The Truth About osCommerce Templates And How You Can Leverage Your Own Successful Oscommerce Store
By Richard Burford
Why osCommerce Templates are bad

You can find many osCommerce templates on the Internet and they might seem like an easy way to get a good looking ecommerce site running with only a small investment of time and effort. The truth is that most of the osCommerce templates that you can find on the Internet are made to look good but without a care for the functionality of the system. Template designers are just looking to make quick money by selling you a template, their involvement in your store ends when you buy their template. When installing a template you must be aware that the ecommerce site you are installing will generally be the default installation of osCommerce with only aesthetic modifications. To progress the template to a robust ecommerce system that will cater for the needs of your business could be an arduous task. The aesthetic modifications made by template designers generally complicate matters and it would be much more beneficial to start from scratch.

Make your own osCommerce store

If you have enough spare time to learn the system properly osCommerce will reward your dedication. You will be able to create a very versatile ecommerce system in only a few months, even if you've never done web development before. The huge online community is a testament to the flexibility of osCommerce and helps to keep you on the right track. If you get stuck on anything just ask in the forums and someone will jump to your rescue. Bare in mind that to get help you first have to show you have done your homework, don't just ask for help from the very start without reading the documentation. Read the manual and check the knowledge base as they are both great resources for someone just starting with osCommerce. Once you have become comfortable with the osCommerce way and have learnt the basics of the system and how to modify the code to your needs you should start looking at the thousands of contributed modules available. There are currently around 4000 modules or addons that have been contributed by the community. These can take your site to the next level and instructions are usually very easy to follow.

After you have done this you will probably be in a position to start contributing your own custom code and addons to the project. This is the way open source software flourishes and your involvement in the project won't go unnoticed.

Speak to the professionals

If you don't have time for all this exploration and learning then you need to speak to the professionals. We at Freestyle Systems have our own code base that we have been working on almost constantly for many months. We have worked out the major kinks in the default installation and can provide robust ecommerce systems for a very reasonable fee. When you hire a professional company to do your design and development they unlikely to leave you in the lurch like the template designers. We at Freestyle Systems pride ourselves in creating extremely robust osCommerce systems for our clients. If you want the benefits of a solid, effective ecommerce solution but don't have the time or manpower to go it alone, come and speak to us. We will be more than happy to answer any of your osCommerce related questions.

Word of warning

Just because a company seems professional it doesn't mean they will give your business the attention it deserves. Take some time to explain what you want in detail and see what they have to say. If they are only prepared to give you a brief answer to your questions then don't trust them. They will no doubt follow this attitude through to the design and development of your site. We see this all the time and it's a real shame. You will know when a company is the right choice by the attention to detail they give in response to your query.
Freestyle Systems, Ecommerce, Web Design, SEO and Development