How do I decide where to start? Newbie

I need to sell products on line, and want to use Pay Pal. I have
read dreadful stories on (several boards) about all the problems
with shopping carts and Pay Pal. Does anyone (who has
experience with shopping carts/PP) have a recommendation
of which cart to use?

Also, would Site Builder be the way to go for a simple web site, and
then add the shopping cart? Can you use thumbnail jpg linked to
enlarged pic of jpg with Site Builder? I did try the demo, and that
went well, as I do have desktop publ. experience. I just don't
know what features to expect from SB, and if a cart works
well with it.

Thanks for any insight!
FoggyDays

[KWHS]

cubecart is a good one I think, multiple payment gateways and it very easy to add products too etc

[khepri]

I gather from your post you don't currently have any HTML or PHP experience?

http://www.w3schools.com/

is a decent place to start...

As to the rest HostGator acutally prefers...erm, recommends PP and I'm sure support or the members of this forum would help at the asking....

Personally I've never used any "sitebuilding" programs let alone Site Builder preferring to hand code instead (hope that doesn't start a flame war...LOL)..[edit - by handcode I usually mean installing a script and hacking it up to my liking rather than writing from scratch]

Anyway, you're in a good place should you decide to join....basically you can do *nearly* anything with your space that you want....imo

[khepri]

Originally Posted by KWHS

cubecart is a good one I think, multiple payment gateways and it very easy to add products too etc

I didn't know that wasn't a "free" cart?!

Hmm, well he'd get the added benefit of support from them I guess....

Paypal always has their own sorta cart you can incorporate into your own pages if all else failed...find a nice template...copy and paste some code...yadda yadda...

Anyone tried ZenCart? I've been eyeballing them but haven't installed it to mess around...

Thanks for the reply.
Yes, I do know some HTML, as I had a web page in 1994! but
I don't have the time nor inclination to turn in and learn all I
would need to right now, and I had hoped the "Site Builders"
that several host have now would get me around that, for now.
I have a lot of product I am still developing, and don't need to
spend all my time learning new code.

HG sounded great. (Wonder who,if anybody, uses those "Site Builders"?)
Thank you for your time. I appreciate the truth.
(Ms.)FoggyDays

[KWHS]

you can run cubecart free, if you want to remove their copyright then you have to pay for a license, runs just fine without it though

[khepri]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Thanks for the reply.
Yes, I do know some HTML, as I had a web page in 1994!

Probably the same people that used to use HotDog way back then!...LOL

Originally Posted by Unregistered

I have a lot of product I am still developing, and don't need to
spend all my time learning new code.

Ahh, I see...Of course you're right!

Originally Posted by Unregistered

HG sounded great. (Wonder who,if anybody, uses those "Site Builders"?)
Thank you for your time. I appreciate the truth.
(Ms.)FoggyDays

Plenty of people use them I think...The Frontpages, the Dreamweavers, NVU, each of them has their cool features and their drawbacks...Probably one of those Left Brain, Right Brain things....

Site Builder specifically I'm not sure...I played with it a bit recently (last few months) just to see what it was about....Personally I thought the pages looked a bit generic, but much better then some others...

My impression, thinking of your situation, was that you could find a nice freebie template and insert Paypal's cart code into it and end up with a better looking site...although that could take a day or two longer to put together inserting your links and whatnot...

HG has good technical support most of the time, and this little community of HG users is a good resource IMO....and something my last host completely lacked...

[Serra]

I did the shopping cart tour and installed a few to test them out and I decided that the free carts really were not worth what you paid for them. The thing that really made the difference was going to all of the sites built buy the carts and seeing that they all looked about the same.

I've been using x-cart for a while now and I'm very happy with it. It isn't a free cart, but it is well worth the money.