to how I would set up such a store? I am sure I will need third party software for this. I also want to somehow provide immediate delivery of the files that they want to download, either for free or after paying for the premium ones.

Any ideas?


Thanks…

Greg

P.S. Sorry if this is a basic question. I operate this business in my spare time around my day job. Just operating the site as is really takes a lot of time, and I haven’t had time to research this on my own.

[paulhiles]

Hi Greg,

Have you tried looking through the eCommerce forum? http://www.webproworld.com/viewforum.php?f=18 There's lots of information about online stores and the pros and cons of different shopping carts. If you're really lucky.. some nice Site Design Moderator will move this post over there for you! ;o)

Wishing you lots of luck,

Paul

[brandblast]

Hi,

We have a great article on getting started in ecommerce at (mod edit: no self-promotion, please)

Good luck,

[Corey Bryant]

What does your site reside on currently - Windows or a *NIX flavor? This would help to determine whether you would like to use PHP or ASP.

[SportsFan]

running windows 2000

[Corey Bryant]

Just have to verify - is it you running Windows 2000 or the server?

[dark one]

i had quite a similar project. on windows as well. http://x-cart.com/ helped me handle it.
in time i learned windows is not the best platform for ecommerce. so now i build new projects with x-cart on unix.

good luck to you. projects like that are never too simple.

[emceul]

You can try :
http://www.litecommerce.com/

i don`t know wich is the best lite or xcart...

can someone tell us?:))

[dark one]

Originally Posted by emceul

You can try :
http://www.litecommerce.com/

i don`t know wich is the best lite or xcart...

can someone tell us?:))

i found a nice page about it.
http://litecommerce.com/comparison_chart.html
quite clear i guess.

[scatcat]

Hi,

You can get php, apache and mysql to run on windows,
seach for 'php triad'.

Then you could take a look at Oscommerce.

It's open source and supposed to be MOST EXCELLENT

[dark one]

Originally Posted by scatcat

Hi,

You can get php, apache and mysql to run on windows,
seach for 'php triad'.

Then you could take a look at Oscommerce.

It's open source and supposed to be MOST EXCELLENT

what do you mean most excellent?
is it absolute top in functionality?
no
performance?
no
layout?
no
system requirements?
no
and far not the only open source

osc is a good system, but will take you ages to get a pretty store with it. a good system, nothing more. someone'd like it, but i choose time not to be wasted and start with a better platform.