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About the Author
Vikram Vaswani
Vikram is the CEO of Melonfire, a company specializing in software solutions and content syndication.
Six Easy Steps to Start Selling Online with OXID eShop
One-click Shopping
Over the last few years, online shopping has become increasingly popular with consumers all over the world. It’s simple to understand why: eshops are easily accessible, open 24/7, typically offer lower prices (and a wider variety of goods) than their bricks-and-mortar counterparts, and come with additional bonuses such as personalized recommendations, generous return policies, and safe-shopping guarantees. This popularity is confirmed by the statistics: the US Census Bureau estimates that in Q3 2008, ecommerce accounted for $US34.4 billion of retail sales, up from $US27.5 billion in 2006.
As ecommerce has evolved over the years, so too have the tools available to merchants looking to build an online presence. The sophistication of modern ecommerce solutions is such that setting them up requires at most a few clicks and some back-end data entry; usually the software can (and will) do everything else for you. This ease of use is a boon to small and medium-sized merchants, many of who are entering the online marketplace for the first time, and are looking for a simple system that allow them to set up and run an online store with minimal fuss.
If you’re one of these merchants—an individual, a small business, or even a large one—and you’ve been toying with the idea of taking your products to new customers and markets via the Internet, then this article is for you. In it, I’ll be discussing how to quickly and easily build your online shop using one of the new breed of ecommerce solutions: an open-source, community-driven shopping cart system called the OXID eShop. Come on in, and let’s make a start!
Introducing OXID eShop
Let’s start with the basics—what is OXID eShop, anyhow?
OXID eShop, in the words of its official web site, is a “modular, state-of-the-art, and standards-based” shopping cart system for online stores. Written using PHP and MySQL, it provides a framework for shop owners to create and maintain a web-based store, by allowing them to define a product catalogue, set prices and payment methods, manage inventory, and respond to orders. OXID eShop also has a long track record for small to large enterprises, and is therefore both battle-tested and rich in features.
Here’s a quick list of the key features:
- Custom payment and shipping methods: OXID eShop allows a great deal of fine-tuning when it comes to determining payment and shipping methods. Shop administrators can easily support various payment options (including credit card, COD, and PayPal), allow or disallow payment conditions per country or user group, and define custom rules for shipping cost calculation.
- Promotions and discounts: The OXID shop management system includes functions to set up discounts during specific time periods—for example, Christmas sales—as well as to specific groups of users, such as VIP members. Discount coupons are also supported. Reviews: In the spirit of sites like Amazon.com, OXID eShop harnesses the wisdom of the community by allowing users to comment on products they’ve purchased. This provides useful feedback to other users, as well as product manufacturers.
- Customer communication: Good communication is the key to customer loyalty, and OXID eShop includes a number of tools to assist the process. Shop owners can keep users informed about new products via an opt-in newsletter, allow users to comment on service and products in a guestbook, or display shop news on the main storefront page. There’s also a price alert mechanism, which allows the shop to notify users when prices fall below a particular limit.
It’s also worth noting that OXID eShop comes in three flavors: the Enterprise Edition, the Professional Edition, and the Community Edition. The Community Edition, which is the version used in this article, is offered to users free of charge under the GNU General Public License. The other two editions are commercial packages for mission-critical use; they provide additional functionality and include vendor support, guarantees, indemnification, and more business benefits.
Install and Configure the Software
To start using OXID eShop, you’ll need to first make sure that you have everything needed for a successful installation of the product. You’ll require an Apache web server with PHP, and a MySQL database server.
You can find a complete list of requirements including a list of required PHP extensions on the OXID web site. Once you’ve confirmed that your host meets all the installation requirements, download a copy of OXID eShop Community Edition from the official web site. Transfer your files to a location on your server under your web server root directory, either by uploading the package and unpacking it on your server, or unpacking first and then uploading all individual files.
The next step is to create a MySQL database to store all the application information and a database user account that will be used to access the OXID eShop database. You can run the following SQL commands on the server if you have access to the command line; or you can run them using a tool like phpMyAdmin which is commonly provided by web hosts; or else the administration panel provided by your web host should include the appropriate controls.
To create the database run:
CREATE DATABASE oxid;
Creating a MySQL user account with privileges to only access this database is a security precaution that ensures other MySQL databases on the system remain secure, even if the security of your OXID system is compromised. The following command will create a user named ‘oxid’ with a password of ‘sh0pp3r’:
GRANT ALL ON oxid.* TO oxid@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'sh0pp3r';
With the database and user account created, it’s time to set up all the required tables. This is simpler than it sounds—the OXID eShop installer will do all the work for you. All you need to do is open your web browser and navigate to the root folder of your OXID installation. You should see a page like this:
Assuming that your system meets all the requirements, installation is a point-and-click process. Click the Proceed with setup button to continue. In the next step, select your country and click the Start installation button:
You will then be asked to accept the terms of the OXID license. Once done, the system will prompt you for your database connection information. Enter the values for your MySQL server, together with the user credentials created previously, but make sure you select the option Do not install demodata. This prevents the installer from installing test data in the system—we’ll be adding our own soon enough!
Click the Create database now button and the OXID installer will now go to work creating the necessary database tables. In the final step, specify the HTTP and file paths to your OXID installation (these should be filled in for you):
Make sure you select the Delete setup directory after installation option so that the installer deletes the setup files as this prevents unauthorized users from resetting your hard work at a later date. Also, before submitting the form, make sure that the temporary directory specified exists and is writable by your web server, or else create it with the necessary permissions; failure to do this will produce an installation error. There are many ways to do this, depending on how your hosting environment is set up; check with your hosting provider, or visit the G-Loaded web site for an overview of various approaches. Click the Save and continue button to proceed.
At the end of it all, if OXID eShop has been successfully installed and configured, you should see a similar image to this:
That’s it—you’re done! Next, we find out how to begin setting up product listings.