Re: shopping mall software, online storefront

Hi Nick,

It would be worth investigating Interchange by Redhat
(http://interchange.redhat.com).  The package is open source and does
everything you're asking for an more.

Once installed it allows you to set up as many stores as you want, on any
domains on your server.  You could easily have dozens of storefronts on your
domain.  Installation of a store takes about 2 minutes.

Each store comes with an admin panel.  The admin panel lets the user change
page templates, upload pricing/product info, thumbnails, tax info, etc.  The
software will use UPS shipping tables to calculate shipping and it will
authorize credit cards through many of the online companies like cybercash.
I'm told that there is the ability to download orders into Quickbooks
(desktop accounting package) as well.  It also produces marketing reports,
will incorporate volume discounts, will dynamically generate specials and
'upsell' products,etc etc, features you would expect in packages costing
twice as much ;-).

I found three difficulties with the software:
- I had some initial installation difficulties, due primarily to my
ignorance of *nix.
- there's a learning curve to the admin panel because it is so comprehensive
- documentation is a bit thin.
I ended up contracting an interchange specialist, and he got me over all
three hurdles in < 1 day.

Regards,
glenn


----- Original Message -----
From: Nick Ciantro <nc(at)pyrotechsystems.com>
To: ISP-Software list <isp-software(at)isp-software.com>; HWG Software List
<hwg-software(at)hwg.org>
Sent: Sunday, September 30, 2001 9:54 PM
Subject: Look for shopping mall software.


> We are looking for a solution to running an online shopping mall.  In
other
> words, we dont want just a basic shopping cart, but something that would
> allows us to sign up various merchants an incorporate all their product
into
> one on-line mall under one domain.  Each merchant should be able to log in
> with their own user name and password and add, modify and delete items
from
> their products list.  If an order is place, a merchant should me notified
by
> email, and then the merchant can log on to their account to retrieve the
> order.
>
> Hope this makes sense, and any suggestions are greatly appreciated.
>
> Nick
>

HWG: hwg-software mailing list archives, maintained by Webmasters @ IWA