Deep Inside osCommerce: The Cookbook: Ready-to-use recipes to customize and extend your e-commerce website (Paperback)

by Monika Mathé (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Ready-to-use recipes to customize and extend your e-commerce website

• osCommerce expert "Monika in Germany" lets you in on her secrets on how to hack your way to that perfect osCommerce site
• Create new modules and custom-code your default osCommerce installation
• Add extensions and features like category driven designs and individual shipping modules

In Detail

osCommerce has been around since March 2000. At present there are over 10,000 live, registered osCommerce sites, and about 100,000 registered community members. Apart from providing ready-made solutions to problems, as well as a huge repository of information, the osCommerce community is a living entity with which we can all interact. With the rising success and popularity of this remarkable piece of software, things can only get better.

What you will learn from this book? The book has 11 chapters, each dealing with a different aspect of osCommerce.

Chapter 1 equips you with a few very easy and very important changes to the basic design which will make developing and later modifying a whole new template a breeze.

Chapter 2 will help you modify your navigation to ensure a smoother shopping experience for your customers.

Chapter 3 covers infoboxes and turns you into an expert in tweaking them to your needs.

Chapter 4 deals with one of the most important visual parts of your shop, the product display in the listings and the detail page.

Chapter 5 outlines different methods to make searching on your site a fun experience. You want your customers to use your search and to find the products you want to sell to them.

Chapter 6 highlights customizations of the checkout process, namely the flow from the shopping cart to the shipping and payment pages up to the order email.

Chapter 7 talks about new shipping modules. You will learn how to adapt existing modules to create completely new rate systems for your shop.

Chapter 8 focuses on existing payment modules and how they can be tweaked.

Chapter 9 provides tips on efficiently using banners as a marketing tool.

Chapter 10 is a goodie bag of extra special treats to indulge your sweet tooth.

Chapter 11 tackles changes in the admin area. You alone will be the keeper of these secret recipes hidden to the public eye.

Approach

This book is aimed at people with existing online stores, built using osCommerce. The book follows a systematic approach whereby users can modify and extend features on their already existing osCommerce site. Each chapter deals with a different aspect , and provides ready-made recipes for modifying code to your requirements. The author starts by explaining basic changes one can make to the design of your store, and then covers features like navigation, images, shipping and payment modules, and even explains how to make changes on the administrator's side and keeping your own recipes private.

Who this book is written for?

This book is for people who are already familiar with osCommerce. It presumes a working knowledge of PHP and HTML, as well as basic understanding of phpMyAdmin for database inserts.

About the Author
Fascinated by being able to combine logic and creativity, it seems that destiny had finally found me when I became a software developer and Oracle Certified Database Administrator.

It was a tough call to decide in which field to work, but landing a position in a marketing agency and working with everything from Oracle to SQL-Server and HTML, ASP and JavaScript was a fabulous decision I still congratulate myself for! I learned more about marketing campaigns, e-commerce, CMS and CRM than I had ever wanted to know, I mean, ever thought was possible!

I have been completely absorbed by the Open Source Community - I became an avid believer in php and in MySQL, and definitely in a love affair with osCommerce. I believe almost anything can be done with it... I challenge anyone to prove me wrong!

Being an active member of the osCommerce Online Community, I know pre-emptively which questions will arise in new shop creation. Presently, I am creating as many customised shops for clients as time allows; of course while urging them to add as many custom coded modules as I see fit... that's dessert for me!

Monika Mathé

Fascinated by being able to combine logic and creativity, it seems that destiny had finally found me when I became a software developer and Oracle Certified Database Administrator.

It was a tough call to decide in which field to work, but landing a position in a marketing agency and working with everything from Oracle to SQL-Server and HTML, ASP and JavaScript was a fabulous decision I still congratulate myself for! I learned more about marketing campaigns, e-commerce, CMS and CRM than I had ever wanted to know, I mean, ever thought was possible!

I have been completely absorbed by the Open Source Community - I became an avid believer in php and in MySQL, and definitely in a love affair with osCommerce. I believe almost anything can be done with it... I challenge anyone to prove me wrong!

Being an active member of the osCommerce Online Community, I know preemptively which questions will arise in new shop creation. Presently, I am creating as many customised shops for clients as time allows: of course while urging them to add as many custom coded modules as I see fit... that's dessert for me!

Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Packt Publishing (October 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1847190901
• ISBN-13: 978-1847190901
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #469,409 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Book That Lives Up To Its Promise, October 17, 2006

By	Ralph L. Reade "ComicWisdom" (USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is one of those books that does exactly what it tells you it's going to do. There are a few others out there, but not many. Add this to your short list.

I've read in a few places that this is not a beginner's book. That really depends on your definition of "beginner." If you've managed to get osCommerce up and running, and if you've managed to install even just one or two of the contributions from the osCommerce support site, this book is for you. This is much closer to a beginner's book than to an expert's book, though I'm sure there isn't an expert out there who couldn't use at least some of the presentations.

At first glance, the chapter titles seem to be a little too "cute." But they grow on you. And you get to appreciate them. Besides which, a little light-heartedness mixed in with your work is a good thing. In what might be Monika's terms, I'd say it makes for a good recipe. I think of those titles as a sign that she enjoys what she's doing. And it's obvious she does. And when you enjoy what you're doing, you do it best. And she has.

The format of the book works well. At the beginning of each section, she presents specifically what that sections coding will accomplish. She then gives you the list of all the files you'll need to be working with. (This is a good time to back those up.) After, she explains in clear, concise and simple terms the step-by-step process to accomplish the goal.

Again, if you've installed a single contribution, you'll recognize the format and be immediately comfortable with it. While most of the instructions that go with the contributions on the osCommerce support site are well done (no pun intended), these are all very well done. I couldn't find a bit of confusion anywhere.

A great feature of the book was the insertion of screen shots to give a graphic display of the expected results. And her decision to use the default display was excellent. Everyone who has used osCommerce knows what that looks like and can immediately see what's changed.

In essence, what Monika has done in a very easy to understand manner is provide numerous recipes to make your eshop a little sleeker and more appealing, and your customers stay more pleasant. That, of course, should mean money in your pocket.

If you're planning to go into ecommerce and osCommerce is your choice (which I highly recommend), buy this book now. Even if you've never seen a bit of code in your life. By the time you get your first installation up and running (an incredibly easy chore), and you figure out how to get rid of "What's new here," "Lets see what we have here...," and "This is the default osCommerce setup...," you'll be ready for this book.

Just don't be tempted by the goodies in this book to ignore the contributions on the support site. They'll do a lot of good things for you that aren't covered and are not meant to be covered in this book.

My one disappointment is that although Monika taught me how to put the billing address phone number in the confirmation email, she never taught me how to put the shipping address phone number in the confirmation email.

I'm going to repeat myself here for emphasis. If you're thinking of going into ecommerce and osCommerce is your choice, buy this book; you'll be glad you did.

And if you do that, I'll see you in the forums.

Look for me.

PS: After you buy the book, it's possible to get a download of the code to save yourself some typing. A great idea!

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Useful Resource for osCommerce Store Developers, November 23, 2006

By	Ruth Maude "Dandelion" (Toronto, ON Canada) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Deep Inside osCommerce is the latest osCommerce reference book from Packt Publishing. Written in a cookbook style, this book is filled with easy-to-understand recipes for improving your osCommerce site. If you are looking to take your osCommerce installation to the next level, you should definitely pick up a copy.

You won't just sit and read Deep Inside osCommerce from cover to cover. By the time I had finished chapter one I was already modifying my latest osCommerce project. As with any good cookbook, you will open it up to a recipe and work carefully through all the steps to completion. Each recipe is well laid out in an easy-to-follow style including screenshots clearly showing how the code change will affect an osCommerce default
shop. The "Chef's suggestions" at the end of each recipe provide increased clarity and add greater depth.

If you know Monika Mathé by reputation from the osCommerce forum, you know she is a well-respected expert in the community and that her code is well thought out and effective. By publishing Deep Inside osCommerce Monika has given osCommerce store developers a useful resource. I give this book a full 5 stars, highly recommended for all osCommerce users.

submitted by Ruth Maude - Dandelion Web Design Inc

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars osCommerce shopping carts on steroids: A must-have reference book for osCommerce shopping cart developers, January 9, 2007

By	Ana Sanchez (Florida, USA) - See all my reviews

An excellence source of information for anyone working in the open source osCommerce software. The book includes 69 different code solutions very cleverly developed and written by osCommerce expert Monika Mathe.

Although the book is targeted at intermediate users already familiar with osCommerce, I found that most chapters (or recipes as they are appropriately referred to in the book) were easy to implement as long as you have a working installation of osCommerce in place and have some basic understanding of php and html.

Free download and installation instructions of osCommerce can be found at www.oscommerce.com, however this book will allow you to apply several key enhancements and additional functionality to your basic installation. You will find a range of useful applications; from simple code snippets to customize the design of your shopping cart to much more sophisticated functionality to tweak shipping, payment and other modules. Check out a full chapter summary above in this page.

For those not familiar yet with osCommerce, Monika makes each recipe easy to implement and understand. She always offers a "plain English" practical description of the application before delving into the insights of the code. Additionally, screenshots of the final result are offered as well as a list of new files to be created and files that will need to be modified (useful for preliminary backups).

I strongly recommend you buy this book, you will be glad you did as soon as you see your shopping cart projects take on additional life with these recipes.