Need to setup a comprehensive e-commerce page for the first time--Magento?

Question

Hey guys,

I'm a designer (starting to learn PHP/MySQL) and am need in an eCommerce platform (it does not have to be free) that will allow me to create a comprehensive eCommerce site--countdown promotions, related products, user reviews, payment/shipping processing, etc. Basically just populating it with products, and styling the pages.

I'd appreciate some suggestions for what platforms to explore, that will have either fairly straight forward implementation (for someone with basic PHP knowledge) or documentation with tutorials.

I've heard some buzz around Magento, but I only have experience setting up an Amazon WebStore... which brings me to my next point; seeing as I will be maintaining the page myself, I'm not interested in a clumsy drag-'n'-drop widget front-end design control panel. Ideally I'd be able to style everything with CSS, and insert/rearrange snippets of PHP code to create each page's design.

Thanks!

Answer 1

If you are just learning php/mysql then you'd better stay away from magento for now. It is fairly complex and complicated to maintaing even for experienced developers. The skinning mechanism is also quite complex with a lot of xml layout definitions.

If you are just starting with ecommerce you should look at a simpler shopping cart system. The ones I heard good stuff about are zencart and cubecart. Have a look at wikipedia's list of ecommerce software solutions to find the shopping cart which is suited to your needs.