SuperPower09 Posted January 20, 2016 Share Posted January 20, 2016 Hey All! I'm fairly new to osCommerce as I was recently tasked to maintain a website that is using this platform. Prior to coming to this company, I've worked primarily as a front-end developer, mostly working with Wordpress and helping set up blogs, ecommerce sites, etc. So my question is, what is the best way to get started to learn osCommerce development? Looking at the documentation and various forum items, it appears that I'll need to get even more familiar with PHP and MySQL than every before, which isn't my strong suit currently (I'm working on it though). Things I've done so far: Reviewed osCommerce documentation for 2.3.4 Get more familiar with PHP and MySQL (bought a few books off Amazon) I've searched for books specifically for osCommerce development but they are fairly dated Things I want to accomplish: Migration - For the company I'm working with, they are using an older version of osCommerce (2.2-MS2 to be exact). I'll need to migrate this site to a newer version sometime this year. Help the Community - I've never made a Wordpress plug-in and obviously, I've never made a osCommerce add-on but I think that would be one of the coolest things to do. I have a few ideas in mind that I think would be not only beneficial to the company I work with but also the osCommerce community as a whole. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jack_mcs Posted January 21, 2016 Share Posted January 21, 2016 Hi Dwaune - welcome to this forum. What you want to do can be accomplished but I think your biggest obstacle, at first, is to understand how the files are laid out. Most questions you will have have most likely already been answered here. Finding the answers to those will help you understand the shop. Also, oscommerce still has the largest collections of addons (code packages written for oscommerce) and they are free. Not all of your needs will be available in addons but the majority will be, most likely. As for upgrading the shop, be sure to use the Bootstrap version. It is not the official version but is the one you should use. For your existing shop, you may want to read through this thread and this thread since they have lots of answers you will need. Besides the above, it is difficult, for me at least, to provide much more help without specific questions. So I suggest you find some small change you want to make on the site and then, assuming you can't find the answer, post a question here. You'll find this forum full of friendly, helpful people. Support Links: For Hire: Contact me for anything you need help with for your shop: upgrading, hosting, repairs, code written, etc. All of My Addons Get the latest versions of my addons Recommended SEO Addons Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrPhil Posted January 21, 2016 Share Posted January 21, 2016 I agree that you want to go Bootstrap (2.3.4BS) rather than plain 2.3.4 (unless you absolutely want to avoid mobile-using customers!). It's a new install (not an upgrade) and a database migration. Unless your old 2.2-MS2 was extremely customized, and it looks to be too painful to recreate all the stuff you need, there is no point to staying with an older version. You'll just get tripped up by PHP upgrades all the sooner, and essentially end up forking your own version (supporting it yourself). At least, make a test install and DB migration soon, and play with a 2.3.4BS store to see if you're missing anything important. I wouldn't sweat over trying to learn PHP and MySQL before you begin. That knowledge can be handy if you need to debug some problem, and certainly if you want to do any customization or add-on creation, but it's not necessary to do a basic installation and migration of data. Most books (dead tree and e) are for pre-2.3.4 releases, and won't help you very much with 2.3.4, and almost not at all with 2.3.4BS. Things have changed considerably (for the better), especially with the UI, but documentation hasn't caught up yet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SuperPower09 Posted January 21, 2016 Author Share Posted January 21, 2016 Thank you guys for your insight and wisdom (and the helpful links), this is a great starting point. I'm looking forward to tackling osCommerce and hopefully helping the community in the future. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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