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What is it?

osCommerce Online Merchant is an Open Source e-Commerce solution featuring online shopping cart functionality, allowing store owners to setup, run and maintain online stores with little effort and no costs or limitations. It is available for free under the GNU General Public License. osCommerce was started in March 2000 in Germany by project founder and leader Harald Ponce de Leon under the name The Exchange Project. As of November 2007 it powers over 12,000 registered live shops around the world. Officially osCommerce is still in its development stage, but the current release of Milestone 2.2 is considered stable. Milestone 3.0 is expected to be a major re-write, with programming changes to incorporate an object oriented backend, a template system for easy layout changes, and inclusion of an administration-area username and password definition during installation.

Who is it for?

osCommerce offers a basic set of capabilities that meets the general needs of almost all online businesses. In this approach it avoids the pitfall of too much functionality, requiring an overly complex implementation. But osCommerce is not in any way basic. It can be augmented through either community-supplied add-ons or custom code, making it customizable to the specific needs of any business.

Features

All features of osCommerce are enabled by default, offering a complete out-of-the-box solution. The installation is automatic and Web-browser based, as is the upgrade procedure. The template structure implementation provides support for dynamic images. Backend functionality includes support of unlimited products and categories with products-to-categories and categories-to-categories structures. It also includes the ability to add, edit, or remove categories, products, manufacturers, customers, and reviews. Support is offered for both physical and virtual products. The software also provides the ability to contact customers directly via email or newsletters, and to print invoices and packaging lists from the order screen. All orders are stored in a database that can be easily backed up or restored, allowing for fast and efficient retrieval. Customers can view their order history and order statuses and maintain their accounts. The software offers a temporary shopping cart for guests and a permanent shopping cart for customers, plus quick search and advanced search features and product reviews for an interactive shopping experience.

All transactions through osCommerce are secure with SSL. Shop owners can accept both offline and online payment processing from numerous sources. It is also possible to disable certain payment services based on a zone basis. Weight, price, and destination based shipping modules are available, as are real-time quotes from UPS, USPS, FedEx, and more. Owners have the capability to offer free shipping based on amount and destination, and disable certain shipping services based on a zone basis. osCommerce also offers flexible tax implementation on a state and country basis, and the ability to set different tax rates for different products and charge tax on shipping on a per shipping service basis. In addition to all of these basic included features, the osCommerce Web site offers page of free downloadable community add-ons where osCommerce customers can add files for other customers to use, with new functions added daily.

Compatibility

osCommerce is compatible with PHP 4 and MySQL, and with all major browsers. It can be installed on any server where a Web server with PHP has been installed and has access to a MySQL database server. This includes shared servers, dedicated servers, and even local computers, using Linux, Unix, BSD, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows operating systems. It is also multi-lingual, with English, Spanish, and German provided by default.

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