Ecommerce hard or not?

I have a client that wants Ecommerce,the problem is,is that I dont know it.. Are there any tutorials for a project like this, or is Ecommerce very hard to program?

Its not going to be like a super mall,but something like maybe 50 items or so. Or are there any programs that can setup E commerce with little programming?

Is e-commerce hard... ahaah. Yes. If you are doing it from scratch, shopping carts are quite complicated, especially when you start worrying about security. There are hundreds of pre-built services that you can use. I've used www.1shoppingcart.com before. It's ok, but the disadvantage is that the user has to go to a third party site to purchase things. There are other things like Miva Merchant that is a shopping cart scripting language type thing that isn't too hard to learn. But like I said, there are hundreds and hundreds of options out there for you.

I've set up a few Miva Merchant stores, and it's unbelieveably easy. And if you can find a host that has Miva Empressa already installed, that will save you about $700 right there. Often, you will find Miva hosts that offer the Merchant software for free with a 2-year contract (we do). Miva even comes with pre-made site templates so that you really don't have to do much work besides showing the client how to use it, and that's really not entirely necessary since all the documentation you will ever need to run the store is available in PDFs on Miva's site (http://www.miva.com).

And do Deker's statement that there are hundreds of options out there....no, there aren't. Miva is the only option. I've tried 3 different solutions, and looked at hundreds of others...and none of the others are even an option after looking at Miva.

No, I don't work for Miva.

I got a free Miva license with my hosting account and tried it out. Looks complicated to me. You have to learn a whole new scripting language just to use it, and all of the designs I've seen are very ugly and cookie-cutterish. So there.

what about using a program like this

http://www.mals-e.com/

It is NOT complicated, and you do NOT have learn a new scripting language.

And agreed, the default templates are a bit simple, but you can also download 1000's of other templates made by other people.

And to lowizzy: It's pretty hard to beat "free", but remember, the old parable always holds true: "You get what you pay for".

You told me you spent 16 hours trying to figure out Miva. That sounds complicated to me.

Well, we know matt's just slow anyway.

It's not complicated.

And MBB: