We have developed this guide to make you more comfortable with the customization process for your osCommerce shopping cart website. We want to help you develop your ideas, and give you a feel for the whole process. We do our best to make everything go smoothly and quickly, and to give you control over the process.

Idea Designing a Solution Cost Time

Bring the idea to life Testing Installation Support

osCommerce is a great web-based shopping cart, but you may like some help setting up a new site, or as you use it, you may begin to see the need for your cart to do more. Most of the programming we do can be placed into one of three categories: 1 – developing a new site. 2 – Changing how information is displayed on your site. 3 – Adding new functions to your site.

For any idea that you come to us with, we will want to know your reasons behind the idea. For example: how do these changes help you, or your customers? This way we can make sure that we are always building toward your goal. We can approach the solution to your idea best by getting into the mind frame of you and your customers.

If you are building a new site, we want to know about you and your product. This information will help us to make good decisions, so that we can build your site quickly. We will want to know the focus of your business, and what makes you unique. For example: do you carry a unique product, are you the cheapest, or do you have the best quality?

Do you know what you want the site to look like? It is a good idea to research other sites, and have a list of sites that you think fit your business and why. For example: do you like the colors, the feel, or the flow? If you already have a layout designed, it is less expensive to take an existing layout and fit it into osCommerce than it is to develop one from scratch.

The following is a list of questions that we will need to have answered before we can set up your new website (we can also help you find out the answers to any of these questions if you are not able to find them yourself):

• Do you already have a hosting company?
• Do you already have a domain name?
• Is the domain name already pointing to a current site that you are using?
• Do you already have an SSL security certificate (to protect the website)?
• Do you already have “web ready” pictures of your products?
• Do you have a database of your products that might include a product id, description, price?
• Do you already have inventory management?
• Do you need orders to be automatically downloaded to a back-end accounting or other system?

Once we know what changes you want to make, we start out by searching through the osCommerce code already installed on your site, to see if there are any modules that are currently inactive. If this is the case, we can activate the module and train you how to utilize the tools. Next, we search for preexisting modules and other code enhancements that would fill your needs, or ones that come close. You can find these yourself at the osCommerce Community Add-Ons Site. If we find that a solution is already available in osCommerce, we can work on getting the new module or changes added to your system. We would be glad to consult with you about any features already in osCommerce. We want to make sure you have control over your site, and are able to maximize your investment.

If we find that an existing module comes close to fitting your needs, we review it to determine what types of custom modifications are necessary to make it work on your site. The final step in the process, which occurs only if your idea is completely new to osCommerce, is to work with you to design an entirely new module that will make your idea come to life.

In order to research your requested changes, we will need some information from your website. We generally need FTP access, as well as osCommerce access, to be able to deliver an accurate quote. The following information is helpful to have available when you first contact us, because it will speed up the quoting process.

• Do you already have a site?
• What version of osCommerce do you have? — Get from the admin (in most versions of osCommerce) from Tools | Server info
• What version of PHP is running on your server? — Get from the admin (in most versions of osCommerce) from Tools | Server info
• What is the URL of your site? — e.g.: www.dunamisdesign.com
• When does your site have the least traffic? — So we know the best time to change your site. You can get this from your web statistics. If you don’t have that information, try signing up for Google Analytics.
• How many sales do you get from your site per day? — This helps up figure out a strategy to update your site cleanly. Do we need to phase in changes so to not disturb your customers?

Ultimately, the cost of a project is calculated by estimating the amount of time we think the project will take. Remember that you can contact us for a free quote. We strive to think through any project so we can warn you of possible complications.

There are a few guidelines to give you an idea how big your project will be. The prices given here are to give a ballpark figure so you have something to think about.

Making small changes in the look of the site tends to be less expensive (~$200). Some examples of this are: wanting to move something on a product page or changing the color layout.

Adding a preexisting module to your site also tends to be less expensive (~$300). This cost is highly dependent on how modified you site already is, and the version of osCommerce that you are running.

Custom modifications to an existing module can still be relatively inexpensive, though the cost depends upon the complexity of the requested changes. (starts at ~$500)

Building a new custom module or customizing part of your code (~$500 on up). The cost of this can vary greatly, but tends to be the most expensive. Remember that for large projects, we break them up into phases so you can see results quickly. For small businesses, this can control the amount that you are spending, and we can make new changes when you have the money.

Please remember that sometimes the things that look simple are difficult, and sometimes what looks hard can be very easy. Contact us for a free quote.

To set up a new osCommerce web site, it would be about $1500, depending upon your graphic needs and the complexity of the customizations to the base osCommerce code.

For any large projects, we ask for a 50% non-refundable deposit at the beginning of each phase. We ask for the rest when the project (or phase of the project) has been completed and we have asked you to review the installation.

The time that it takes to complete a project is based on our current schedule of projects and the amount of work that we have to do. We will work with you to build a schedule that meets your needs. To maintain a schedule, it is important that we are able to communicate in a timely fashion. If we have a question for you, we need to know who to talk to and how to email and/or call them.

When we schedule large custom projects, we break them up into phases so you can see working results quickly. For small businesses, this can limit the amount that you are spending in the short term, so that we make the changes when you have the money.

For many of the projects that we develop, we prefer to do all programming and testing on a test site, which is set up at the beginning of the first phase. Utilizing a test site allows us to safely make changes to your code without you suffering any lost sales. We like to set up an environment that closely resembles yours, most importantly with the same version of osCommerce.

Even if you are only installing a new module, it can be helpful for you to have a test version set up. It makes it possible for you to play with the different parts of osCommmerce safely, without worrying about making changes to live data before you are ready. You can get to know your tools more intimately, which means that you can leverage more of your investment. If you would like your own test environment, please let us know and we can help set one up with your current host.

As we build your new custom module, we may have questions to clear up any issues that crop up as we work on your idea. For larger projects, we will ask that you review our progress periodically, to make sure that we stay on the right track.

Many times it is not the actual programming that takes the most time. It is the testing. Sometimes a single change can require multiple tests to make sure that it works throughout the system, and then it may have to be tested on different browsers to make sure that all of your customers have the same pleasant experience.

After we complete our initial testing, we ask for you to test and review the changes that we have made, to make sure that it works exactly how you want it to. Now that the idea has been made a reality, does it work like you imaged?

Once we have your approval, we will install the module or code on the live site. We work with you to select the best time to make the change. When we do make the change, we run some final tests on the production system to make sure everything has installed well. Then we contact you to let you know that the installation is complete. We ask that you look over the production site to verify that all is well.

We care about your site running smoothly. We know that many types of problems can occur with your site, for example: your hosting company updates PHP, or your database tables become corrupt. If you are having problems with your site, we will give you our priority. Since we cannot give a quote for this type of work, we charge by the hour.

Sometimes we miss something in our work. We expect that in the first 60 days after we install onto your live site, that any extraneous bugs will be found. During that time we will warranty any defect that was caused by us. Generally, if you find a post-installation problem, email us, and if we can solve it quickly, we will not charge you.