Posts Tagged ‘Online Shopping’

Leading ecommerce platform review: dashCommerce

We all aware of that finding an open source software based on Microsoft technology is like searching for needle in a hay stack, let alone a suitable one. dashCommerce is one of those very rare open source .NET ecommerce platforms in the wild, other two available option you have- DotShoppingCart and nopCommerce (we will come to these two in the future). dashCommerce formerly known as the Microsoft Commerce Starter Kit, is a complete CMS (Content Management System) and ecommerce open source solution. Current stable version dashCommerce 3.0 is quite flexible and robust in nature, as it’s incorporates all three major components of an ecommerce application: Product Catalog Shopping Cart Order Fulfillment   Key Features Key features of dashCommerce: One page checkout Drop-In skinning / themes Configurable shipping and tax rates Drop-In Provider Model for- Shipping Providers Payment Providers Tax Providers (US and Canada only. Real-time. Tax tables are updated monthly. Requires Yearly Subscription) Coupon Providers Simple model for creating Sku’s Partial Refunds Product cross sales & automatic thumbnail generation for images. Fully Localizable, currently translated into 11 languages.   Drawbacks Well until now everything sounds cool right? you found a .NET ecommerce platform, which happens to be open source and…
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Leading ecommerce platform review: PrestaShop

PrestaShop is what we consider a one-stop shop and a lot simpler to install and setup than most open source ecommerce platform. This is a scalable open source platform, which means it can grow as your business grows. PrestaShop is a free solution, and their easy-to-use back office tool allows anyone, regardless of skill level, to use and maintain an online store (sort of like ecommerce for dummies ). PrestaShop is available under the Open Software License and officially launched in August 2007 for small to medium-sized businesses. The software, which is based on the Smarty template engine, has approximately 24,000 active stores as of August 2009. Two dude name Igor Schlumberger and Bruno Lévêque from Paris founded PrestaShop. Official PrestaShop 1.0 was released on July 31, 2008. PrestaShop is based on LAMP solution stack. This makes it preferable choice for new startups, small or medium size companies looking to start online shopping web site. The makers of PrestaShop have an official marketplace for priced modules and themes entitled PrestaStore. The store houses both free and paid modules (Note some paid modules can be very expensive). They also have a turkey based e-shop solution dubbed as PrestaBox which runs on…
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Leading ecommerce platform review: Magento

Varien a LA based Web firm turn ecommerce platform provider developed Magento, one of the most vibrant, feature rich open source ecommerce platform. Varien was founded in 2001 which worked with osCommerce. They originally planned to fork osCommerce but later decided to rewrite it as Magento. Though Magento version 1 publicly launched on March 31, 2008, the official development started way back in early 2007. Magento is built on components of the Zend Framework. It’s available under the Open Software License version 3.0. Since version 1.1.7 some parts are licensed under the Academic Free License version 3.0. On April 15, 2009 Enterprise Edition, a paid for version of Magento is being introduced for large companies. This version provides a service agreement with Varien and starts at $11k+ USD/ year (It’s a shit load of money-well it’s definitely worth though). So if you are counting evolution lifecycle Magento is just 2 years old, seriously underage compare to all those expensive horn blowing propriety ecommerce software. But guess what? It’s all the things anyone can expect from professional web stores. Honestly I’ve never seen another ecommerce platform well architected and well designed as Magento. It’s robust, simple to use/customize and dripping with…
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Goodbye Adobe stock photos

Adobe Systems Inc. has announced plans to discontinue its Adobe Stock Photos service effective April 1, 2008. The service enables users of Adobe’s Bridge software to purchase royalty-free images for use in their work. It was introduced in 2005 when Adobe rolled out Creative Suite 2. “Adobe has decided to concentrate its efforts in other areas,” said the company in a statement posted to the Adobe Stock Photos Web site. In straighter wards-Adobe stock photos don’t bring us any money, the way our world class image editing software brings. It’s true that me and many of my colleagues use Adobe Photoshop and Fireworks almost every day but never used their stock photos service. Some of us though use similar sort of services, which they consider much more cost effective and rich in resources. I agree with those who thinks Adobe stock photos service just not up to the mark(ex. iStockPhoto and Getty Images) to gain a lead in that stock photography market. The service will remain fully operational until March 3, 2008. From then through the end of March, comp images will still be available for download. Adobe has posted instructions for users interested in purchasing or downloading images after…
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Online shopping series A: Spare Parts Warehouse

The mass improvements of Internet technology and virtualization bring us in a stage where we nearly buy/want to buy everything from online. But as the online shopping spree grows so is the online scam and fraud. There are thousands of online shopping sites out there with lowest quality products (that they can’t sell on site), some with zero customer care, much worse some are just crooks/frauds. So they only way to be safe is buying from someone reliable, certified by proper authority. In United States BBB online reliability program is one such scheme, where they scrutinizes online companies to adhere some basic guidelines to make online shopping safer for consumers. Spare Parts Warehouse is a member of BBB online reliability program, which is a fantastic online shopping place for laptop parts such as laptop batteries, hard drives, AC adapters, DVD/CDRWs, LCD displays, etc. Spare Parts Warehouse is a subsidiary service of Dayton, OH based UCR LLC, which has a long illustrated 22 years of service track. Apart from just laptop parts sales, they do have an outstanding Laptop LCD Screens & Laptop Screens repair service, which is well within the reasonable cost. And hey they are an Authorized Laptop Repair…
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