What is oscommerce? Help!!!

I love designing sites and can put them together using some CSS and XHTML or basic HTML 4.0 transitional.

But today I had someone contact me about oscommerce and a frontpage design. So I googled it and I noticed it was about installing a type of program or script using PHP if I'm right?

This will be for a site selling bikes and the email states the following:
"...looking for a front page design, oscommerce design, biz cards, and other stuff..."

I will be requesting clarity as this doesn't seem to thorough but in case I have to dive into this is there any help besides what I've found at www.oscommerce.org that can be of benefit.

Thanks for your help guys, it's highly appreciated.

Cheers!

OSCommerce is an open source application (freeware) for creating an Ecommerce site. It is quite robust, and has a built in templating system. Because it's open source, you find that the core program is pretty stable, but that most of the added functionality is programmed by people in the 'development' community--and sometimes adding one plugin breaks another.

There is a good source for documentation, Michael over at http://www.oscdox.com is quite good. He also works with a hosting company to provide oscommerce hosting; but the best part is he's put together a 'bundle' of several of the best oscommerce plugins including the Basic Template System. I haven't looked at the software in a while, the project I was using it for got caught in limbo land. http://oscdox.com/Downloads-index-req-viewdownload-cid-4.html

Hope this gets you started.

Malibu, thanks for your reply man...those links are going to help me have a go at it, but it's programming and I'm not the techy type, so I'm sure I'll have some headaches awaiting me. At any rate, I'm sure it'll be a learning experience.

Thanks again for your time and if anyone else has anymore info, please shoot it my way.

Cheers!

Good luck. OSCommerce is one of the most difficult things to skin ever, even with the "templating" system which really doesn't work all that well. At all. You'll also find the documentation sorely lacking, especially if you aren't already a programmer. And why would you need a script if you could already program? I don't know.

I don't mean to be a downer, just letting you know what you're in for before you take the job. I've done several OSC sites, and have hated every minute of it. The script tries to do too much, and is 100 times more complicated than it should be. The plugins only make things even more complicated and difficult to use. Especially since they are just extra features slapped on, they aren't integrated into the admin panel and many of the other parts of the site very well, making the whole system bloated and unorganized and very difficult and confusing to use.

If possible I'd recommend going with a payed for solution like http://www.eshox.com/ which is based on OSC, but has been mostly rewritten and is sold for about $200 - $300 I think. It has a real templating system that actually works pretty well, and a much nicer, cleaner, and more professional admin panel. Plus you actually have someone to ask for support, other than a bunch of programmers on the OSC forums.

Hey Deker, thanks for the info man...that's pretty much what I thought. Once I hear things about programming like this, I tend to get the feeling that I'm headed for a headache or two. I'm going to look up the site at eshox and see what's up with the cost and all.

Hopefully I can do their design and install it and maybe they can hire someone else to do the programming. Thanks again for your time man, have a good one.

Cheers!

*edit*
Oh man...the lady just got back to me and doesn't need me to program the thing, she already has a programmer so all she wants is a template....wooohooo!