Customer Reviews

Building Online Stores with osCommerce: Professional Edition: Learn how to design, build, and profit from a sophisticated online business.

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I've seen this book a bit earlier than most as I had the pleasure to do the technical reviewing of it. Normally not too fond of tool books, I really enjoyed reading this one - well to be honest it was quite an addiction for me to read it. I was actually on vacation at my parents home and they thought it was pretty weird for me to lock myself in my dad's computer room to read it for hours.

So why did I enjoy it this much? This book really covers it all ... from setting up a dev environment on your local puter to finetuning your store at the end. In between there is lots of tips on business decisions, never in a dry voice though but full of examples and easily understandable explanations why some things just work and others do not. The writer has a chatty tone which is refreshing to read and never boring.

All admin parameters are explained, contribution installation is demystified and tips for turning your store into a fun and secure shopping experience pop out from all pages. A perfect guide for those newbies who enjoy reading the knowledgebase or forumns but still like to have a book on hand for easy reference. Even a total beginner could build a fab store with the step by step explanations found here.

Especially the security part is a topic often neglected in new shop creation and will distinguish your shop from those which just don't make it. Ditto for looks and functionality to create a pleasant shopping environment for the visitor and an easily managable backend for the shop owner.

As I'm totally in LOVE with osC (geez now that's a secret I tell you here so NOT!!!) I felt like a little sponge while reading the book. Yes there were passages that were new to me too and that I eagerly implemented in my stores. So good for business and so fun at the same time. Enjoy!

I am a PHP programmer but have no experience with osCommerce. I needed a "big picture" view of how osCommerce works and how it is customized. I also needed some detail as to how modules inter-relate. This book satisfied both of those requirements.

It is written in a casual, easy-to-read way, and is suitable for folks new to e-commerce technology as well as people like me who need some orientation before setting out to customize things.

This is my second Packt book, and I am very happy with the overall quality.

This book helped me to install and configure all the tools needed to get a development osCommerce site running at home. I did run into some configuration problems however, the online community helped tremendously. This book really does a fine job of explaining what the out of the box tools can do and how the contribution modules can further improve your online store. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in building an online store since osCommerce and all the tools required are opensource (free) and in many ways better than the costly competition.

I am a PHP web developer but I have never used OSC before. I am half way through the book and I can't waint to thank and congratulate the author for this wonderful book. The book is clear and complete step-by-step procedures are always spelled out in detail.

this book was the one I used to get me out of the gate quickest *because* of the quality and the no-nonsense explanations.

As a computer system administrator I have found this book to be a valuable resource to anyone aiming to build and grow an on line shop with osCommerce.

Please keep the good job.

This isn't by any means a definitive OSCommerce text, but it will give an EXPERIENCED programmer with a PHP/MySQL background a solid launch point for implementing an OSCommerce store.

OSCommerce isn't rocket science, but it IS really complicated if you want to modify it in any way. This book provides a vocabulary and a rudimentary framework for how OSCommerce is structured and how its parts interact.

This book isn't all you need to develop a great OSCommerce store, but it sure does get you started!

Glad I bought it!

I was pleasantly surprised that this book really got into the inards of OSC. Most technical manuals merely restate what has already been written in the included documentation. This book, however, does get into the technical end of things and shows you how you can customize many features of osCommerce. A must book for anyone building an online store with osCommerce.

That is the first thing that you should ask? This book is for osCommerce V2.2MS2 and for this does a very good job. It also does a very good job of giving an overview of the osCommerce process and layout of things. But it does not work for osCommerce V2.2RC2a. This version is just different enough that the steps that are outlined do not work. Now that osCommerce V2.3 and v3.0 are on the horizon this book is even more out of date.

I didn't purchase the Beginner's manual, but I think this Professional Edition could be called a Beginner's guide. It worked pretty well to get me started as I'm not a programmer and had never really used osCommerce. Due to the title, I was expecting to get a little more information on the coding aspect.

POSITIVES - for beginners, it gives you a good overall idea of site structure and is written in language that anybody can understand. It suggests several add-ons to incorporate and shows you how to install them as well as provides hints on some of the customization.

NEGATIVES - I was hoping for something with a little more depth on the programming level.

Overall, I think this is a great book for a beginner who has never worked with osCommerce and has little experience with php & mysql. However, if you want something that will guide you in creating your own custom modules, I think you should look elsewhere.

I am a newbie to not only oscommerce, but also apache, mysql and php. I foung this book to be very helpful in getting an understanding about how all of these products work together in order to get an ecommerce site up and running. Written in such an easy to read and understand manner, it becomes a simple process of building an oscommerce site and deploying to a live server. I'm not real sure if I could have coped with the whole process without the help of this book. Highly recommended.

I was very disappointed with this title. First and foremost, it, like the osCommerce project itself, is sorely outdated. While Magento is the sexy new blonde on the block with tons of quirks and baggage, osCommerce is the tried and true all-American girl. But with that, you get predictable, bland, and not a whole lot of control. I thought that this book being geared toward "Professionals" would teach you how to make osCommerce your own. Instead, it doesn't tell you hardly anything about how to actually customize the app, and spends tons of time telling you how to add products and set variables, the kind of stuff that is self-explanatory and easily found in the FREE online user guide and forums. So why hasn't anyone written a book on how to make osCommerce not look like your fat cousin. It literally looks like a website from 1994, and it takes tens of hours of work just to change whether or not there's a right hand column. I was hoping for someone to have better ideas on how to make osCommerce actually look like a professional app and not just a canned eCommerce solution. But this book in no way does that. Is it any coincidence that the Customization chapter is the shortest one in the book? I doubt it. As soon as Magento gets the kinks worked out, osCommerce is headed the way of the dodo, and just one author could write a valuable manual and change that.