Recommend PHP or Java Opensource E-Commerce solution

Question

A friend of mine was about to be scammed by a bunch of pseudo-programers that intended to sell him a opensource shopping cart as if it was developed by them. Luckly he was smart enough to ask his geek friends first.

Now I'm committed to help him with this endeavor. But to be honest Im more into custom software development that into implementing existing solutions so this totally out of my expertise (comfort zone).

Can some one recommend me a Java or PHP opensource e-commerce solution (Please exclude any Ruby stuff... don't ask why)? Please tray to explain why do you think its the best option as detailed as possible.

Thanks a lot in advance, people!!

Answer 1

I heard good things about OScommerce (php).

as an aside, I'm totally with you on the custom software development thing, I'm currently creating my own e-commerce solution.

Answer 2

I'd highly recommend Magento. It's a little bit harder to get running to start, but once you're up, it's the most extendable, sophisticated, yet user-friendly eCommerce solution I've found. It's PHP.

http://www.magentocommerce.com/

Answer 3

There's a couple of options. WordPress with a couple of plugins like eShop gives the flexibility of blogging and e-commerce. There is also ZenCube, which is a branch of OsCommerce. As long as the business logic is nothing exotic (like for every 5 products you buy you get the sixth one free kind of stuff), OsCommerce, ZenCart or eShop should suffice.

Answer 4

I'd recommend KonaKart if you're looking for a Java based solution. We use version 2.2.6.0 which is (now) not the latest version but we find it stable and performant. We needed to write custom Payment and Shipping modules and found adequate documentation available which made the task straight forward. There are hosting companies that install KonaKart as a standard option, and so implementing your site is now relatively painless. At the end of the day it boils down to which technology you want to use, and what level of customisation you want to make - our site Tiling Tools Direct is based around the standard templates that were bundled with the product. If you want to go Java then I would definitely take a look at KonaKart.