Full Site Change

[TCH-Rob]

Hey gang,

 

I started my personal site using osCommerce. I like it as a shopping cart and think it works great, but great as a shopping cart. I wanted to add content but osc didn't really fit the bill for what I was looking for. So what does one do when they need something new? Go shopping, thats what. I came across some software that integrated osCommerce and PHP-Nuke. I like it rather well, I can change the theme on the fly. I can add content when I want, add products, even has a forum.

 

So whats the problem? I do not like the fact that I can not completely edit the code for each page like I could osc. Each page had its own meta information as well as what was on each page in the content. I don't get that with this software, whether or not it matters, I like to add those things. It makes me feel better.

 

I am looking for suggestions. I would like to keep osCommerce, I think it has value, but I need to integrate content and have forums.

 

What would you suggest? Osc is 3 column so would I keep 3 column for the content, what would I use for it? I don't want to give it a blog look. What about the forums? Should the first thing one sees as the home page be the store or the content that leads to a store like it is now?

 

I have time while I am working out issues with my merch provider so I think a rework is in order but I am not sure the best route to take.

[vengavenga]

There are a few osC forum systems in the osC contributions download section of the osC site (oscommerce.com).

 

I've not looked for a while, so I'm not sure how well they've developed - last time I needed one was around August last year - all I needed really was a guestbook type system for a client, so I took one of the forum contributions that worked (several of them didn't) and hacked it to bits.

 

There's always been a lot of talk about phpbb integration with osC (so that users could login to both with the same password, and not have to login to one if they were already logged into the other) - again, I've not looked for a while but I think it was getting close to working. Again, you'll find contributions for this in the download section.

 

Content wise, it depends what type of content you need - there are loads of "latest news" type contributions that will let you add news and articles to the left, right or center column.

 

Take a look at one of the sites I designed (www.dappernippers.com) - it's got the latest news and the "guestbook" that I mentioned (was originally a full-blown forum) in the "dappernatter" section.

 

Hope that helps,

 

Ali.

www.vengavenga.com